The New Complete Book of Food

xix

tomatoes, for example. Vine-ripened ones not yet completely red will get juicier and tastier
after a few days at room temperature. Artificially ripened ones (the “hard ripe” variety) will
rot before they soften. Sort out the facts under storing this food.
Ready to eat? Then it’s time to begin preparing this food. This section tells you how to
handle food you are about to cook or serve. With the pertinent science, of course. For example:
we tear greens at the very last minute to keep them crisp—and to prevent the loss of vitamin
C when torn cells release the anti-C enzyme ascorbic acid oxidase. We beat egg whites in a
copper bowl because copper ions flaking off the surface stabilize the egg foam. We slice raw
onions under running water to dilute sulfur compounds that make our eyes water.
What happens when you cook this food? Lots. Heating crystallizes sugars and proteins to
form a flavorful crust. Aroma molecules move more quickly to produce enticing aromas.
Pigments combine with oxygen or other chemicals, turning brown or olive drab. These reac-
tions are familiar; here’s the “how” and “why.”
And there’s the question of how other kinds of processing affect this food. Processing often
changes a food’s texture, and it may alter the nutritional value. Defrosted frozen potatoes
and carrots are usually mushy; canned vegetables have less vitamin C. Sometimes, process-
ing even makes food potentially hazardous: Dried fruit treated with sulfur compounds may
be life-threatening to people sensitive to sulfites.
This leads quite naturally to the medical uses and/or benefits of food. The information in
this section comes from sources current as the book is written, but research in this area is so
new and expanding so rapidly that it must always be regarded as a work in progress rather
than a final conclusion. What you read here is a guide, not the last word. Ditto for adverse
effects associated with this food and food/drug interactions.
In some entries you may find a series of asterisks ( *) at one or more headings. The
asterisks mean that right now, we may not be aware of information pertaining to the cat-
egory for this food.
When you are done, I hope you come away with a larger store of information about
your favorite foods and guidelines for evaluating them as individual health products, just like
the medicines on your drugstore shelf.
Remember the grapefruit. Remember the aspirin. Remember how similar they are.

Carol Ann Rinzler

MEASUREMENTS USED IN THIS BOOK

RDA = recommended dietary allowance

g = gram

mg = milligram

mcg = microgram

1 gram = 1,000 milligrams

= 1,000,000 micrograms

IU = international unit

l = liter

Preface