Busy urban dwellers often eat casually for breakfast and lunch, making dinner the time to make up for all the deficits. Over time, dinner has become the main meal in the eyes of many, with numerous business engagements, meetings, and social gatherings all scheduled for this time. However, nutritionists are deeply concerned about the phenomenon of excessive dinners. Dinner should be适量 (moderate).
At night, Gui Street is illuminated by a sea of red lanterns. This is the most prosperous time of the day for this famous dining street. It is considered a haven for business and social gatherings by many, and people come for dinner in a continuous stream. Such frequent dinners will inevitably lead to a significant increase in dinner intake. Yu Kang, Deputy Chief Physician of the Clinical Nutrition Department at Peking Union Medical College Hospital, says: "Dinner must be small in quantity." Otherwise, excessive energy intake can lead to obesity, and subsequently, other related health problems.
Because of busy work schedules, many people do not have a regular dinner time, eating it either early or late, and some even go to bed on an empty stomach. On this matter, Yu Kang says: "Dinner cannot be skipped, but it should consist mainly of light foods." If dinner is too greasy, excess fat intake can cause blood lipids to rise, leading to atherosclerosis and coronary heart disease. Excess protein intake can increase the metabolic burden on the gastrointestinal tract, liver, and kidneys, which is particularly harmful for patients with liver or kidney diseases. Dinner should not be rushed.
As work becomes more irregular, the number of people eating takeout boxes for dinner is constantly increasing. Those who often have to work overtime have no way to go home for a meal and can only buy a takeout box from a small restaurant or fast-food shop near the office, hastily finishing it in a short fifteen minutes. After returning home, they have no appetite other than to sleep.
Relevant experts believe that these small restaurants often use heavy seasonings, and frequently eating this kind of takeout can easily lead to "internal heat" (上火), causing symptoms such as a sore throat, mouth ulcers, toothaches, bloating, and constipation. Furthermore, a "quick and decisive" dinner is not good for digestion. Going back to work immediately after eating will加重 (aggravate) the burden on the gastrointestinal tract. Dinner often lacks staple foods.
China's traditional dietary structure places grains as the staple food. However, the status of staple foods on today's dining tables is increasingly being weakened.
Yu Kang says that staple foods are essential. In fact, no meal should be without a staple food. The staple food for dinner can mainly be in the form of porridge or other soft foods. He says that the amount of staple food for a man's dinner should be about 2-3 liang (raw weight), and for a woman, about 1-2 liang. The elderly are best off eating some congee.
Carbohydrate foods such as rice, noodles, and tubers, which serve as staples, should be the main source of energy for the human body (accounting for 60% of total energy). They are also the most economical, have the simplest metabolic process, produce harmless and easily excreted metabolic byproducts. If staple food intake is insufficient, the body has to use fat and protein for energy. Fat breakdown produces more harmful organic acids, and using protein as an energy source is a more complex metabolic process, with metabolic products like urea nitrogen being toxic to the body. This not only increases the body's metabolic burden but also damages the structure and function of important organs like the liver and kidneys. Dinner is often too late.
Today's dinner is more and more like a "late" dinner. If it's for business or social gatherings, it often goes on until midnight. Yu Kang says that a normal dinner should be between 6:00 PM and 7:00 PM, but this is not absolute and can be adjusted according to personal habits. Generally, it should be about 6 hours after lunch.
The peak period for calcium excretion in the human body is often 4-5 hours after a meal. If dinner is eaten too late, when the peak calcium excretion period arrives, the person is already in bed. Urine then stays in the ureter, bladder, urethra, and other urinary tracts, unable to be excreted in time, causing calcium in the urine to continuously increase. This easily deposits to form small crystals, which, over time, gradually grow and form stones. In addition, if the meal is too late, the blood sugar level remains high while the body is at rest, forcing the body to store the excess energy, which can easily lead to obesity and hyperlipidemia.