Want to lose weight but love sweet food? Coffee, milk tea and cake, which one should you give up first? The key is…

I was having a small gathering with a few friends, and one of the beautiful ladies at the table kept complaining that she was getting fatter and fatter. A physical examination showed that her body fat content was relatively high. She had recently applied for a gym membership and hired a personal trainer to help her shape her body, but still saw no results. So she asked me for any suggestions on diet.

I would say it is very simple. You can increase calorie expenditure and improve basal metabolic rate through exercise, so all you have to do is reduce calorie intake in your diet. For example, from now on, I should eat about the same amount of food as a hamburger every day than before, make sure to eat 500g of vegetables and 250g of fruits, only eat lean meat, and don't eat desserts... Before I could finish my words, she refused to do it: "What? If I don't eat desserts, what's the point of me living!" It turned out that she often ate something in a dessert shop before going home after get off work.

Desserts are not only high in calories, but also easily increase blood sugar, promote insulin secretion, and increase fat synthesis. If you want to lose weight, you must not eat too much. The beauty finally decided to make some concessions and let me choose the most unhealthy one among coffee, milk tea and cake and stay away from them from now on. This is really difficult, because coffee, milk tea and cake are all very common foods, and they come in various styles and rich ingredients, making it difficult to make a horizontal comparison.

But they have one thing in common, that is, if you want to achieve a mellow flavor and taste, you cannot do without fat. There are good and bad fats. If we simply rank them from "least harmful" to "most harmful", they are unsaturated fats, most vegetable oils, natural butter, lard, shortening, fully hydrogenated vegetable oils, margarine, partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, and trans fats. From this point, you can make a rough judgment about coffee, milk tea and cake.

Except for American coffee, which is extremely low in calories, common coffee often contains a lot of sugar and fat. The fat in good quality freshly ground coffee mostly comes from the natural milk fat in pure milk. Milk fat, also known as butter and cream, is animal fat, but its molecular structure mostly consists of medium and long chains, making it easier to metabolize. It is healthier than other animal fats such as lard. However, some fast food restaurants or supermarkets often use non-dairy creamer to increase the aroma of the instant coffee.

Non-dairy creamer, commonly known as non-dairy creamer, is a powdered solid derived from vegetable fat, the main ingredients of which include fully hydrogenated vegetable oil or partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. Some hydrogenated vegetable oils contain trans fats, which are very harmful to the cardiovascular system.

Milk tea is actually similar to coffee. Pure natural, high-quality milk tea not only retains the aroma of milk, but also retains the antioxidants of tea. However, more sugar and fat are added for the taste. However, the ingredients of cheap milk tea sold on the street are not so sufficient. Not only flavors and pigments are used, but also non-dairy creamer containing partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. The trans fat content is very high and can easily exceed the safety limit.

Finally, let’s talk about cakes. Does the cream on the cake also contain a lot of trans fats? That layer of "cream" is a water-in-oil type oil product made from sugar as the main raw material through homogenization, with a fat content of about 20%. The oil ingredients are generally extremely hydrogenated palm oil or coconut oil, so the trans fat content is not high.

To sum up, if we score from the perspective of fat, milk tea undoubtedly has the lowest score and should be discarded first.

In fact, appropriate fat is necessary for the human body. Even if it is trans fat, it will not cause harm if you consume less than 2g a day, so the key is still the quantity. Although desserts can be used to improve mood and relieve stress, you can only order enough.

This article is from the book "Professional Nutritionists Teach You How to Eat Right, Lose Weight, Get Rid of Chronic Diseases, and Stay Away from Metabolic Syndrome" published by Gao Baoshu