Why does boiling water destroy the health benefits of certain foods (eg: honey/matcha) but not all food? How can you tell what not to use boiling water with?
In: Chemistry
It’s all about heat and protein structure. Heat denatures proteins. What temperature depends on which proteins. Denature means to alter its 3D structure to the point that it no longer functions as it did. When you cook meat, you change the proteins, making them soft and easy to eat. When you burn your finger, the skin blisters and you lose sensation. This is denaturing of proteins.
Some proteins cope with heat. Organisms living around deep sea volcanic vents (thermophiles) have evolved to have enzymes that survive high temperatures.
So some foods have proteins that denature at low temperatures, some at higher temperatures.
At some post, all enzymes will become denatured, it just depends when that will be.
Boiling water doesn’t generally destroy any health benefits. That’s largely because most of the health benefits don’t seem to be there in the first place.
The main thing out bodies use food for is energy. We measure that in calories and it has the biggest impact on health. If you don’t get enough calories you’ll starve. If you get too much you’ll be overweight.
The second biggest concern is macro nutrients. Food can basically be divided into fats, proteins and carbohydrates. You need fats and proteins as building blocks for your body. Carbohydrates make up the calorie difference.
After that there are micro nutrients. There are a few that humans are somewhat prone to being deficient in; calcium, iron and vitamin A for example. With a varied diet most people get everything they need but some people need to take special care to supplement one or more of them.
Honey is almost pure sugar. About 17% is water and only about 0.5% is other stuff (such as nutrients). There are plenty of claims about the health benefits of honey but not much in the way of actual evidence that it actually has any positive health benefits.
The stomach is also a pretty harsh environment. Anything you eat gets soaked in a bath of hydrochloric acid and digestive enzymes. That does a pretty good job of breaking down anything in your food into its constituent chemicals.
Boiling food does two big things for food. It kills off a lot of pathogens. If you get your food hot enough bugs like e-coli, salmonella and trichinella. It also breaks down some of the chemicals in food.
This tends to make foods healthier rather than less healthy because it takes less work for your body to break down those chemicals and because our bodies are incapable of breaking down some of them at all.
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