Smart Eating for the Chinese New Year Feast
After a year of hard work, it's time to rest during the Chinese New Year. Experts offer health tips: when preparing festive meals, follow healthy principles, avoid overeating, and balance entertainment with rest. As long as you don't go overboard with the "rules," you can enjoy the "feast" without the "burden."
Watch Out for "Old Problems" When Satisfying Cravings
During the long Chinese New Year holiday, rich food and alcohol can lead to more than just weight gain. Be mindful of digestive ulcers, gout, and acute pancreatitis. Those with chronic illnesses should be especially cautious.
Don't Let Chronic Illnesses "Act Up" from Overeating
Doctors remind those with digestive issues and chronic conditions like diabetes and high blood lipids to pay special attention to gastrointestinal health during the festival.
Experts advise that diabetics should eat small, frequent meals to avoid gastrointestinal discomfort or acute gastroenteritis caused by excessive or too many types of food. Alcohol, sweets, high-fat, spicy foods, and coffee can all stimulate stomach acid secretion, so those with peptic ulcers should avoid them. For those with acid reflux, besides avoiding the foods mentioned, it's also best to eat less cold, hot, and greasy food. Alcohol, coffee, chocolate, garlic, and onions should be consumed sparingly to prevent chest pain, heartburn, or acid reflux, which in severe cases can lead to ulcers and bleeding. Patients with gallstones should avoid high-fat foods to prevent severe abdominal pain. Additionally, those with chronic conditions like diabetes, high lipids, and obesity should avoid fried foods, desserts, seafood, and high-fat foods. For patients with chronic hepatitis, binge eating can increase the burden on the liver and worsen the condition.
"Spicy and Sour" Can Be Embarrassing
Eating hot pot in winter is a tradition, but eating it "too hot"—with excessive spice and numbing flavors—can easily cause subconjunctival hemorrhage and trigger constipation or hemorrhoids. Don't let the holiday turn into this.
Eating hot pot indoors makes the tiny blood vessels in your eyes dilate. When you go outside into the cold wind, these vessels constrict rapidly, causing conjunctival congestion and red eyes.
Those with hemorrhoids must be extra careful with what they eat. Hemorrhoids are abnormal expansions of blood vessels in the anal mucosa. While everyone has some degree of expansion, the severity varies. However, frequently eating spicy hot pot and drinking alcohol can cause blood vessels to expand and swell, triggering hemorrhoids. Others may experience digestive upset after hot pot, leading to diarrhea, which increases the burden on the anus and induces hemorrhoids. For those with mild hemorrhoids, it's a good habit to sit in a warm bath after a bowel movement to help local blood circulation.
Those with a history of constipation need to be extra careful in winter, as cold weather reduces physical activity and slows down intestinal peristalsis, making it difficult to have a bowel movement. To prevent constipation, it's important to drink plenty of water, eat fiber-rich foods, maintain regular exercise, and eat less spicy and irritating food.
Enjoy the Chinese New Year Without the Guilt
During the New Year, gatherings with family and friends for meals are inevitable. But when you're dining with loved ones, don't forget your hard-earned fitness goals just for the sake of a big feast.
The Biggest Fear: Losing Control of Your Diet
Every year around the Chinese New Year, cases of gastric bleeding, ulcers, gout, and acute pancreatitis increase by 10-20%. The main reason is the continuous series of festive gatherings. Reunion dinners are often rich in meat, oil, sugar, and salt—this "four excesses" are the main culprits behind digestive system diseases, high blood pressure, and high lipids. Furthermore, the traditional custom of drinking to celebrate is common. Nearly 98% of alcohol is metabolized by the liver, and it also affects uric acid metabolism, harming the liver and pancreas and triggering gout. Many people, in their excitement, drink too much and vomit severely, sometimes even tearing their esophagus. Others develop acute hepatitis or suffer from gout attacks.
