Five ways to retain the nutritive value of green leafy vegetables are :
1. Do not chop the leaves before cooking time as they have lot of water soluble nutrients that are lost during storage.
2. Blanch the leaves and cooking them just to the optimum point prevents losses of heat labile nutrients.
3. Use the leaves when fresh as they tend to lose nutritional benefits along with storage.
4. Use variety of leaves to get optimum nutrition.
5. Cover the cooking pan with a lid to prevent losses with steam.
6. Use only the required amount of water for cooking.
7. Reuse the water to make soups or curries as the water contains lot of vitamins and minerals.
8. Do not serve leafy vegetables with milk and milk products and phytates in milk bind iron
