ESSAY

Why We Cook the Food We Eat

We cook our food for three reasons, to make food look more appetizing, to soften hard and tough foods, and to kill any microbe that may happen to be in the food.

There are many ways of preparing food. Food can be fried, boiled, broiled, roasted, baked, steamed, stewed, or sautéed. They can be well cooked or half cooked.

It is easier to digest food that is well cooked. But there are foods that are easier to digest when half cooked than when well cooked. Meat and liver for example, are easier to digest when half cooked. But certainly they taste better when well cooked.

Many vegetables are also easier to digest when well cooked but some are eaten raw. Lettuce is an example of a vegetable which is eaten raw.