Eating too "richly" during the New Year not only harms your health but also adds to your weight, which is very distressing. According to standard restaurant dishes, plus alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages, a single meal can easily contain 3000 calories. To burn this off on a popular dance machine, you would have to dance non-stop for 20 hours.
Cook Leafy Greens Whole
Cooking leafy vegetables without cutting their long fibers is called "long-life vegetable." This forces you to chew thoroughly, which naturally stimulates saliva to aid digestion. At the same time, fiber-rich foods promote intestinal peristalsis, helping to prevent indigestion or constipation that can be caused by overeating during the festival.
Keep Mustard Greens on the Table
During the Chinese New Year, when you eat too much meat and glutinous rice-based pastries (which are "warming" in nature), your internal organs can overheat, absorb fat, and lead to fat accumulation. Mustard greens, being "cooling" in nature, can help expel this internal heat when consumed in large quantities.
Vegetarian Breakfast for the New Year
A vegetarian breakfast for the Chinese New Year symbolizes a clear and peaceful start to the year. It also helps balance nutrition from the previous year's heavy meat-based diet by consuming vegetables rich in chlorophyll, carotene, vitamins, iron, and fiber. It also helps regulate the digestive system, making it a very reasonable choice for those looking to lose weight.
Want to Stay Slim? Eat Dumplings
If you want to stay slim, eat dumplings. The dumpling wrapper is rich in fiber (8.1g per 100g), and the filling can contain a variety of vegetables. Cooking methods like steaming and boiling mean you don't have to worry about the grease and calories from frying. You can also use a wide variety of ingredients for the filling.
Don't Put Fruit on the Table
Fruits and vegetables have different digestion times and processes. They should be eaten in separate meals; otherwise, the enzymes in fruit will break down the fiber in vegetables, making them indigestible. This method of separating foods can aid digestion and help with weight loss.
Eat Fruit, Not Juice
Eating fruit is better than drinking juice because fruit is rich in fiber, which is good for you. Juice is filtered, so it has less fiber, and often has added sugar, which can easily lead to excessive calorie intake. Additionally, nutritionists suggest that to avoid overeating, you should have a small snack like crackers or steamed bread beforehand. Flour and rice are easily digested and provide a sense of fullness, which can prevent you from eating too much.
If You Can't Hold Your Liquor, Don't Drink to the New Year
Toasting frequently during the Chinese New Year is common, but the Chinese custom of "ganbei" (bottoms up) is often more about bravado than actual capacity. Research shows that Westerners are more likely to have genes for fast alcohol metabolism, whereas only about half of Chinese people do. However, research also found that those with genes for high alcohol tolerance, while able to drink more, are also more prone to alcoholism and are candidates for liver cirrhosis, pancreatitis, and esophageal cancer.
According to research, almost 100% of Westerners are fast metabolizers of alcohol, while only half of Chinese people are, and even 5-7% of Chinese people are slow metabolizers. Gastroenterology experts explain that after alcohol (ethanol) enters the body, it is metabolized into toxic acetaldehyde and then into non-toxic acetic acid (vinegar) before being excreted. Two genes, ALDH and ADH, affect the speed of alcohol metabolism. Slow metabolizers can experience a buildup of acetaldehyde, causing symptoms like facial flushing, vomiting, and nausea. As more people suffer from alcohol-related illnesses, such as alcoholic cirrhosis, esophageal cancer, and pancreatitis, some cases of hip ischemia or head and neck tumors are also linked to alcohol consumption. In severe cases, some drinkers even exhibit psychiatric symptoms, suggesting alcohol can cause widespread harm to the body. Furthermore, foreign studies have found that genetic predisposition to alcoholism can be passed to the next generation; statistics show that sons of fathers who drink are more likely to become drinkers themselves.
In addition, drinking can lead to weight gain. Alcohol has the second-highest calorie content after fat, and because it's a liquid, it's easy to consume in excess. This is why there are more and more cases of alcoholic fatty liver.