Can (water-soluble) vitamins/nutrients evaporate while cooking?

[Wrichik Basu]

Recently, I found a person saying that when I cook something with water, the vitamins/nutrients present in the ingredients leach out into the water and evaporate with it.

Well, water-soluble vitamins can leach out from the vegetables into the water, that is fine. But can they evaporate with the water?

My answer is "no". Vitamins are not like alcohols that have a boiling point near that of water and can evaporate with water. I think the water evaporates as it should, but the vitamins stay in the utensil. If I make the cooked food dry, then the vitamins either stick to the food or to the sides of the utensil.

Is this reasoning right? If not, is the other person right (and why)?

 

[phinds]

Google is your friend. You should try this some time. I just put your subject line into Google and ...

 

[Wrichik Basu]

Google is your friend. You should try this some time. I just put your subject line into Google and ...

I already saw that, but Quora is not the place I like going to because I believe it lacks what PF has - certified experts. The first answer neither says yes nor no - it just doesn't answer the question. The second answer to that question says:

It is clear that the person is himself not sure.

 

[phinds]

I already saw that, but Quora is not the place I like going to because I believe it lacks what PF has - certified experts.

Agreed, and I should have pointed that out myself. That was just the first thing I saw so I assume there are other more expert cites but if there aren't they of course PF is a great place to ask.

 

[BillTre]

I don't think there would be much evaporation of nutrients and vitamins for the reason you stated.
They are often heat sensitive (as the quora person said) and due to their heat sensitivity will "go away".

"Go away" meaning they breakdown to other compounds and either remain in the water and can get dried down or they may (being a chemically different compound with different properties) then (some or all of the resulting breakdown products) evoporate (personally I think this is less likely, but who knows).
In either of these cases, the original chemicals did not evaporate.

However, a large number different potential chemicals are involved in such a vague question (the nutrients and vitamins in some unidentified food product). It is difficult to be certain of every possible case.

 

[JT Smith]

Well, water-soluble vitamins can leach out from the vegetables into the water, that is fine. But can they evaporate with the water?

My answer is "no". Vitamins are not like alcohols that have a boiling point near that of water and can evaporate with water.

Vitamins do have boiling points though so one would expect some fraction to be in the vapor.

 

[Wrichik Basu]

Vitamins do have boiling points though so one would expect some fraction to be in the vapor.

Boiling point of ascorbic acid is 553°C as per Google, and that of cyanocobalamin is 300°C as per PubChem. So yes, they would be present, but the percentage would be quite small. The induction cooker we use has a usual temperature setting of < 200°C (though it can be increased, of course).

 

[chemisttree]

You should consider the possibility of a steam distillation. If you can smell what’s cooking, you are steam distilling or co-distilling something. Whether they are vitamins is another matter. Nutrients are certainly being lost in cooking but I wouldn’t expect they are being steam distilled. If you consider essential oils to be nutrients, then, yes, they are being lost in the vapor.

Vitamins, not a chance I think.

 

[hutchphd]

One of my happiest recent purchases is an instapot ($55) which is a temperature-regulated pressure cooker. Nothing escapes the cooker when the lid is closed and it is very smart and useful.
I am not a big fan of most automated cooking gizmos but this thing is really good...it browns stuff well, the burner is very uniform, the pot is heavy stainless and it is smart enough to never burn the food even if you do something stupid. No I do not have stock in the company...

 

[jim mcnamara]

I'm not going to litter this with links.

Required nutrients-
Macronutrients by definition - water, carbohydrate, complete protein (essential amino acids present), fats
--required in amount usually larger than 1 g/day
Micronutrients byy definition - a mishmash of things like folates, retinols, ascorbates, etc. plus cyanocobalmine, choline and other goodies. Less than 1g/day. Calcium,.e.g, ius an exception. Sort of.

WHO has a list of required nutrients, so does NSF and the USDA.

Short list of oddities:
Phylloquinone is changed by gut bacteria into usable "vitamin K".
Vitamin D is very rare in naturally ocurring foods. Whole milk may have added "vitamin D₃"
Vitamin D behaves like a hormone, not a vitamin. FWIW. Normally, humans get "vitamin D" from sun exposure.

Iodine and Selenium supplements are dependent on the presence/absence of these elements in local soils. Examples:
Parts of Iowa (US state) have Selenium deficient soils.
Iodine in soils in some areas in India is virtually non-existent.
Goat and sheep forage maps of the US show high iodine soils because these ruminants do not do well with iodine supplemented feed when they pasture those areas.

Vitamin is not a very good term. It originated long before researchers had a good understanding. Non-science folks use the term, so we end up with a duality: micronutrient versus vitamin.

The answers given above are partially correct. Steam is not have a measurable loss of micronutrients.
Has chemical effects on food as is noted earlier.

Assuming you really mean micronutrients:
Some are altered by heat - Ascorbic acid
Some leach into boiling water - Niacin
Some - Carotenes, retinols, lycopene - become much more available in cooked foods.
Some foods require Nixtamalization to realize full nutrient availability -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixtamalization

Think of cooking as pre-digestion and pathogen/parasite removal.

WHO Intro to nutrients (Longish)
https://www.who.int/nutrition/topics/nutrecomm/en/