Eat fewer vegetables at noon, make up for it at dinner
After the long holiday, everything returns to normal. Having gotten used to home-style dishes, one can only eat fast food at work. Nowadays, everyone emphasizes nutrition and knows that "you need to eat at least half a kilogram of vegetables every day." Everyone knows fast food is unhealthy, but there's no choice but to eat it. So how can you make up for this nutritional deficiency? Eat healthily under current conditions at lunch, and focus on making up for the loss at dinner. Although one or two bad meals won't cause any major problems, eating out year after year can easily lead to nutritional imbalances and various sub-health issues.
Fast Food: Eat Well at Night
Whether Chinese or Western, the nutritional structure of fast food is irrational. It's generally high in oil and salt, with more meat and fewer fresh green vegetables.
Solution:
Remember to replenish that serving of green vegetables you missed at lunch during your dinner.
In addition, don't browse the web while eating. Blood is mainly concentrated in the brain when browsing webpages, which affects the gastrointestinal tract's digestion and absorption of food. It is recommended to set aside at least 20 minutes for lunch. Furthermore, some busy office workers finish their lunch in just a few bites. This eating method causes food to enter the stomach in large molecules without being chewed thoroughly, which can easily lead to indigestion. The stomach also has to secrete more gastric acid to digest the food, increasing the burden on the stomach and potentially developing into various stomach problems over time. It also makes it easy to accidentally overeat, increasing the likelihood of obesity.
Eating Out: Choose Steamed and Boiled Dishes
In addition to eating fast food, it's also a common practice for office workers to go out to eat in groups. Especially in restaurants, stir-fried and deep-fried dishes are common, which also leads to the unintentional intake of a lot of oil.
Solution:
When ordering in a restaurant, choose lighter dishes, eat more steamed and boiled foods, and fewer stir-fried and deep-fried ones. After the food is served, eat rice and vegetables first to fill up, then have some meat until you are 80% full. If you like spicy food, you can order one or two stir-fried dishes with fresh chilies, but not too many. Dried or high-temperature cooked chilies should be avoided as much as possible.
Bringing Your Own Meal: Choose Root and Stem Vegetables
Many office workers have joined the "bento box crowd," cooking extra for dinner and saving the leftovers for lunch the next day. However, the nutritional content of green vegetables left overnight is more easily lost, and the nitrite content also increases. Moreover, homemade lunches usually only have one meat dish and one vegetable dish, resulting in a limited variety of food.
Solution:
The vegetable dishes for homemade lunches should mainly be blocky or stem-based, such as tomatoes, white radishes, etc. In addition, seal the food promptly after cooking and store it in a 4°C refrigerator. Reheat it thoroughly before eating the next day, and pay attention to food hygiene. Since the variety of food for lunch is limited, increase the variety of foods at dinner.
A Quick Tip
Bring a sour fruit to work
The longer vegetables are stored, the more vitamins they lose. Vegetables in takeout boxes or homemade bento boxes are often stored for a long time, and some are even reheated multiple times, causing their vitamins to be lost or destroyed. If you bring a fruit to work every day and eat it about two hours after lunch. This not only supplements the insufficient vitamin intake but also reduces hunger when you get off work. After returning to the office, eating sour fruits can supplement vitamin C and provide antioxidants for the body.