Don’t worry about getting fat during the Chinese New Year with these 4 tips! Nutritionist's New Year's Eve Dinner

Whenever the Chinese New Year comes, the whole family gets together and it is a tradition to fill the table with New Year dishes, such as Buddha Jumps Over the Wall, Dongpo Pork, Lion's Head, Pig's Trotter, Whole Chicken or Rice Cake, which are all mouth-watering. In addition, some people will crazily eat cashews, almonds, dried meat and various New Year cakes, causing their weight to soar by 2 or 3 kilograms in just a few days of the New Year holiday. What's more troublesome is that blood lipids and blood sugar also soar! Today, nutritionists Huang Xiaotong and Cai Yixuan will teach you how to eat New Year's Eve meals in a healthy way with 4 tips.

Traditional New Year dishes: Buddha jumps over the wall, Dongpo pork, rice cake

Before getting into the main topic, let me first share with you the nutritional value of several traditional New Year dishes and the dietary details that you should pay attention to when eating them.

Buddha Jumps Over the Wall:

The meat part includes pork, chicken, fish skin, and seafood (abalone, scallops, and dried scallops). Pork itself is a red meat and has a relatively high fat content. Although chicken and fish have less fat in comparison, some parts such as chicken feet, chicken wings, chicken skin, and fish skin have a relatively high fat content. People who want to lose weight need to try to avoid these parts.

Buddha Jumps Over the Wall also contains staple foods such as taro, chestnuts, and lotus seeds. In addition to being rich in carbohydrates, it also contains a variety of nutrients. First of all, taro is rich in resistant starch, which can bring a feeling of fullness, but it is still a whole grain root tuber, so you need to pay attention to the amount you consume with white rice. Chestnuts are high in dietary fiber and potassium, which can help control weight and stabilize blood pressure.

Lotus seeds are rich in B vitamins, which help stabilize emotions and maintain spirits, but the phosphorus content is high, so patients with kidney disease should pay special attention.

We can also see shiitake mushrooms in Buddha Jumps Over the Wall, which is a low-calorie, high-fiber ingredient with higher protein than ordinary vegetables. It also contains polysaccharides, which are also beneficial for improving immunity. In addition, the vegetable portion also includes bamboo shoots. Bamboo shoots are high in dietary fiber and low in calories, but people with poor gastrointestinal function and prone to bloating should be careful about the amount they consume.

It is important to note that since meat itself contains fat, when it is used as an ingredient to cook Buddha Jumps Over the Wall, the fat will seep into the soup, and drinking the soup is equivalent to drinking oil. In addition, cornstarch and cassava starch are added to thicken the soup, which are starches with empty calories and little nutritional value. In addition, it contains a lot of sodium and purine, so patients with cardiovascular disease and gout should pay more attention to their intake!

Dongpo Pork

Dongpo pork is always a must-have dish on the New Year's dinner table, and the main ingredient is pork belly. After being deep-fried and set, it is cooked with a large amount of sugar, soy sauce, and wine. It is a dish that goes very well with rice! But everyone, pork belly itself is high in fat and calories, the meat alone is almost 800 calories. It is recommended that you do not eat too much, just taste it. If you cook Dongpo pork at home, you can skip the frying step and steam it instead, which is healthier!

rice cake:

I regret to tell you that rice cake is a high-sugar, high-calorie food and it is absolutely not suitable to eat too much. The main ingredients of traditional rice cakes are glutinous rice and sugar. Other rice cakes with added fillings such as red bean rice cakes, eight-treasure rice cakes, and coconut milk rice cakes are all must-eat foods for Taiwanese people during the Chinese New Year. Every 100 grams of traditional sweet rice cake has 242 calories, which is close to the calories in a bowl of rice. Not only that, many people will coat the rice cake with thick egg juice and batter and fry it. The batter easily absorbs oil, and the calories are completely off the charts. It is recommended not to coat the food with flour, but to cut the food into thin slices and dry-fry them in a non-stick pan to reduce unnecessary fat and calorie intake.

4 Tips to Eat Healthy New Year Dishes Without Gaining Weight

1. Selection of New Year's Eve Dinner Ingredients:

For the staple food, choose high-fiber whole grains and root vegetables, such as brown rice, whole grain rice, sweet potato, taro, quinoa, etc. to replace white rice. Increasing dietary fiber intake can not only stabilize blood sugar, but also increase satiety, so that you will not be hungry all the time and eat a lot of food, which is beneficial to weight control. In addition, dietary fiber can promote gastrointestinal motility, increase stool excretion, and prevent constipation!

In addition, for protein, you should be good at using low-fat meat and seafood as ingredients. Chicken, fish, pork tenderloin, shrimp, squid, etc. are all good choices. Eat less high-fat meat, such as pork knuckle, pork belly, braised pork belly, etc. Try to avoid them.

2. Smart use of red plates:

Red is an effective appetite suppressant and is often used as a warning sign in nature or human society to tell you to stop an action. If sugary drinks and salty foods are placed in red cups or red plates, it can be seen that the subjects drink significantly less drinks and eat less snacks than those who use white or blue tableware to serve food.

3. Eat more fresh fruits and vegetables:

There is a little tip I would like to teach you, which is to make good use of vegetables to decorate the dish. Not only will the colors be bright and beautiful, but it will also increase the chances for your family to eat vegetables. It is recommended that girls eat 4 servings of vegetables a day and boys eat 5 servings, so that the amount of vegetables will be sufficient. Try to choose seasonal, fresh vegetables. Next, you can eat fruits rich in enzymes after meals to aid digestion. Pineapple and papaya are good choices.

4. Healthy cooking methods:

It is recommended that you choose healthier cooking methods such as baking, steaming, boiling, stewing, and cold dressing, and use good vegetable oil to cook food. Be sure to avoid high-temperature cooking methods as much as possible to reduce carcinogens produced by fat fission. In addition, making good use of low-oil cooking tools, such as non-stick pans, steamers, ovens, rice cookers, etc., can also significantly reduce the amount of oil used during cooking.