Cooking carrots whole - keep the nutrients

I just heard a news item on radio 4 about new research that indicates the benefits from cooking carrots whole. Now, that sounds like very old news to me. I recall my first cell biology practical at Bristol Uni back in the 70's, we cut carrots into varying size pieces (with whole carrots as a control) and then after boiling them analysed the 'cooking water'. The very clear result was that the smaller the pieces the more concentrated the levels of salts etc. in the water - ie. the less remained in the carrots.
This simple experiment came close to proving the bleeding obvious, but heyo, us young scientists had to start some where and I guess a lot of important principles came out of the experiment.

The recent research discussed on Radio4 also shows that cooked, whole carrots have more flavour than cut ones - no surprise there either. So the simple message is cook carrots whole if you want to keep the nutrients, anti-cancer agents and flavour. 

The study, carried out by Dr Kirsten Brandt and researcher Ahlam Rashed, from the University's School of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development, found that "boiled-before-cut" carrots contained 25% more of the anti-cancer compound falcarinol than those that were chopped up first.