Introduction:

in recent years, there has been an increase in the number of studies evaluating how cooking affects the nutrient content of foods. However, most of them refer to very specific experiments usually with vegetable foods, which cannot be extrapolated to other food groups.

Objectives:

the objective is to summarize the available evidence on typical and most suitable culinary techniques for designing healthy diets, reconciling an adequate nutritional contribution with the gastronomic value and the maintenance of the organoleptic properties.

Methods:

an analysis was conducted of articles published on the association between the most common cooking methods and changes in the nutritional value of the food, without year restriction.

Results:

culinary techniques best studied and described, are moist heat, dry heat and mixed heat cooking methods, with their different modalities. Real nutrient losses in a specific food are associated to multiple factors, mainly the time-temperature binomial, but also the type and state of the food, the previous manipulation and the cooking method itself. So far, the most accurate way to calculate these nutrient losses is to apply the nutrient retention factors established by agreement, according to food groups and culinary methods.

Conclusions:

updated reviews on the knowledge of the most commonly used cooking methods, as well as more innovative ones, are essential and should be carried out regularly, so that they serve as a reference that ensures a continuous improvement of the quality, both nutritional and gastronomic, of the different elaborations.

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