Busy urban dwellers often have "whatever" for breakfast and lunch, making up for the deficit at dinner. So, how can you have a more beneficial dinner? Eating dinner early helps prevent gallstones. Eating dinner early is a healthy measure recommended by medical experts. Related studies show that eating dinner early can significantly reduce the incidence of urinary tract stones.
The peak time for calcium excretion in the human body is often 4-5 hours after a meal. If dinner is too late, when the peak calcium excretion period arrives, the person is already asleep. Urine then gets retained in the urinary tract, such as the ureter, bladder, and urethra, and cannot be excreted in time. This causes calcium in the urine to continuously increase, and over time, it gradually expands to form stones.
Therefore, having dinner around 6 p.m. is more appropriate. A vegetarian dinner can prevent cancer. Dinner should be predominantly vegetarian, with a focus on foods rich in carbohydrates, and it's best to minimize the intake of protein and fatty foods.
In real life, because most families have ample time to prepare dinner, they tend to have lavish meals, which is unhealthy for them. According to scientific research reports, consuming large amounts of high-protein foods like meat, eggs, and milk at dinner increases the amount of calcium in the urine. On one hand, this reduces the body's calcium stores, inducing rickets in children, myopia in adolescents, and osteoporosis in the middle-aged and elderly. On the other hand, a high concentration of calcium in the urine greatly increases the risk of developing urinary tract stones. Furthermore, excessive protein intake that the body cannot absorb will remain in the intestines, where it can spoil and produce toxins like ammonia, indole, and hydrogen sulfide, which irritate the intestinal wall and induce cancer.
If you eat too much fat, it can increase blood lipids. Research data shows that people who often eat meat for dinner have 2-3 times higher blood lipids than vegetarians. Carbohydrates can generate more serotonin in the body, which has a calming and sedative effect, and is particularly beneficial for those with insomnia. Eat a moderate dinner for sounder sleep. Compared to breakfast and lunch, dinner should be lighter. In the evening, with no other activities, eating late and too much can cause cholesterol levels to rise, stimulating the liver to produce more low-density and very-low-density lipoproteins, which can lead to atherosclerosis. Long-term overeating for dinner repeatedly causes large secretions of insulin, which often leads to premature failure of insulin cells, thus laying the groundwork for diabetes.
In addition, an overly full dinner can cause bloating and put pressure on surrounding organs. The stomach, intestines, liver, gallbladder, and pancreas work hard after a meal and send signals to the brain, causing it to become active and spread to other areas of the cerebral cortex, inducing insomnia.