Is microwaving OJ bad?

March 1, 2011 7:09 PM

I like to nuke my orange juice, grapefruit juice, etc. Vitamin C is easily destroyed by heat. Am I drinking less Vitamin C when I nuke my OJ?

My Google-fu indicates that the scale of vitamin C after heat would be something like:

No heat > Microwave heat > Stove heat

Is that correct? Am I destroying the other beneficial nutrients as well?

posted by jyorraku to Food & Drink (7 answers total)

Best answer: My googling indicates Vitamin C is destroyed by heat above 70 degrees (celsius), or 158F. That's scalding hot, enough to burn you in less than a second, so you're likely not heating it enough to actually do damage to the vitamins.
posted by axiom at 7:20 PM on March 1, 2011

a couple seconds in the microwave can make reconstituting frozen oj a lot easier. That being said by the time that orange has been picked, juiced, blended, deconstructed, filtered, reblended, adjusted, dehydrated, frozen, stored and sold I imagine a couple seconds isn't going to do much in the grand scheme. Particularly as 8oz may have more than half the carbohydrate of a snickers bar.

You're probably better off just eating the orange.
posted by mce at 8:46 PM on March 1, 2011

Most people in developed countries get more than enough vitamin C. If it tastes good to you, don't worry about it.

The important thing in fruit/juices is fibre. And usually way too much sugar.
posted by HFSH at 5:19 AM on March 2, 2011

You could try adding boiling or hot water to room-temperature concentrated orange juice if you like it that way. Then you don't actually directly heat the OJ for any length of time.
posted by JJ86 at 6:08 AM on March 2, 2011

Does this mean that the pasteurized or flash pasteurized orange that one finds in the supermarket is misleading in terms of its listed vitamin content?
posted by beisny at 7:03 AM on March 2, 2011

1 120 calorie papaya will give 300% of the adult recommended daily value of vitamin c.
6 10 calorie strawberries give 140% dv.
1 60 calorie orange will give 115% dv.
1 120 calorie 80z glass orange juice is 100% dv. (with 22g of sugar?)

My favorite source of vitamin c and other nutrients is broccoli. Just 1 cup of it is 3g of protein, 116% dv of vitamin c, is a good source of Vitamin E, Thiamin, Riboflavin, Pantothenic Acid, Calcium, Iron, Magnesium, Phosphorus and Selenium, and a very good source of Dietary Fiber, Vitamin A, Vitamin K, Vitamin B6, Folate, Potassium and Manganese.

My second favorite is the red bell pepper. 1 pepper is about 30 calories, 140% dv of Vitamin A and 380% dv of Vitamin C.

I'm describing the above in case you are eating some of these things on regular basis to let you know that you are getting a lot of vitamin C since most people aren't aware of the nutrients in them.
posted by zephyr_words at 9:38 AM on March 2, 2011

Response by poster: Thanks for the answers and factoids. Food for thought!
posted by jyorraku at 1:03 AM on March 3, 2011