Health Versatile Recommendation: The "Three Treasures" for Office Workers' Summer Lunch
As temperatures rise in summer, air humidity increases, coupled with work pressure, many office workers face problems with poor appetite and feeling irritable, not knowing what to eat. To tackle these issues, I have my own clever tricks. To help everyone continue to enjoy a good appetite and eat healthily this summer, I'm sharing my top three treasures for a summer lunch. No matter what you eat, with these treasures, you're guaranteed to have an appetite for lunch. Here it is for your reference.
Prepare three "lunch partner" treasures:
Treasure One — Chili Sauce to Suit Your Taste
I've read online that chili is quite nutritious, especially high in vitamin C. So, when office workers feel they have no appetite for their summer meals, they can add some chili sauce that suits their taste to their dishes. Paired with rice, it can improve appetite. In fact, these chili sauces aren't just spicy; they usually include a variety of ingredients like Sichuan peppercorns, fermented black beans, sesame oil, and more. The moment you open the lid, the fragrant spiciness is enough to whet your appetite and make your mouth water. I have a friend who can eat two big bowls of rice with just chili sauce; I truly admire him!
Besides boosting your appetite, it can also enhance gastrointestinal motility, promote the secretion of digestive fluids, inhibit abnormal fermentation in the intestines, and expel accumulated gas and moisture from the digestive tract. For office ladies, chili sauce can also be an important "food therapy" channel for body shaping and stress relief.
Let's talk about a few ways to eat chili sauce, mainly for convenience:
Cooking: Last time I went home, a friend insisted on eating pasta. I ran to a bookstore to flip through cookbooks and found a fusion recipe, similar to our Zha Jiang Mian. When making the sauce, you can use chili sauce because Lee Kum Kee's chili sauce is quite salty. The method is: mix sweet sauce and Lee Kum Kee chili sauce, probably in a 3:1 ratio. After heating the oil, pour the sauce in to stir-fry. When you smell the aroma, add the minced meat and stir-fry. According to personal preference, you can also add other crispy ingredients like diced cucumber or bamboo shoots to enhance the texture. When the meat is cooked, the sauce is ready. After making it, pour the meat sauce over the cooked pasta; it's delicious!
Mixing with vegetables: Choose vegetables with a light taste, with cucumbers being the best. They're crisp, so you can freeze them in the fridge for a bit. After taking them out, just scoop a spoonful of chili sauce on top. It's fragrant, spicy, and refreshing. Cucumber + chili sauce is also a great food for weight loss.
Mixing with noodles or rice: For dry noodles or rice, I find that adding a few more scoops of Lee Kum Kee's Guizhou style fermented chili paste makes it even better. It's so spicy you'll sweat, but you can't stop eating it, and you can finish a lot in one go.
So, a small bottle of chili sauce can be the first partner for an office worker's lunch. Office workers who don't like spicy food can also start trying it gradually. There are many varieties of chili sauce on the market now; you can start with a milder one like Lee Kum Kee's Thai Sweet Chili Sauce based on the spiciness index on the packaging.
Treasure Two — Snacks and Fruits to Strengthen the Spleen and Stimulate Appetite
For office workers, the digestive system often has one problem or another. In fact, focusing on strengthening the spleen and stimulating appetite during summer lunch can lead to unexpected improvements in old digestive problems! Foods suitable for strengthening the spleen and stimulating appetite in summer include hawthorn, white hyacinth beans (lima beans), radish, shiitake mushrooms, and dried tangerine peel. These all aid digestion. For strongly acidic foods like hawthorn, it's best to eat them after a meal to avoid excessive stomach acid and causing a burden on the stomach. You can carry some dried hawthorn with you and eat a few pieces after a meal. Choosing one spleen-strengthening and appetite-stimulating snack during lunch is also essential!
Treasure Three — Healthy Drinks to Aid Digestion
Office workers' work habits often lead to problems like indigestion or constipation. In addition to the two lunch partners I recommended above, drinking a little soda water or lemon water 10 minutes before a meal is a good way to help alleviate indigestion and constipation. As we know, soda water has antioxidant effects and can prevent skin aging; and lemon + soda water is definitely a healthy drink that helps increase appetite, prevent skin aging, and beautify the skin. Also, it's important to note that you shouldn't drink too much coffee or strong tea before a meal, as these can irritate the gastric mucosa and may cause stomach discomfort. Office workers with stomach problems should avoid this.
Finally, a thoughtful reminder: appetite loss can occur not only in summer but also in winter. Now, the pressure on urban office workers is generally very high, which can lead to overeating and burdening the stomach, or it can lead to symptoms of anorexia. So actually, these three treasures can be used in any season, no matter what or how you eat.