Nutrient retention in foods after earth-oven cooking compared to other forms of domestic cooking: 1. Proximates, carbohydrates and dietary fibre

Effects of Pacific traditional style of cooking in an earth-oven11Traditional Pacific style of cooking, lovo as it is known in Fijian, is performed in an oven in the earth prepared by digging a smooth sloping pit on the ground. The main source of heat is provided by the stones (once or twice the size of a fist), heated in an open fire (normally 1–2 h) until extremely hot. All food to be cooked is put in the pit at once on these extremely hot and dry stones (without water being poured to generate steam for cooking) and left in the pit, covered with earth, and left to cook for 1–2 h (1 h and 15 min in this research). oximate content of chicken, lamb chops, fish, cassava, taro and palusami22A vegetable-based dish that consists of a filling, made by mixing canned meat (fish, mutton or beef) with coconut cream, wrapped by a layer of taro leaves. Depending on the taste and likings of people, onion, chilies, carrot, tomatoes and salt are also added to the filling. investigated. Retention of proximates in earth-oven-cooked samples was compared with the retention in microwaved and oven-roasted chicken and lamb chops, microwave-cooked fish, boiled cassava and taro, and steamed-cooked palusami, the nutrient analyses of all of which were conducted during the course of this study. Water content of the samples generally decreased most upon earth-oven cooking. As much as 32.9% moisture was lost from earth-oven-cooked lean of lamb chops. Loss of water from microwave-cooked meat, ranging from 6.6 to 25.8 g/100 g, was second to the moisture loss in earth-oven-cooked meat and the least amount of moisture was lost from the gas-oven roasted meat with the values ranging from 4.4 to 22.2 g/100 g. Retention of protein ranged from 96% to 103% in all samples, the differences being not statistically significant. However, interestingly high retention values of fat were noted in separable lean of lamb chops ranging from 291% to 294%. A simple and logical explanation for this observation is adsorption of fat from separable fat, as it melted during cooking, into the muscle tissue of lamb chops. Retention of over 100% dietary fiber in all foods that had this component in the raw state was noted upon all types of cooking, except in steam-cooked palusami. This implied an increase in this component of food after cooking, whereas starch and sugars generally decreased after cooking.