You Wouldn't Believe: 9 Hardest-to-Digest Foods
[Introduction] When faced with delicious food, many people find it hard to resist. However, when eating, we tend to pay attention to foods that are greasy or irritating to the stomach. But are the following hard-to-digest foods on your list? Here are 9 hard-to-digest foods that you might not notice in your daily life.
Fried foods, chocolate, ice cream, creamed potatoes... These widely loved delicacies are not actually suitable for everyone. If you have a sensitive stomach, you might want to check how to eat the 9 hardest-to-digest foods that have recently been listed.
1. Ice Cream
There is no quick way to test if you are lactose intolerant; you'll only know after you sit down and eat a big bowl of ice cream. When you experience bloating, abdominal cramps, and gas, these are your body's signals telling you to stay away from these dairy-rich foods.
Excessive consumption of cold raw foods like ice cream, popsicles, and cold drinks can affect the normal function of the digestive system, making food difficult to digest and easily damaging the spleen and stomach. Although they are delicious to eat, they can later lead to a loss of appetite, irritate the spleen and stomach, and create a vicious cycle of bloating and abdominal pain.
Solution: If you don't want to give up cool frozen treats, the only solution is to switch to lactose-free frozen foods, such as those made from beans or rice flour porridge.
But even if you are not lactose intolerant, ice cream contains a lot of fat, and fat stays in the stomach longer than other foods. Therefore, it's best to eat cold raw foods in moderation or not at all.
2. Creamed Potatoes
Potatoes are a low-calorie, high-protein food rich in various vitamins and trace elements, known as the ideal diet food. It seems nothing is more popular than a bowl of mashed potatoes. This is why when it comes to so-called "convenient foods," mashed potatoes is always at the top of the list.
Mashed potatoes with cream or cheese, however, are not as good as they seem. In the United States, 30 to 50 million people are lactose intolerant. If you are one of them, you should not enjoy creamed mashed potatoes. This is because the milk, cream, or cheese added to the mashed potatoes can make your stomach very uncomfortable.
Solution: It's best not to buy takeout mashed potatoes. You can easily make your own at home using fresh potatoes, steamed or boiled into plain mashed potatoes without any seasonings.
3. Raw Onions
Onions, garlic, and leeks are full of various nutrients that are highly beneficial to health, such as protecting the heart. However, they can also cause digestive discomfort like bloating and abdominal cramps. But cooking them seems to neutralize the compounds that cause stomach upset.
Solution: American nutrition expert Mary Ryan suggests a mixed cooking method of raw and cooked for these foods. This way, you can reap the health benefits without suffering the negative effects.
4. Chocolate
Excessive consumption of chocolate not only brings excess calories, but also for those who suffer from gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), they have experienced the uncomfortable irritation after eating chocolate. This is because chocolate can relax the lower esophageal sphincter, causing stomach acid to flow back and irritate the esophagus and throat.
Solution: When choosing chocolate, dark chocolate is the best option. This is because dark chocolate contains various beneficial minerals for the human body, such as calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, iron, and copper. Among all types of chocolate, it has the lowest sugar and fat content.
In addition, dark chocolate also has the effects of lowering blood pressure and preventing atherosclerosis. However, even good things should not be eaten in excess.