Learn from a Nutritionist's 3 Years of Healthy Eating Experience
Core Tip: Health lies in action, in practicing it bit by bit, for true knowledge comes from practice. Let's take a look at the healthy eating experience accumulated by a nutritionist over 3 years.
How to eat nutritiously and healthily? Let's look at the six major dietary conclusions drawn by a nutritionist with three years of experience as a senior nutritionist through practice:
One: Change from single-color soy milk to multi-color soy milk
Change from drinking only soybean soy milk to a five-grain full-nutrition soy milk made from over 20 types of grains, beans, nuts, and dried fruits, such as various beans, grains, walnut kernels, red dates, goji berries, black sesame, etc. (Beans include soybeans, black beans, mung beans, red beans, kidney beans, peas, lentils, cranberry beans, adzuki beans, etc., with soybeans and black beans being the main types. Grains include rice, black rice, black glutinous rice, millet, yellow glutinous rice, glutinous rice, sorghum, corn, Job's tears, wheat, barley, oats, buckwheat, Euryale ferox, etc., with black rice, yellow millet, and glutinous rice being the main types of rice, and oats and buckwheat being the main types of wheat).
Two: Combine multiple foods
Change from simply eating a few stewed dishes per meal to a yam and pumpkin vegetable puree that includes: vegetables, seaweed, mushrooms, and grains, made from ingredients like pumpkin, yam, carrots, cauliflower, cabbage, ginger, kelp, wood ear mushrooms, shiitake mushrooms, cashews, flaxseeds, peanuts, etc. The vegetable puree mixed with soy milk is called vegetable puree soy milk, mixed with milk is called vegetable puree milk, and mixed with rice soup, noodle soup, or pure water is called vegetable puree nutritional soup.
Three: Emphasize nut intake to supplement vitamins and minerals
Change from eating nuts as snacks to having them as a main course for each meal. Persist in eating 2 walnuts, 2-3 hazelnuts, 1-2 macadamia nuts (longevity nuts), 5-6 red dates, 20 grams of goji berries, 10-15 pine nuts, 10-20 sunflower and pumpkin seeds, and 5-6 peanuts per day. To control the quantity and for easy carrying when out, I portion these nuts into resealable plastic bags and place them on the dining table as a dish for each meal.
Four: Prioritize cold dishes to get more enzymes
Change from preferring fried, steamed, stir-fried, and braised dishes to raw salads. Eat vegetables raw whenever possible. For each meal, I shred or slice my favorite vegetables like cucumbers, radishes, celery, eggplant, chili peppers, cabbage, etc., and season them with honey, sesame paste, mustard oil, sesame oil, salt, and vinegar. The taste is sweet, fragrant, spicy, and crispy, and very delicious.
Five: Variety of steamed buns
Change from eating plain flour buns to eating vegetable juice buns. This is how I steam them: Chop one head of cabbage (also called savoy cabbage or green cabbage), add it to a bag of milk (250g), and blend it in a food processor (no water needed). Add an appropriate amount of yeast powder (or old dough starter), then add flour to the vegetable milk juice and knead the dough (the amount of flour depends on the amount of juice). After kneading, let the dough ferment at room temperature (30-40°C) for about an hour. Once the dough has fully risen, knead it into buns. After shaping the buns, let them ferment for another hour until they expand, then steam them for 25-30 minutes. The buns made this way are large, white, and airy, full of bread-like air bubbles, and have a special texture.
Three years of study, research, discussion, and practice have led me to further clarify several viewpoints:
(1) To ensure health and longevity, the diet must be diverse. Because maintaining a person's normal daily physiological activities requires the supplementation of 42 nutrients, a monotonous diet will lead to hidden hunger. Only by adhering to food diversity can we achieve the complementarity of food nutrients and reach a nutritional balance. This is the principle behind the World Health Organization's three principles of dietary diversity, moderation, and safety.
(2) Humans eat energy in everything they consume. Energy is the essence of the four seasons of spring, summer, autumn, and winter. The longer the growth period of a plant, the greater the energy in its fruit. For example, walnuts, hazelnuts, pine nuts, and red dates contain the essence of all four seasons. It can be said that the seeds of plants are the essence of their essence, and nuts are indispensable for ensuring health and longevity.
(3) The shape of food determines its absorption and utilization rate. Eating well and nutritiously is important, but the most critical part is digestion, absorption, and utilization. What you eat doesn't necessarily mean you can digest it; what you digest doesn't necessarily mean you can absorb it; what you absorb doesn't necessarily mean you can utilize it. Therefore, how food is processed, what equipment is used, and to what extent it is processed are most important.
(4) The highest realm of dietary health is to maintain balance. Consuming too many acidic or alkaline foods will make the blood more acidic or alkaline, leading to various diseases. Paying attention to the proper combination of meat and vegetables can effectively avoid acid-base imbalance.
(5) The key to dietary health lies in keeping the "sewer" clear. It is now a consensus in the medical community that constipation is the root of a hundred diseases. If bowel movements are not regular, it means the body is constantly "eating poison." Eating various natural food seeds, nuts, and fiber-rich vegetables and fruits is the perfect solution to constipation.
Studying culture first improves oneself; studying health first benefits oneself. Several years of practice have proven from changes in my personal health that this dietary change is not just a matter of taste; it is a brilliant strategy to move away from disease and towards health. Every day, looking at my own glowing and ruddy face, seeing my tireless and energetic state of mind, the feeling of joy is beyond words—only by experiencing it can you truly feel it!