(HealthDayNews) -- If you want to get the most out of the nutrients in your food, try a blender. Or at least chew every bite thoroughly.
The British Journal of Nutrition reports that the Unilever Research Vlaardingen in the Netherlands studied the nutrient value of different foods. After all, it's not what's in the food that counts, it's how much of the nutrients you actually benefit from.
Among other conclusions, the study showed that although spinach is rich in beta-carotene, folate and lutein, very little of these nutrients gets to your blood stream.
The researchers then broke up the plant cells with a blender, and found that most of the nutrients were released. The blood levels of folate from chopped spinach were 14 times as high as from leaf spinach, and the levels of lutein went up 10 times. For some reason that wasn't explained, the beta-carotene levels didn't change at all.
