Today, as people's living standards improve, a wide variety of affluent diseases have quietly emerged, and as a result, many people have chosen vegetarianism.
There is nothing wrong with choosing vegetarianism, but an improper selection of vegetarian recipes can lead to problems. For those who adopt a vegetarian diet to maintain health and slow down aging, it would be better to choose more seed-based foods, because any single seed contains a complete life. Compared to vegetables of the same volume, seeds have far higher nutritional value.
Seed-based foods are common in daily life, such as rice, flour, corn, Job's tears, millet, sorghum, oats, various nuts, peanuts, and all kinds of beans planted in the fields; also, sweet potatoes, Chinese yams, potatoes, white radishes, and carrots buried in the ground.
Oatmeal is a high-protein, high-fat cereal, and its nutritional value ranks first among nine grains including rice, millet, white flour, sorghum flour, and corn flour. Traditional Chinese medicine believes that oats are warm in nature and sweet in taste, able to benefit the liver and spleen, lubricate the intestines to induce labor, nourish deficiency, and stop night sweats. The saponins contained in oats can lower cholesterol and triglycerides. Therefore, consuming oatmeal porridge regularly or using it to make flour products can be beneficial for post-illness weakness, poor appetite, and constipation. It is particularly helpful for patients with tuberculosis and can also prevent arteriosclerosis, diabetes, coronary heart disease, and cardiovascular diseases. Moreover, it has a good auxiliary therapeutic effect on fatty liver, diabetes, constipation, and edema, and can enhance physical strength and prolong life.
Sunflower seeds are rich in oil and are an important raw material for oil extraction. Sunflower oil is a premium healthy oil highly recommended by nutritionists. The kernel of the sunflower seed has an average fat content of up to 60%, of which 90% are unsaturated fatty acids. Among these, linoleic acid, an essential fatty acid for the human body, accounts for 55% to 70% of all unsaturated fatty acids. They also contain relatively balanced proteins and carbohydrates, with the quantity and quality of protein comparable to that of common meats. In addition, they are relatively rich in carotene, potassium, and various vitamins such as E and B3.
To make vegetables tasty, a large amount of oil is generally required. Nowadays, getting oil is not difficult, but it was different in the past. When oil was scarce at home, vegetables were simply boiled, which was far from tasty. In contrast, grains and tubers do not require oil and can fill a room with their aroma and stimulate the appetite when simply boiled. Compared to vegetables, they are more filling. For thousands of years, our ancestors relied on seed-based foods as their staple food, with vegetables only serving as a supplement.
Before the 1960s and 1970s, people's diet in spring and summer mainly consisted of barley and wheat, while in autumn and winter, they ate sweet potatoes every day, supplemented with a small amount of bean flour or rice. The main vegetable was radish; fresh radishes were simply shredded and mixed with a little salt. They also ate other vegetables, but mainly to accompany the rice, with very small portions per meal. They ate more cowpeas and lentils. Besides three meals a day, there were no other snacks to eat. Only in the autumn, when the fruit grown at home ripened, would they pick a few to eat. Even with such a simple diet, children at that time had quite good health, and now, in middle age, they don't get sick much.
For ordinary people, there are many vegetarian options to choose from, each with different medicinal properties—some are cooling, some are warming, some nourish the liver, and some nourish the spleen. Generally, healthy people do not need to be too particular; just changing the variety and not eating the same thing frequently is sufficient. However, for patients with chronic diseases, even when choosing a vegetarian diet, they should pay attention to the medicinal effects of the food and try to choose foods that are therapeutic for their recovery.