Introduction: Food affects health through the gut microbiome. To "take care" of your gut, provide it with ample nutrition, avoid constipation, and ensure strong intestinal function for a healthy body. In fact, the gut has its own preferred foods, which should be noted in your diet.
Coarse Grains: Replace half your white rice and flour with coarse grains
To keep the gut comfortable, you must first boost the population of gut probiotics. Probiotics love foods rich in dietary fiber and oligosaccharides, with whole grains and coarse grains being the top choice.
But look at our bowls; they are almost entirely white rice and white steamed buns. The dietary fiber we get from staple foods cannot compare to what we consumed two or three decades ago. According to statistics, the average dietary fiber intake for Chinese residents in recent years is around 15 grams, failing to meet the recommended 20-30 grams.
Replace half the white rice and flour in your home with whole grains and coarse grains. Choose a variety of grains each time, cook them into a porridge in an electric pressure cooker—it's simple, convenient, nutritious, and delicious. Alternatively, soak beans for 8-12 hours and coarse grains for 2-4 hours before cooking them into a porridge, which makes them easier to cook and digest.
Walnut and Coarse Grain Paste
Tubers and Legumes: Use dried beans as staples, fresh beans as side dishes
Both soluble and insoluble dietary fiber are abundant in sweet potatoes. If you're not used to coarse grain rice, cut sweet potatoes, potatoes, and other tubers into small pieces and steam them with rice to avoid a nutritionally monotonous staple diet.
Legume foods like green beans, red beans, and soybeans contain even more dietary fiber than tubers. Soybeans, in particular, are not only rich in dietary fiber but also contain oligosaccharides that promote probiotic growth. Fresh beans like tender peas, fava beans, and edamame also contain a good amount of dietary fiber and are excellent as side dishes.
Root Vegetables: Make vegetable soups with burdock and carrots
Root vegetables like celery, burdock, and carrots are also foods the gut favors. Burdock, in particular, is known as the "Oriental ginseng" and is rich in crude fiber, which not only relieves constipation but is also beneficial for preventing various chronic diseases. For a vegetarian soup, burdock and carrots are great ingredients. Simply simmer them and lightly season for a light and delicious broth.
Don't forget fruits either. Apples, oranges, dragon fruit, kiwis, and others contain relatively high levels of dietary fiber such as cellulose, hemicellulose, pectin, and gum, which have a positive effect on intestinal health and cancer prevention.
Seafood and Celery Casserole Porridge
Seaweed: Serve cold or in soup for a delicious and nutritious meal
Wakame is very inexpensive but is an excellent sea vegetable that is high in dietary fiber and protein, low in fat, and rich in minerals and vitamins. Sea lettuce has a tender and smooth texture and is rich in trace elements like magnesium, calcium, and iodine, as well as soluble dietary fiber like alginic acid. Agar-agar has a high content of plant gum, which swells with water in the gut and is very helpful for relieving constipation, making it a good food for middle-aged and elderly people.
Sea lettuce and other seaweeds have a high sodium content, so soak them in water for a while, blanch them in boiling water, squeeze out the excess water, chop them up, and mix with salt, soy sauce, minced garlic, and sesame oil. Additionally, seaweed soup, nori soup, and sea lettuce and egg drop soup are also excellent choices.
Pork Bone and Seaweed Soup