There's nothing more comforting than a steaming hot pot on a cold winter day. Eating hot pot is a favorite winter pastime for many, but some unnoticed bad habits can silently steal our health. Be sure to avoid the following 6 bad habits when eating hot pot.
1. The contrast of hot and cold harms the digestive system.
A steaming hot pot can make you sweat profusely even in the cold winter. Some people like to drink iced beverages while eating hot pot. However, the extreme temperature contrast can easily lead to indigestion, causing diarrhea and constipation. Drinking cold beverages stimulates the contraction of stomach blood vessels, slows down gastrointestinal motility, and reduces the secretion of digestive juices. At the same time, the decrease in temperature lowers the activity of digestive enzymes, which is not conducive to digestion. When eating hot pot, don't be too impatient and avoid eating food that is too hot. Additionally, you can choose some room-temperature vegetable juices, dairy products, or plant-based protein drinks to better aid digestion.
2. Eating undercooked meat can lead to illness.
Meats like lamb, beef, and fish must-orders for many when eating hot pot. Many people enjoy eating meat very rare, immediately taking thinly sliced raw meat or fish out of the pot after a quick dip. Raw meat and seafood are easily contaminated by pathogenic microorganisms and parasite eggs and must be thoroughly cooked in boiling soup to kill them before consumption. Generally, thin slices of meat should be cooked in boiling water for about 1 minute, changing from bright red to grayish-white, before they are safe to eat. For shellfish like clams and river shrimp with thicker flesh, they should be boiled in the pot for more than 5 minutes.
3. Excessive spicy and oily food can lead to "heatiness".
On cold days, red oil and numbing-spicy hot pots are more popular. While the rich flavors are delicious, the spicy and oily coating turns even healthy vegetables into unhealthy "harmful substances." Red oil contains a large amount of irritants that can cause swelling and congestion in the digestive tract and irritate the gastrointestinal mucosa, making it unsuitable for patients with gastric ulcers and ulcerative colitis. When dipping food, some red oil is also brought into the mouth, significantly increasing fat intake. The winter weather in the north is dry, and spicy food causes the body to lose a lot of water, easily leading to "heatiness." It's best to pair it with cooling and neutral vegetables that have a cooling, detoxifying, and "heat"-reducing effect, such as winter melon, loofah, rape, spinach, cabbage, enoki mushrooms, mushrooms, lotus root, water bamboo shoots, bamboo shoots, and bok choy.
4. Mixing raw and cooked food leads to cross-contamination.
When dipping hot pot, chopsticks are used to put raw food into the pot and to pick up cooked food from it. Some people even use the same pair of chopsticks to pick up raw meat from the pot and then use them to serve food from their bowl, which can easily transfer bacteria from the raw food into the mouth and even contaminate an entire dish. If eating utensils are not distinguished for different uses, it can also lead to illness. Utensils for handling and serving raw food should be kept separate from those for direct consumption to avoid mixing and contaminating with germs, leading to illness. To prevent cross-contamination, it's best to use serving chopsticks.
5. Boiling the broth for a long time can lead to gout.
The purine content in hot pot broth is very high and is not suitable for patients with hyperuricemia and gout. Secondly, the nitrite content in the broth increases after prolonged boiling. If you drink the hot pot broth, you should skim off the floating oil and consume it within 20 minutes after it starts boiling. Furthermore, patients with hyperlipidemia, hypertension, obesity, diabetes, arteriosclerosis, and coronary heart disease should eat hot pot less often.
6. Eating and chatting easily leads to overeating.
As long as broth is continuously added to the pot, the hot pot will keep steaming, making people eat and chat unconsciously and lose track of time. Sitting for a long time to eat hot pot greatly increases the burden on the digestive system. As the stomach continuously receives food, overconsumption at one time causes digestive juices like gastric acid, bile, and pancreatic juice to secrete non-stop, easily causing gastrointestinal dysfunction and abdominal pain or diarrhea. Overeating can also trigger acute pancreatitis. You can choose to eat vegetables and starchy foods first, and then cook the meat last. Eating until you are 80% full can reduce energy intake.