Healthy Diet Taboos for Christmas
It's unclear from which year or season it began, but foreign holidays from the West, such as Christmas, have become all the rage in China. Chinese people tend to focus more on the grandeur when celebrating Christmas. Despite Christmas not being a legal holiday in our country, the festive atmosphere fills the entire city as soon as December arrives. Now, let the Hua Media Health editor summarize the healthy dietary taboos for Christmas for everyone.
During the festival season, with family reunions and friends visiting, sumptuous family feasts add to the joy and festive atmosphere. However, with changes in lifestyle, festive eating should also be scientific, hygienic, and healthy. So, how can we arrange our festive diet to be scientific, reasonable, and beneficial to our health?
Clever Pairing of Nutrition for Christmas Diet
Clever Pairing of Varieties
When selecting dishes and arranging the festive diet, one should strive for a clever combination of meat and vegetables, cold and hot dishes, coarse and fine foods, and dry and wet items, all while focusing on color, aroma, flavor, and presentation. A mix of meat and vegetables can stimulate the appetite and maintain a nutritional and acid-base balance. In terms of the flavors of cold and hot dishes, not only should sweet and salty flavors be well-balanced, but also numbing, spicy, sour, and bitter flavors should be cleverly combined to achieve a complete range of five flavors, which can greatly enhance the appetite. A coarse and fine pairing means appropriately eating coarse grains and high-fiber foods to aid digestion. A dry and wet pairing mainly refers to a variety of staple foods, such as rice, steamed buns, pancakes, steamed buns, dumplings, tangyuan, and rice cakes; porridge, soup, and sweet beverages should also have a variety of types and flavors.
Clever Supplementation of Fat and Lean
Festive meat dishes should be less in quantity but higher in quality, with a combination of fatty and lean meats, leaning towards lean. The flavors should be light, with more choices of beef, dog meat, rabbit meat, pigeon meat, pork, chicken, duck, and goose feet, as well as seafood and fish. Fish and meat should be primarily steamed, with less frying and grilling.
Clever Arrangement of Late-Night Meals
During the festival, people often stay up late or even all night, so it's inevitable to have a late-night snack. Since the daytime diet is rich, a late-night meal can be as simple as steamed buns, buns, noodles, or a hot drink like milk. This not only satisfies hunger but is also gentle on the stomach and spleen, and is beneficial for sleep.
Clever Regulation of Snacks
The three main meals during the festival are often rich and greasy, so snacks should be characterized by stimulating the appetite, regulating qi, relieving bloating, reducing internal heat, and relieving dryness. For example, about two hours after a meal, you can eat apples, pears, or bananas to stimulate the appetite and promote bowel movements. Eat less of snacks like peanuts, melon seeds, candy, and chocolate. It's best to avoid tangerines and persimmons. Additionally, preserved plums, hawthorn slices, and mint candies can be enjoyed in moderation.
Clever Separation of Smoking and Drinking
During the festive season, with gatherings of family and friends, drinking is often part of the fun. Moderate drinking can promote blood circulation, eliminate fatigue, and speed up metabolism. However, one must not drink excessively to the point of drunkenness. Especially, heavy drinking while smoking heavily is extremely damaging to the body. Therefore, during the festival, one should not smoke at the dinner table, avoid drinking while smoking, and prevent the liver, stomach, and lungs from being harmed simultaneously.
Clever Regulation and Treatment of Indigestion
During the festival, some people, not paying attention to their digestive capacity, easily suffer from indigestion. For indigestion, you can use 10 grams each of cinnamon and hawthorn, and 30 grams of brown sugar. Boil the cinnamon and hawthorn in water, filter the liquid, add the brown sugar, and mix well for a hot drink. Alternatively, use 10 grams each of areca nut, fried radish seeds, and raw hawthorn. Boil the three ingredients in water, remove the dregs, and add a little sugar after it cools to drink instead of water for good results.
Pay Attention to Nutritional Labels When Shopping
After you have decided on your menu, you can start shopping. Remember not to go shopping on an empty stomach to avoid buying a bunch of foods not on your menu. It's best to use fresh fruits and vegetables as the main ingredients and avoid buying snacks and fast foods. Remember to read the nutritional labels on packaging carefully, choosing foods where the fat and calories per serving are less than one-third of the total calories (1 gram of fat = 9 calories). Avoid buying processed foods as they are usually high in fat. Try to choose low-fat foods instead of full-fat ones. This way, you can pass the first hurdle of your diet and keep excessive fat away!
Use Less Frying When Cooking
For cooking utensils, a non-stick pan is better as it reduces the amount of cooking oil used. At the same time, avoid frying or pan-frying; use roasting or steaming instead to reduce the amount of oil consumed. Also, try to use less sauce and seasoning, and use spices instead. For egg dishes, you can use two egg whites to replace a whole egg. Remove the skin from meat before cooking, as the skin layer usually contains more fat. Finally, remember not to prepare more than needed, otherwise, you will have to eat it all because you cooked it so hard!
Little Knowledge About Healthy Drinking for Christmas
Every healthy adult has a considerable ability to digest and metabolize alcohol. This is because the bacteria in the human intestine can normally release more than 30mL of pure alcohol per day. Therefore, even for those who never drink, they unknowingly ingest natural alcohol equivalent to 250mL of wine or 750mL of beer daily. If people were not born with the ability to break down this alcohol, they would be drunk every day.
However, everyone's ability to metabolize alcohol varies due to genetic constitution, regular drinking habits, age, and physical and mental health at the time of drinking. Generally, an adult can rapidly digest and metabolize about 0.8mL of pure alcohol per kilogram of body weight without adverse effects. For a 70kg man, this means he can break down 56mL of pure alcohol. After deducting the 30mL produced by the body, an adult man can typically digest and metabolize about 26mL of externally ingested pure alcohol per day, which is equivalent to the alcohol content in a bottle of beer.
Since the human body can naturally break down alcohol, moderate drinking does not affect health and can even be beneficial. Many medical research reports abroad suggest that moderate drinking can dilate arteries, lower blood pressure, and is beneficial for patients with mild hypertension and poor blood circulation. Moderate wine consumption can also increase beneficial high-density lipoprotein and reduce harmful low-density lipoprotein, thus helping to prevent heart attacks. China's traditional brewed wines (Shaoxing wine, glutinous rice wine) have also been nourishing tonics since ancient times. It must be noted that excessive drinking can damage the liver; at the same time, excessive alcohol consumption can increase lactic acid in the body, inhibit the excretion of uric acid, and increase uric acid accumulation. Therefore, patients with gout should avoid excessive drinking.