When dining out, the most common phenomenon is eating only the dishes and skipping the rice. It's not until you're full of wine and dishes that you remember to order some staple food. As a result, the dishes become the main attraction, while the rice becomes an afterthought.
You may not know that meat and fish contain almost no carbohydrates. Besides about 70% water and a small amount of minerals, they are composed of protein and fat. If people don't eat rice every day and have large amounts of meat and fish for every meal, what are the consequences?
Without starchy foods in the stomach, these high-protein foods cannot provide enough carbohydrates, creating an energy supply problem for the body. The body has to break down protein for energy. Protein breakdown for energy produces a large amount of waste, increasing the burden on the liver and kidneys, promoting the proliferation of harmful bacteria in the large intestine, and increasing the risk of colorectal cancer.
We should consume 250-400 grams of carbohydrates daily, which is equivalent to 5-8 liang (250-400g) of staple food. This 5-8 liang is not fixed; it varies depending on an individual's labor intensity, body weight, gender, and age. For example, a worker with a heavy job might need to eat 750 grams a day, while some women who are overweight and have very light workloads might only need 150-200 grams. Regulating your staple food intake is the best way to control your weight. There are many weight-loss products on the market now—weight-loss creams, pills, sprays, slimming belts... and so on. In reality, you don't need to resort to these. Regulating your staple food intake plus moderate exercise is the best approach.
According to statistics from the National Bureau of Statistics, in 1995, the annual per capita grain consumption for urban residents in China was 97 kilograms, a decrease of 33 kilograms from 1990. From 1991 to 1996, meat consumption increased from 27.1 kg to 49.5 kg, eggs from 8 kg to 16 kg, aquatic products from 11.7 kg to 22.9 kg, vegetables from 178.7 kg to 225 kg, and fruits from 19.1 kg to 38.3 kg.
It is not difficult to find that as people's intake of staple food has decreased, the incidence of certain chronic diseases has been on the rise. The top two causes of death for Shanghai residents have changed from measles and tuberculosis in the 1950s to malignant tumors and cardiovascular-cerebrovascular diseases today, with the heart disease mortality rate already exceeding that of Japan.
A female university student, in order to maintain a "devilish" figure, actually avoided staple food for over a year, eating only vegetables and fruits like cucumbers for three meals a day. As a result, she was hospitalized due to malnutrition.
I have also seen some pregnant women who, in order to provide more nutrition to the fetus, ate lobster and protein powder every two to three days, but often ate less or no staple food to make room for nutritional supplements. As a result, their protein levels were found to be excessive during check-ups. Excessive protein not only increases the risk of gestational diabetes and gestational hypertension but also poses the danger of giving birth to a "macrosomic baby" and may lead to difficult labor.
In fact, staple foods are rich in carbohydrates, dietary fiber, vitamins, and minerals. Because they are bulky, they can create a feeling of fullness, which can, to a certain extent, help control food intake. The secret to losing weight is to reduce the intake of high-calorie foods, not to eliminate staple foods. Relying only on vegetables and fruits to fill you up is not only likely to leave you feeling hungry but can also harm the spleen and stomach. Over the long term, it may also trigger neurotic bulimia and anorexia. The worst thing is that a weight-loss method that avoids staple foods will lead to protein loss and a decrease in basal metabolic rate, meaning the body's efficiency in burning calories is weakened. Once you resume eating staple foods, your weight will immediately rebound.
Choosing staple foods wisely is also key to the dietary therapy for diabetics. Clinical experiments have shown that if a patient's staple food intake is too low, they can be in a semi-starved state, which can easily lead to reactive hyperglycemia and a decreased ability to fight off hypoglycemia. Over the long term, the patient's body will become emaciated, with fat being improperly generated, and they are prone to various complications like hyperlipidemia, making treatment difficult.
So, how can one eat staple foods in the healthiest way? My suggestion is that staple foods should be kept simple. Now that people are prosperous, the rice and steamed buns that were once essential for every meal are being neglected by many, as if staple food needs to be flavorful to reflect a certain standard of living. So, in restaurants, the staple foods are fried flaky pastries, tossed pancakes, shredded pork noodles, rice noodles in chicken soup, meat pies, xiaolongbao (soup dumplings), and fried small steamed buns. At home, people eat fried rice, stir-fried cakes, and meat dumplings. But has everyone considered that these "fancy" staple foods contain large amounts of salt and oil? Eating too much of them is harmful to your health. Eating two liang (100g) of a salty staple food is equivalent to consuming an extra 2 grams of salt. Buns, pies, and dumplings all have meat fillings, with a fat content of over 30%. Fried rice is coated in a layer of oil and is often served with high-fat ingredients like eggs and diced ham. Therefore, although these "fancy" staple foods are delicious, they are like sugar-coated bullets with many hidden dangers.