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I've been researching the nutrient content of various foods and I've found that cooked spinach appears to have more iron than raw spinach (3.57 mg / 100g vs 2.71 mg /100g). Intuitively, I would have expected the opposite.

Is the data I'm looking at wrong?

Maybe, it is just that it is easier to aborb the iron from cooked spinach rather than raw.

Can anyone explain the difference?

Shog9
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Mast
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3 Answers3

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Iron is simply an element, so it cannot be destroyed by cooking (or generally temperature changes), as vitamins and other organic structures potentially can.

Cooked spinach inevitably has a much lower water content, thus the relative density of all other components must increase. So gram for gram, it makes sense that cooked spinach should have a higher concentration of iron (and possibly some other things) than raw. However, the actual process of cooking does nothing to change the amount of iron.

Noldorin
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I would guess that cooked spinach has lost a lot of the water content, so cooking doesn't add more iron, it just increases the percentage or iron by reducing the total mass.

I.e. if you had 100g of raw spinach and you cooked it (and drained it probably) you would end up with less than 100g of cooked spinach.

David Ly
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Spinach contains oxalic acid which inhibits the absorption of iron. Cooking destroys the oxalic acid therefore more iron is absorbed from cooked spinach. We absorb other vitamins and minerals from spinach. We absorb different nutrients from cooked and raw spinach, so.it is good to eat it both raw and cooked. (nutritionist knowledge)

user36185
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