Dinner is the most important meal of the day. After a hard day's work, what should you eat to reward yourself?
What to eat for dinner is a question worth considering, as eating the wrong things can be extremely detrimental to your health. For example, eating ginger at night can affect sleep; eating dessert for dinner can lead to weight gain; and eating foods like cabbage, corn, or bananas can affect digestion. This article will introduce the dietary taboos for dinner and tell you what you should eat.
Six Foods You Should Never Eat for Dinner
1. Eating ginger at night is like eating arsenic
The ancients said: "Eating ginger in the morning is better than drinking ginseng soup; eating ginger at night is like eating arsenic." Ginger is pungent and warm in nature, containing volatile oils, gingerol, resin, and starch. Ginger can enhance and accelerate blood circulation, stimulate gastric juice secretion, excite the gastrointestinal tract, promote digestion, and also has antibacterial properties.
Eating a little ginger in the morning is beneficial to health. But eating it at night, because ginger is inherently "hot," it can cause internal heat, harming the body and health, so it is not advisable to eat it.
Ginger contains volatile oils that can accelerate blood circulation; it also contains gingerol, which stimulates gastric juice secretion, excites the intestines, and promotes digestion; ginger also contains gingerols, which can reduce the occurrence of gallstones.
It is best not to eat ginger in autumn, because the autumn climate is dry and dryness injures the lungs. Eating pungent ginger on top of that can more easily harm the lungs and worsen the body's dehydration and dryness.
2. Greasy foods should be avoided
Greasy foods not only include fried foods, but also some animal organs with high cholesterol content.
These foods increase the workload on the intestines, stomach, liver, gallbladder, and pancreas, and stimulate the central nervous system, affecting sleep quality. People with high blood pressure, high blood sugar, and high cholesterol should be especially strict in controlling their intake.
3. "Gas-producing foods" are not suitable for consumption at night
Some foods produce a large amount of gas during digestion, leading to bloating. Examples include beans, cabbage, onions, corn, and bananas.
Excessive bloating not only causes discomfort in the stomach and intestines but also affects sleep. Therefore, such foods should also be avoided at night.
4. High-calcium foods at night can cause stones
Dinner is not suitable for foods that are too high in calcium, such as dried shrimp, cartilaginous fish, etc.
As the five organs enter a resting state at night, the calcium from these high-calcium foods can easily accumulate in the kidneys and urethra, causing stones.
5. If you have a "liver fire," it's not advisable to drink milk at night
Drinking milk at night can increase liver fire, which is not conducive to the body's nighttime detoxification. It can also make you feel dry-mouthed and thirsty, causing you to wake up for water in the middle of the night, which is not good for sleep.
Furthermore, milk itself is also an allergen, and drinking it at night can easily lead to indigestion and other problems.
6. Dessert after dinner is forbidden
Many people like to have dessert after dinner, feeling that it completes the meal, but overly sweet things can easily burden the digestive system.
On the other hand, the sugar in dessert is difficult to break down in a resting state, and it can be converted into fat, easily leading to obesity. Over time, it may also increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases.
Three Principles for a Healthy Dinner:
1. Simplicity and portion control
Compared to breakfast and lunch, dinner should be simpler. Generally, the energy provided by dinner should not exceed 30% of the total daily energy intake.
When it's impossible to avoid unlimited dishes, ensure you eat a sufficient amount of staple foods. Staple foods should be "quantified"; healthy adults should have at least 300 grams per day, and this amount can be appropriately reduced for dinner.
On the other hand, when choosing staple foods, you should lean towards coarse grains that are easy to digest and retain nutrients well.
2. Light, low-fat, and easily digestible
Dinner should be light. Pay attention to choosing low-fat, easily digestible foods, and do not eat too much.
Excessive nutrition at dinner leads to unburned fat accumulating in the body, causing obesity and affecting health. Eating dinner too late, for too long, or too much is not good for sleep, as it can easily lead to indigestion and insomnia.
3. A vegetarian dinner is healthier
Dinner should be primarily vegetarian, focusing on foods rich in vitamins and carbohydrates. You should especially consume more fresh vegetables and try to reduce excessive intake of protein and fatty foods.
Dinner must be taken seriously, but it does not require large portions, nor should it be a feast of meat and fish. Dinner should include at least two types of vegetables to increase vitamin and fiber intake.
In addition, the amount of flour-based foods can be reduced, and you can eat some coarse grains. You can also eat a small amount of fish. If you can go for a walk 40 minutes after dinner, it will be very beneficial for the digestion and absorption of food.