Introduction: Chinese people are passionate about hot pot, savoring the taste of the simmering broth and experiencing the lively atmosphere of family and friends gathering. The steaming and convenient hot pot is uniquely favored during the winter season.
However, in addition to enjoying it, we have slowly discovered the health hazards caused by the misconceptions of eating hot pot. How can we eat a healthy and nutritious hot pot?
To learn more delicious hot pot recipes, we recommend the daily special: Don't Miss Hot Pot Season Nourishing Hot Pot to Fight the Cold
Ensure a Variety of Ingredients
In daily life, customers at hot pot restaurants often "focus" on meats like lamb and fatty beef, as well as processed meat products like fish balls and crab sticks, while holding an indifferent attitude towards vegetables and bean products. This characteristic is especially prominent in buffet-style hot pot shops.
Due to this tendency, people tend to have a very one-sided diet when eating hot pot, which is not conducive to a balanced intake of nutrients and may lead to excessive intake of lipids. Therefore, when eating hot pot, people should pay attention to the diversity of ingredient pairing. In addition to meat, it's also important to pair it with staple foods, vegetables, and bean products. Eating vegetables can eliminate the greasiness from meat, provide the body with rich vitamin C, and have the effects of cooling, detoxifying, and reducing internal heat; for those who avoid meat products, they can appropriately consume some bean products, which contain various trace elements, and the gypsum in tofu also has effects such as clearing heat and purging fire.
Choose Your Dishes Carefully
First, eat less high-purine foods. Seafood, animal offal, and mushrooms contain a large amount of purine substances. These substances are metabolized by the liver to form uric acid, which can lead to decreased kidney function, affect the excretion of harmful substances, and induce or aggravate gout. In addition, animal offal has a high cholesterol content and more metabolic waste residues, so it should be eaten even less.
Second, eat more foods rich in dietary fiber. Ingredients like potatoes and sweet potatoes have a high dietary fiber content, which can not only help lower cholesterol and triglyceride levels in the blood, but their "high-potassium, low-sodium" characteristic is also beneficial for controlling blood pressure.
Third, the dipping sauce should be light and palatable. The nutritional value and calories of dipping sauces are often overlooked. Nutritionist Wang Tengyue introduced that the dipping sauces for hot pot food are very high in calories; one large tablespoon of sauce contains 100 kilocalories, so people who are overweight should pay more attention to their sauce intake. Seasonings like chili and sesame oil can irritate the gastrointestinal tract, so people with a sensitive stomach should eat less. At the same time, seasonings also contain a large amount of fat, salt, and additives. Excessive intake not only affects the taste but can also cause symptoms like "internal heat".
Finally, choose suitable beverages. If you're eating hot pot, yogurt, juice, and tea are all good choices to accompany your meal. Yogurt has a protective and regulatory effect on the gastrointestinal tract, and the phospholipids it contains can form a thick, hydrophobic layer on the surface of the gastric mucosa, resisting damage from harmful factors like alcohol and protecting the gastric mucosa; juice and tea can reduce heat and clear internal heat. Beer, however, should be consumed in moderation because alcohol can easily transport uric acid to joints or soft tissues, leading to gout.
Eat in a Reasonable Order
For many, eating hot pot is a way to relax, but it is this casualness that often leads people to overlook many health details, such as the order in which they eat the ingredients. The correct eating order allows us to enjoy the delicious food while minimizing the harm to our bodies.
Experts suggest that the correct order for eating hot pot should be: leafy vegetables, mushrooms, seafood, and then meat. This way, nutrients can be utilized reasonably. Because leafy vegetables are more absorbent of oil, once the broth is rich in lipids, the leafy vegetables become high in fat after being cooked, and can no longer be considered "vegetables." Therefore, they should be eaten before meat products. Mushroom foods have the same characteristic, so they should also be eaten first.
So, if you like to drink the broth, when is the best time? It is recommended to drink the broth about ten minutes after the pot starts, avoiding the old broth. Because old broth contains more harmful substances such as nitrites, saturated fatty acids, sodium, and purines, it's best to discard it. As for staple foods and root or seaweed vegetables, you can enjoy them anytime according to your personal preference.
Control the Cooking Time
There is a folk saying, "One scald is as good as three fresh ingredients." To make the taste more delicious, people are often willing to cook the food for a longer time before eating it, but the cooking time affects both the retention of nutrients in the food and their absorption by the body. The tolerance temperature for the human mouth, intestines, and gastric mucosa is 50°C to 60°C, while the temperature of hot pot broth can be as high as 120°C. If ingredients are taken directly from the pot and put into the mouth, it is easy to scald the mouth, intestines, and gastric mucosa, leading to inflammation and ulcers, or causing the recurrence of oral diseases. This is also one of the reasons why such illnesses are more common in winter. Therefore, after taking food out of the hot pot, it should be allowed to cool in the bowl for a moment before eating. Remember, "haste makes waste."
Conversely, some people believe that hot pot ingredients should only be briefly scalded to maintain a fresh and tender texture, which they consider more nutritious. This is not the case. Eating food that is only slightly cooked can leave behind pathogenic microorganisms and parasite eggs in vegetables and meat, leading to illness. Therefore, even if it means sacrificing some texture, we should wait for the food to be fully cooked to ensure the digestion and absorption of its nutrients.
Maintain a Fresh Eating Environment
The eating environment is often a major factor in healthy eating that people overlook. In most hot pot restaurants, we can see the misty clouds formed by the rolling broth, and after eating for a while, people may start to feel slightly dizzy. At this point, we might blame the alcohol, but there is another reason: the eating environment.
Air circulation in general hot pot restaurants is poor, and the steam from the hot pot makes the indoor environment even more humid and stuffy. If it's a gas stove or charcoal hot pot, incomplete combustion can also produce some carbon monoxide, leading to symptoms like dizziness. Therefore, when eating hot pot, try to choose a seat with good air circulation to avoid the negative effects of a stuffy environment.
Hot pot is a trendy food popular among young people like students and office workers in winter, and it is also a simple and healthy dietary trend. As long as we pay attention to a few things during the process—such as caloric intake, avoiding scalds, ensuring food is fully cooked, and maintaining a fresh eating environment—healthy eating will be right by our side, and we can become true "healthy hot pot lovers."