During the Mid-Autumn Festival, eat mooncakes and grapefruits, and be careful of the full moon! The "Round" Rescue Team teaches you tips on healthy eating

When I saw barbecue sauce advertisements starting to appear on TV and my friends started giving me various mooncake gift boxes, I knew the annual Mid-Autumn Festival was approaching. According to Taiwanese customs, people always get together with a few friends to watch the moon and barbecue. After the meal, they can also enjoy moon cakes and pomelo as snacks, which is a great enjoyment in life. However, the good figure you built up during the summer will face a big challenge during the Mid-Autumn Festival. In order to avoid being "troubled by the moon", let the nutritionist tell you a few tips on how to enjoy delicious food while keeping in shape, so that you can spend the Mid-Autumn Festival happily and healthily!

<Mid-Autumn Festival Barbecue>

1. Stay away from high-fat and high-salt foods

When choosing ingredients, we encourage people to choose fresh "original foods" instead of processed foods, such as replacing bacon, fish balls, sausages, bean curd, etc. with lean meat slices, seafood, and chicken, which can reduce excessive intake of fat and salt. In addition, we must be careful about high-fat meats with high saturated fat or cholesterol content, such as pork belly, pork belly, animal skins or offal foods. Excessive intake can easily increase the risk of cardiovascular disease.

2. Rainbow fruits and vegetables are essential

In addition to big fish and meat, don't forget the colorful vegetables. Not only are they rich in fiber, they also have the benefits of increasing satiety and promoting gastrointestinal motility. More importantly, the unique phytochemicals and antioxidants they contain can reduce the free radical damage caused by barbecue and reduce the risk of chronic diseases. Here are some common ways to increase your vegetable intake:

You can use lettuce instead of toast to eat meat.

Leafy vegetables or melon vegetables can be cooked in tin foil containers.

Cut bell peppers, onions, mushrooms, etc. into bite-sized pieces and combine with meat or seafood to make kebabs.

3. Season naturally, don’t overdo it

The phrase most often heard during the Mid-Autumn Festival is "One barbecue restaurant has a thousand aromas." This reflects the Taiwanese custom of always using barbecue sauce to season barbecue meat and brushing the sauce on the meat repeatedly during the grilling process, which makes us consume a lot of salt without realizing it, increasing the burden on the cardiovascular system and kidneys. We can use fruits to make sauces, such as lemon, orange, etc., to give the food a natural fruity aroma, or sprinkle spices on it for seasoning, such as onion, mashed garlic, allspice, Italian spices, etc., while maintaining the flavor of the food, we can also maintain our health and achieve a win-win goal!

4. Be careful of coal spirits coming to your door

After grilling with charcoal fire, food always has a charming aroma. The source of this aroma is actually the fat in the food dripping onto the charcoal fire. After being heated for a long time, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) are produced. This substance has the risk of causing cancer and can easily stick to food through smoke. In addition to avoiding eating rough and gritty foods to reduce intake, you can also reduce the risk of carcinogens by using tin foil to block direct flames and food ingredients.

5. Choose sugar-free drinks

Most people's good partners with barbecue are nothing more than beer, soda, and hand-shaken drinks, but these either contain a lot of refined sugar or alcohol, which is a heavy burden on the body. It is recommended to use sugar-free tea or boiled water instead; if you still need to drink for social factors or other reasons, it is recommended that men do not exceed 2 alcohol equivalents per day, and women do not exceed 1 alcohol equivalent per day. (1 alcohol equivalent is equivalent to 250 ml of beer, 100 ml of wine or 30 ml of kaoliang liquor).

6. Pay more attention to food hygiene

Finally, I would like to remind everyone of a point that is easily overlooked. You must pay special attention to the hygiene and safety of each ingredient. In addition to thoroughly cleaning the ingredients before grilling, meat and seafood should be grilled before eating to prevent gastrointestinal discomfort. Be more careful and eat safely and healthily during the Mid-Autumn Festival.

<Snacks>

Choose mooncakes carefully to stay healthy

There are a wide variety of mooncakes on the market, with many new flavors coming out every year, always refreshing our understanding of it. However, the production process of mooncakes is often accompanied by a large amount of sugar and oil, making it synonymous with "high-sugar, high-fat, high-calorie snacks." If we don’t want to fall into such a beautiful trap, we can reduce the burden on our body through the following tips:

 Read the nutrition labels more often and choose low-calorie and low-sodium items. It is also a good choice to choose snow skin mooncakes and mochi mooncakes to replace the oil-rich puff pastry or mooncakes containing egg yolks. It is also a good choice to choose mooncakes with sugar substitutes instead of refined sugar or konjac to reduce the calorie intake.

 Sharing a mooncake with friends and family not only allows you to enjoy a variety of flavors without overdosing, but also helps you enhance your relationship with each other, killing two birds with one stone. However, it is still recommended to eat only a small amount of mooncakes and not more than one a day. Diabetics should pay special attention to not consuming too many mooncakes. In addition to the excessive amount of starch, a high-fat diet can also easily lead to higher blood sugar levels after meals.

Grapefruit is rich in vitamin C, pectin and dietary fiber. Moderate intake can promote bowel movements and enhance gastrointestinal motility. For people who need to control calories or diabetics, it is recommended to limit fruit intake to two servings per day.

<Pomelo Chapter>

A moderate amount of pomelo without burden

Grapefruit is rich in vitamin C, pectin and dietary fiber. Moderate intake can promote bowel movements and enhance gastrointestinal motility. For people who need to control calories or diabetics, it is recommended to limit fruit intake to two servings per day. 2-3 grapefruit segments are about one serving of fruit, so you can share it with friends and family to avoid excessive intake, which will cause blood sugar levels to rise.

[Nutritionist's reminder]:

During the Mid-Autumn Festival, you may want to seize the time to spend with your family. After eating delicious food, go for a walk together to enjoy the moon. In addition to increasing activity and helping digestion, it can also create many wonderful moments that will become wonderful memories in the future. Finally, as long as you make good use of the above tips in diet, you can become a member of the health rescue team and celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival without worries for yourself and your family and friends.