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Many recipes using frozen chopped spinach instruct one to thaw and squeeze out the water from the spinach. When I do this, how much nutrition I am squeezing out?

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Interesting...I haven't seen that suggested for frozen spinach before, myself. However, if you're planning to overcook the spinach (for example in a casserole, or in many Indian spinach-based dishes), I've seen it recommended to partially cook the spinach first and squeeze out the water. Squeezing out the water removes/prevents some of the terrible canned flavor of overcooked spinach. It might also be necessary if using frozen spinach in a recipe that is intended for fresh, as the partially-cooked spinach might overcook. While I know why it's done, however, I'm not sure what is lost. – Theodore Murdock Nov 27 '12 at 14:32

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When you squeeze the water 'out' you are really squeezing out the water on the outside of the spinach leaves, not the juice inside the spinach. You will get some green color but most of the moisture is just wash water.

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One way of looking at it is that nutrient density is increased due to the removal of water. Minerals will not have been drained away at any rate.

Example from nutritiondata.self.com:

                            water content, g per 100g  Iron     vitamin A
Unprepared thawed spinach   90.2                       1.9       11725 
cooked drained              88.9                       2.0       12061

I assume more nutrients are cooked away rather than squeezed but that was the data available.

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if it was pure water, sure. But many vitamins are water soluble. – Kate Gregory Nov 26 '12 at 19:30
look at the nutritional charts for drained vrs undrained spinach. No, I didn't say NOTHING was lost but I AM correct about the nutritional density by weight or volume. Iron levels also are not negatively impacted by draining as I mentioned – Pat Sommer Nov 28 '12 at 19:47
@Kate Gregory Some vitamins are water soluble, some even "swim" in the free water, but most are bound to the cellular structure, Pat is quite correct in this observation (and the nutritional data supports that) – TFD Dec 16 '12 at 19:43
up vote -1 down vote

I'd think this would have the same effect as overcooking. It'll probably be difficult to measure the amount of lost nutrients, but there will likely be nutrients lost.

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