Nutrition & Foodservice Edge Magazine - May/June 2022 - 20

COMMON COOKING MYTHS DEBUNKED
same amounts. There are nutrients that are destroyed by the
freezing process, others that are indigestible if consumed
raw, and yet others that are rinsed away during the high
heat pasteurization that occurs with canning. Confused
yet? Ideally, we will include a variety of preparations and
processing levels in our vegetable consumption, but reality
is never so neat. The simple answer is that the healthiest
vegetable preparations are the ones that you will eat the
greatest amount of. A counterintuitive study found that
people who consume large amounts of canned food receive
more nutrients than people who don't. (Comerford, 2015)
Canned food is affordable, simple to prepare, easy to eat,
and has a practically infinite shelf
life. Keeping, preparing, and eating
fresh vegetables can be challenging
and expensive. The window of
opportunity is small, and waste just
exacerbates the already-high costs.
5. Wooden utensils are
unsafe.
scored by knife use, or cracking, splintering, or fuzzy.
If you are old-school like me and love wooden spoons for
cooking soups and risotto, a big solid butcher's block for your
cutting board, and wooden benches for baking, fear not!
Wood utensils are just as safe as any synthetic material, and
some experiments have even shown wood to be safer than
plastic. You must be committed to washing and sanitizing
these items by hand, avoiding high-temp dishwashing (not
because it is unsafe, it'll just destroy wood in the long run)
and always air dry after sanitizing. Wood can be sanded
when it gets raggedy, won't scratch your pans, and it floats!
Just don't leave it (or anything, please) over an open flame.
WOODEN UTENSILS ARE
JUST AS SAFE
Wooden spoons, cutting boards,
platters, chopsticks, rice steamers,
lunch boxes, and many other items,
have fallen in and out of favor
over the years because of their
questionable safety. To make this
worse, there's a lot of conflicting
information on the Internet, and it
can be difficult to sort out the facts. The myth that wood is
porous and will absorb pathogens in the crannies that will
then emerge to cross contaminate your next dish is false.
(Nese O Ak, Jan 1994) Just like their polymeric cousins, they
only become unsafe when they are physically damaged, deeply
as any synthetic material,
and some experiments have
even shown wood to be safer
than plastic.
FOCUS ON THE FACTS
If we learn anything from these
common cooking myths, it is not to
automatically believe everything we
are told. There are far more myths
in cooking than I could fit in this
article, so sometimes it pays to be a
rebel with an Internet connection.
Modern chefs have totally free access
to information, recipes, research,
and instruction that the chefs of
yesteryear could only dream of. Be
careful, do your research, and take
nothing for granted. E
REFERENCES
Scan QR code to view the list of
resources for this article.
R. ANDREW BRAUN, CDM, CFPP |
richardbraun1979@gmail.com
Andrew Braun is a chemist and chef with 25 years of foodservice
experience, with over a decade in health care and senior living.
20 NUTRITION & F OOD SER VICE EDGE | MAY-JUNE 2022
Nutrition & Foodservice Edge Magazine - May/June 2022

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