Cooking Changes foods?? (ex. squashes - love them!)

Why is it that squashes (ex: butternut, acorn -- even zucchinis if you think about it!) taste sweeter after they are cooked?

Do the grams of sugar change?? How DOES that work...

Do the grams of fiber content come down as well after cooking? (I guess this applies to all foods??)

so perplexing....

(Btw, can anyone guess around how many calories 1 medium butternut squash is?? And grams of sugar/fiber, etc. I'm really not sure how many 'cups' it is, but it seems like most measurements are in cups)

Vegetables are made up of starchy cells containing water, sugars and other things.  Some are very tough starchy cells.... think potatoes, squashes, carrots, rice grains...  others are more delicate... think lettuces, oranges, tomatoes...   When raw the tougher ones are hard, indigestible and, in the case of potatoes, inedible.   We cook them to break down the cell structure starches and make them more digestible.    In the process the sugars & acids contained within the cells are released which changes the flavour.  Eat a raw carrot or apple and this breaking down process goes on in your stomach rather than a saucepan.

So the grammes of sugar don't change and the calories don't change.  The fibre doesn't even change.  You could take a carrot, cook it in stock and puree it through a blender (I think they call that a soup!) and you'd still get the fibre.   The one thing that changes is the vitamin content.  A fresh/frozen raw vegetable will contain more vitamins than an old/stored vegetable or a cooked vegetable. 

The calories in raw butternut squash are 45 per 100g. Check the CC database for the other info.

I just checked on the food list for squash.  1 cup (any variety) Summer squash is 36 calories, and 1 cup (any variety)  Winter squash is 76 calories.  I did not check the individual squash types, but from what I saw and remember a serving size is 1 cup of just about all of them.

You can do your own leg work from here on out just by using the Food search, or Google it.  I don't think the fiber count changes once the food is cooked.  I'm sure it doesn't get "cooked away".  You can also go to the nutrition forums to look this up.

What GI-Jane says.   Her post wasn't there when I first wrote.

Gi jane is right. Technically speaking, a chemical polysaccaride called "Dextrin" is produced when you heat/ or add acid to a starch. Dextrins are just sweeter tasting then starches, so the actual chemical composition changes when you heat/cook a starch