Results from the study showed that cooking
affected both the bioactive compounds and their
antioxidant activity. Boiling and stir frying pumpkin
for 2, 4 and 6 min resulted in 18 to 45% degradation of
its total phenolic compounds. However, interestingly,
content of both beta-carotene and lycopene was found
to increase 2.0 to 40.6 times upon boiling and stirfrying.
The pumpkin boiled for 2 minutes have shown
to have strong antioxidant activity. The evaluation
of those bioactive compounds in pumpkin would
provide information about the changes of phenolic
compounds, carotenoids and their antioxidant activity
during cooking