As life gets faster and faster, dinner has become the main meal of the day. Many families have a hasty breakfast, make do with a flexible lunch, and rely on dinner to supplement their nutritional needs for the entire day. Whether for social engagements or combining dinner with a late-night snack, many are unaware that a problematic dinner is the root cause of many diseases. Let's take a look at how to handle problem dinners and make your dinner a healthy and longevity-promoting one!
Best Time:
The best time for dinner is around 6:00 PM. Avoid sleeping within four hours after dinner.
Studies have shown that eating less for dinner leads to better sleep. The correct dinner should leave you 80% full, based on the feeling of not being hungry. Dinner is best scheduled around 6:00 PM and should not be later than 9:00 PM. It's best not to eat any solid food after 9:00 PM. Furthermore, do not go to bed within four hours after dinner to ensure the food eaten is fully digested.
Calcium Supplementation for Dinner:
Everyone knows that taking calcium before bed is effective, such as drinking a glass of milk, which both promotes sleep and replenishes calcium. Some people also know that dried shrimp skin is rich in calcium, so they believe that eating dried shrimp skin before bed would be more effective than milk for supplementation. This view is completely wrong. Not only does it fail to achieve the goal of calcium supplementation, but it also increases the risk of developing urinary tract stones.
The main component of urinary stones is calcium. The calcium from food is partially absorbed and utilized by the intestinal wall, while the excess is excreted through urine. The peak time for calcium excretion in the human body is generally 4-5 hours after a meal. If a dinner is too high in calcium, eaten too late, or if one eats dried shrimp skin before bed, the peak excretion time may coincide with when the person is already asleep. The urine will then be retained in the urinary tract, unable to be excreted in time. This causes the calcium content in the urinary tract to continuously increase and deposit, easily forming stones over time. Matsushita Hospital in Japan once surveyed 270 patients with urinary stones, and 97 of them usually had dinner after 9:00 PM, while 25 had the habit of going to bed immediately after a late-night snack.
Best Method for Calcium Supplementation:
For evening calcium supplementation, it's best to choose something that is easy to digest and absorb. Drinking a glass of milk 1-2 hours before bed is an excellent choice.
Dinner Should be Moderate:
Due to busy work schedules, many people do not have a fixed dinner time, eating it either early or late. Some even go to bed on an empty stomach. Dinner should not be skipped, but it should consist mainly of light foods. If dinner is too greasy, the excess fat intake can cause blood lipids to rise, leading to atherosclerosis and coronary heart disease. Excess protein intake increases the metabolic burden on the gastrointestinal tract, liver, and kidneys, which is very harmful for patients with liver or kidney diseases.
Dinner Often Lacks Staple Foods:
The traditional Chinese dietary structure places grains as the staple food. However, the importance of staple foods is increasingly being diminished on modern dining tables.
Staple foods are essential. In fact, no meal should be without a staple food. For dinner, the staple food can be mainly in the form of soft or liquid foods. The amount of staple food for a man's dinner should be around 2-3 liang (raw weight), and for a woman, around 1-2 liang. The elderly are best off eating some porridge.