During the Mid-Autumn and National Day holidays, a variety of delicious foods are served on the table, but it's important not to overindulge at the expense of your health. Therefore, you should control your intake of calories and sugar to eat healthily.
Quit smoking and limit alcohol
It's not advisable to drink excessively during the holidays, but you can have a small amount of low-alcohol beverages, preferably wine. At the same time, do not drink on an empty stomach; eat some food to protect your liver and blood circulation. Smoking is harmful to your health. When gathering with family and friends, you should avoid creating a smoky environment for the sake of your own and others' health.
People often feel full after drinking, especially in large quantities, and therefore don't want to eat afterward. This is actually very harmful. Scientific research has found that eating more food, especially a sufficient amount of carbohydrates, while drinking can reduce the occurrence of alcoholic fatty liver. Normally, after alcohol is absorbed by the gastrointestinal tract, it is converted into acetaldehyde by the action of alcohol dehydrogenase in the liver, then into acetic acid, and finally decomposed into carbon dioxide and water and excreted from the body. When drinking heavily, the body's acetaldehyde cannot be converted into acetic acid in time, leading to the production of a large number of superoxide anion free radicals, which disrupts the balance between oxidation and anti-oxidation in the body. At this time, eating more vegetables and fruits to supplement important antioxidants such as vitamin C, vitamin E, and trace element selenium can reduce the harm of alcohol to the human body.
In addition, it's best to drink in the evening. This is because the activity of alcohol dehydrogenase in the human liver has a time-based rhythm; it is lower at noon and higher in the evening. Therefore, alcohol is not easily metabolized and excreted when consumed at noon, making it easier to get drunk and causing greater harm to the body at this time compared to the evening. Another thing to note is that drinking on an empty stomach in the morning can easily cause damage to the gastric mucosa.
Drink in moderation, especially beer. Many young people believe that beer has a much lower alcohol content than red and white wine, so it's fine to drink heartily during a trip. In fact, regular beer consumption can easily lead to high blood pressure, high blood sugar, and high blood lipids.
Reduce snacks and beverages
>Snacks and drinks are essential for gatherings, chats, and card games, but be mindful of controlling your intake. Snacks like melon seeds, peanuts, and candy contain a lot of oil, sugar, salt, and spices. Eating too much can be difficult to digest, leading to bloating, dry mouth, and even irritability. Beverages with high sugar content can increase the body's osmotic pressure, making you thirstier the more you drink. Therefore, snacks should be eaten in moderation, and it's better to switch to fragrant hot tea or fresh fruit and vegetable juices. 、高血脂。
Four Keys to Healthy Holiday Eating
1. Key to using oil: Use less oil, and avoid deep-frying, pan-frying, braising, or stewing. Instead, opt for boiling, cold salads, or steaming. This not only reduces calorie intake but also decreases the greasiness and strong flavors of food. Deep-frying is worse than pan-frying, and braising and stewing are also high in calories.
2. Key to seasoning: Use less seasoning to emphasize the natural flavor of the ingredients. The umami and nutrition of a soup you've simmered yourself cannot be replaced by various artificial seasonings. Common ingredients for soups include pork bones, chicken bones, and fish bones. Pork bones make a rich broth, suitable for thick soups or stews; fish bones can make a broth with a fishy taste, only suitable for seafood dishes; only chicken bones can produce a broth that can be either rich or light, clear in color and fresh in taste, making it most suitable for cooking.
Generally, when nutritionists estimate the calories in food, they do not consider soy sauce, salt, MSG, vinegar, green onions, ginger, or garlic. Only oil, sugar, rice wine, and starches are considered to have calories. (Soy sauce itself has no calories). Because these contain high calories, their amount of addition should be controlled.
3. Key to controlling portions: Eat in moderation for good health. During holiday gatherings with family and friends, it's easy to overeat unconsciously due to the large number of people and the lively atmosphere, which is especially taboo for the elderly. If you can't control your food intake, it's recommended to control the amount of food cooked in advance. It's fine to prepare slightly less food than usual, so that there will be no leftovers after the meal, and you can still express a sense of festive abundance. Do not use the excuse that certain foods are low in calories to eat a large quantity of them. People with chronic diseases, especially diabetics, should be especially careful to control their intake.
4. Key to reducing greasiness with vegetables and fruits: Eat more vegetables and fruits to cut through the grease. Many people don't like to eat vegetables during the holidays because they think they are not "festive" enough. It's easy to eat a lot of meat and consume excessive calories during the holidays, so it's even more important to eat more high-fiber vegetables and fruits. Using vegetables and fruits to add flavor is not only refreshing and delicious, suitable for balancing the stomach, but also allows for a variety of cooking methods. For example, in a hot pot, you can cook vegetables. Radish can be cubed and added to a pork rib soup; after eating a lot of rich meat dishes, this can be a refreshing soup. Spinach can be blanched in boiling water to remove its greasy feel. It is recommended that adding Napa cabbage, carrots, potatoes, celery, frozen peas, and corn kernels together makes a nutritious and flavorful clear soup; if you thicken it with cornstarch, it becomes a sweet and savory thick soup.
Three Healthy Pairings for Holiday Meals
1. Alkaline and Acidic Pairing: The human body must maintain a slightly alkaline state, with a pH value of around 7.3 being optimal. If the human blood is acidic, blood viscosity and cholesterol are relatively high, which can easily lead to fatigue, and the body's resistance will also decrease. Almost all meat dishes are acidic foods (except for dairy and blood products), rich in protein, carbohydrates, and fat. Do not eat only large amounts of meat and fish at every meal during the holidays; pair them with alkaline foods to achieve a balance of acid and alkali in the body. The food with the highest alkaline content is seaweed, followed by green vegetables, lettuce, celery, mushrooms, carrots, radishes, etc.
2. Potassium and Sodium Pairing: The salt intake of residents in our country is originally high, more than twice the amount recommended by the World Health Organization. During the holidays, eating more side dishes means even more salt intake, leading to higher sodium levels in the blood, which is not conducive to maintaining normal blood pressure. Potassium is the nemesis of sodium; it can excrete excess sodium from the body. Vegetables rich in potassium include seaweed, kelp, mushrooms, asparagus, pea shoots, lettuce, celery, etc.
3. "High-Fiber" and "Low-Fiber" Pairing: Meat dishes do not contain dietary fiber, and livestock, poultry, and aquatic products are all refined "low-fiber foods." Eating too much of these can cause constipation. When feces and other waste stay in the intestines for too long, it increases the absorption of toxins by the intestinal lining, which can easily induce colon cancer. "High-fiber foods," on the other hand, can eliminate the harm caused by "low-fiber foods." Foods rich in dietary fiber mainly include millet, corn, oatmeal, peanuts, fruits, cabbage, radishes, etc.