What Vitamins Are In Broccoli?

Broccoli is one of the most nutrient-dense vegetables you can put on a plate. A single cup of raw chopped broccoli delivers a meaningful share of several vitamins, most notably vitamin C, vitamin K, and folate, along with smaller amounts of vitamin A, vitamin E, and several B vitamins. It also provides minerals like potassium and calcium, plus fiber and a group of plant compounds called glucosinolates that researchers have studied for decades.

The exact amounts shift depending on whether you eat it raw, steamed, boiled, or roasted. Cooking changes the vitamin content in ways that are worth understanding, because some nutrients hold up well to heat and others do not.

What Vitamins Are In Broccoli?

Broccoli contains a broad mix of vitamins, but three stand out for their concentration: vitamin C, vitamin K, and folate. The table below reflects values for raw broccoli, based on USDA nutritional data. Cooking will change these numbers.

One thing that surprises many people: broccoli contains no vitamin D and no vitamin B12. Those nutrients come from sunlight exposure and animal foods (or fortified products and supplements), not from vegetables. Broccoli is also not a meaningful source of vitamin B12 for anyone following a plant-based diet.

How Much Vitamin C Is In Broccoli?

Broccoli is an excellent source of vitamin C. A one-cup serving of raw chopped broccoli provides roughly 81 milligrams, which is more than the daily vitamin C recommendation for most adults. The current Recommended Dietary Allowance for adult men is 90 mg per day and for adult women is 75 mg per day, according to the National Institutes of Health. Smokers need more, about 35 mg extra daily, because smoking depletes vitamin C.

Vitamin C in broccoli is water-soluble and heat-sensitive. Boiling broccoli in a large volume of water can leach out a substantial portion of the vitamin C into the cooking water, and the heat itself degrades some of it. Steaming, microwaving, or stir-frying tends to preserve more vitamin C than boiling. If you boil broccoli, you are still getting fiber, minerals, and other compounds, but the vitamin C content drops.

Vitamin C matters for more than immune support. It is required for the body to make collagen, the structural protein in skin, blood vessels, and connective tissue. Without enough vitamin C, collagen production falters, which is why severe deficiency causes scurvy. Most people in the US get enough vitamin C, but broccoli is one of the more efficient ways to get it from food.

Why Is Broccoli High In Vitamin K?

Broccoli is one of the better vegetable sources of vitamin K, providing about 93 micrograms per raw cup. That is a large share of the daily adequate intake, which is 120 mcg for adult men and 90 mcg for adult women.

Vitamin K is central to blood clotting. The body uses it to activate several proteins that allow blood to coagulate. It also plays a role in bone metabolism, helping to modify a protein called osteocalcin that is involved in building bone tissue.

This matters for one specific group: people taking blood-thinning medications like warfarin. These drugs work by interfering with vitamin K, and a sudden increase or decrease in vitamin K intake can change how well the drug works. The standard guidance is not to avoid vitamin K foods but to keep intake steady from day to day. If you take warfarin, talk with your clinician before making big changes to how much broccoli or other leafy greens you eat. This is a case where consistency matters more than avoidance.

Vitamin K is fat-soluble and survives cooking better than vitamin C does. Boiling, steaming, and roasting do not destroy much of it.

Does Cooking Broccoli Destroy Its Vitamins?

Cooking does not destroy all the vitamins in broccoli, but it does change the mix. The nutrients most affected are water-soluble vitamins, particularly vitamin C and folate. The nutrients that hold up best are vitamin K, vitamin A, and most minerals.

The method matters more than the fact of cooking. Here is the general picture:

• Boiling causes the greatest loss of vitamin C and folate, because both dissolve into the water and are also degraded by heat.
• Steaming preserves more water-soluble vitamins because the broccoli has less direct contact with water.
• Microwaving with minimal water tends to preserve vitamins well, largely because cooking time is short.
• Stir-frying or roasting keeps vitamins in the food rather than in the cooking liquid, though heat exposure still reduces some vitamin C.

Folate deserves a note here. It is one of the more heat-sensitive vitamins in broccoli. Cooking reduces folate content, and boiling reduces it the most. For most people this is not a practical concern, since broccoli is rarely the only folate source in a diet. But if you are specifically trying to maximize folate, eating broccoli raw or lightly steamed keeps more of it intact.

There is a tradeoff worth naming. Cooking broccoli makes some nutrients more available and others less. Heat can break down cell walls, which may improve access to certain compounds like carotenoids. At the same time, it degrades vitamin C. There is no single best way to cook broccoli that maximizes everything, so variety in preparation is a reasonable approach.

Is Broccoli A Good Source Of Vitamin A And Other Vitamins?

Broccoli provides vitamin A, but in a specific form. It does not contain preformed vitamin A (retinol), which comes from animal foods like liver, eggs, and dairy. Instead, it contains beta-carotene and other carotenoids that the body converts into vitamin A. A raw cup provides about 28 micrograms of vitamin A as retinol activity equivalents (RAE).

The conversion from plant carotenoids to vitamin A is not one-to-one. The body converts beta-carotene to retinol less efficiently than it absorbs preformed vitamin A from animal sources, so plant sources deliver less usable vitamin A per microgram than the raw numbers might suggest. Broccoli is a modest contributor to vitamin A status, not a leading one.

Beyond vitamin A, broccoli offers smaller amounts of vitamin E, vitamin B6, thiamin, and riboflavin. These are present but at levels that make broccoli a supporting player rather than a primary source. Vitamin E in particular is low, at under 1 milligram per cup.

Broccoli also contains vitamin K and vitamin C in amounts that genuinely matter, which is why those two get the most attention. If you are tracking vitamins for a specific health reason, broccoli is most useful for those two plus folate.

Does Broccoli Lose Vitamins When Frozen Or Stored?

Frozen broccoli can be nearly as nutritious as fresh, and sometimes more so. Commercial freezing usually happens shortly after harvest, which locks in vitamin content before it declines during transport and storage. Fresh broccoli that sits in a refrigerator for a week may lose more vitamins than broccoli that was frozen the day it was picked.

Fresh broccoli does lose vitamins over time. Vitamin C in particular declines during storage, and the rate increases with warmth and light. Keeping broccoli cold and using it within a few days helps preserve what is there. Wrapping it loosely and storing it in the crisper drawer slows the loss.

Blanching, the brief heat treatment used before freezing, does reduce some water-soluble vitamins. So frozen broccoli is not identical to fresh-picked. But the gap between frozen and fresh-from-the-store is often small, and in some cases frozen comes out ahead.

One practical point: how you cook frozen broccoli affects the final vitamin content just as it does with fresh. Steaming or microwaving preserves more than boiling, whether the broccoli started frozen or fresh.