When you're hungry, your appetite becomes stronger, and you might even feel an urge to grab food and shove it into your mouth. If you constantly give in to your appetite, problems like obesity and being overweight can creep up on you over time. Furthermore, eating the wrong things can also harm your health.
What foods should you avoid when you're hungry? How should you deal with the 5 hungriest moments of the day? The Life Times consulted experts to find out.
You should avoid the following 6 foods, even when you are very hungry. Why is that? Let's hear what Fu Jinru, honorary director of the Tianjin Nutrition Society, has to say.
1 Persimmon
It has a poor satiating effect and won't relieve hunger immediately. On the contrary, since more gastric juice is secreted when hungry, persimmons contain a lot of fruit acid and tannic acid, which can easily form indigestible gelatinous blocks.
2 Cold Drinks
Choosing cold drinks like ice cream or iced beverages when hungry will not only fail to relieve hunger but can also stimulate and cause gastrointestinal cramps.
3 Banana
Bananas contain a lot of sugar and can relieve hunger to some extent. However, bananas are also rich in magnesium. Eating them on an empty stomach can cause a sharp increase in magnesium in the body, disrupting the magnesium-calcium balance in the blood, which inhibits the cardiovascular system and is not good for your health.
4 Milk and Soy Milk
Both are rich in protein and can provide a quick energy boost, but protein cannot be absorbed on an empty stomach and is likely to cause bloating. The correct way to drink them is to pair them with snacks, flatbreads, or other foods containing flour to effectively promote protein absorption.
5 Sweet Potato
Sweet potatoes are high in crude fiber and carbohydrates, which can quickly provide energy and relieve hunger. However, sweet potatoes contain tannins and pectin, which can stimulate the stomach wall to secrete more gastric acid, causing discomfort like heartburn. Fu Jinru reminds people with sensitive stomachs to avoid sweet potatoes when hungry.
6 Candy
Sugar can quickly relieve symptoms of low blood sugar when hungry, but it doesn't provide a strong sense of fullness, so eating a lot of it on an empty stomach is not advisable.