In tropical Africa where the daily diet is dominated by starchy staples, African leafy vegetables (ALVs) are the cheapest and most readily available sources of proteins, vitamins, minerals and essential amino acids. Five leafy vegetable species (Abelmoschus esculentus, Celosia argentea, Ipomea batatas, Manihot esculenta and Myrianthus arboreus) that are used as soup condiments in Western Côte d’Ivoire were subjected to cooking in order to evaluate the effect of this processing method on their nutritive value and antioxidant properties. The result of the study revealed that longer time of cooking (higher than 15 min) caused negative impact by reducing nutritive value but positive impact by reducing anti-nutrients such as oxalates and phytates. The registered losses were as follow: ash (46.06 – 63.20 %) proteins (4.8 - 33.09 %), vitamin C (80.57 – 95.83 %), carotenoids (75.69 – 100 %), oxalates (64.52 – 66.08%) and phytates (48.71 – 79.52%).The average reduction on cooking was 69.75 – 85.5 % for antioxidant activity. Contrary to these reductions, a slight increase of fibres content was observed in the studied cooked leafy vegetables. Furthermore, the residual contents after 15 min of cooking of calcium (142.47 – 301.75 mg/100g), magnesium (120.01 – 306.08 mg/100g), phosphorus (247.79 – 347.04 mg/100g), potassium (459.62 – 2197.37 mg/100g), iron (12.54 – 51.83 mg/100g) and zinc (8.90 – 25.30 mg/100g) could cover the recommended dietary allowance. All these results suggest that the recommended time of domestic cooking must be less than 15 min for the studied leafy vegetables in order to contribute efficiently to the nutritional requirement and to the food security of Ivorian population.
