The Traditional Chinese Diet. A Healthy And Enjoyable Way To Eat And Live
Seldom have I met someone who hasn’t love Chinese cooking. For me, Chinese food can be a daily lunch time affair (perhaps, complementing it with Thai or Indian food for dinner).
Oftentimes, Chinese restaurants have a cheerful environment. They are also inexpensive and ubiquitous. You may find one in every street corner of the world. Due to the rising issues for a healthy diet and the importance of enjoying eating such a diet, Chinese cuisine, of course, has become even more popular than before.
We know that Chinese cooking is good for the health: it uses healthy types of oil such as peanut and sesame oil, lots of vegetables, and is low in saturated fat and meat.
However, does Chinese cooking truly merit its huge popularity? To be more specific, does it help promote a healthy heart and a lower blood pressure?
Setting aside the delectability factor for a second, we need to become an objective observer and see the pros and cons of Chinese food as a healthy means of sustenance. To begin with, there are unquestionably certain essential components to support its positive effects to health; how about we take a look at some of the typical Chinese ingredients:
Garlic
Garlic is one of Chinese cooking’s most basic ingredient. Potent garlic active chemicals additionally act to open and unwind the veins. The truth is the circulatory system is positively affected by garlic in such a way that as a supplement, this herb has long been used to boost the health of the circulatory and cardiovascular systems.
Like most nourishments, however, garlic is most useful in its complete and pristine state when it’s utilized as a part of cooking. What’s more, eating Chinese food can be an ideal and enjoyable reason to take in lots of garlic.
Ginger
Ginger is an aromatic plant that is virtually omnipresent in Chinese cuisine; it’s one among the four foundations of this style of cooking. This is an herb that for thousands of year has long been valued for its stimulating and overall tonifying qualities. It provides one with a substantial rundown of restorative benefits that include being an anti-inflammatory and a digestive aid.
What’s more, new studies demonstrate that ginger possesses potent compounds known as “gingerols” that help relax the blood vessel walls that in turn, cause these vessels to widen and thus help lower blood pressure. Along these lines, ginger acts in a straightforward and beneficial way vis-à-vis our blood pressure levels.
Chili Peppers
More and more folks are discovering the tremendous health benefits of chili peppers and are learning how to eat them in a more enjoyable way. Most of us love to eat hot and spicy foods and peppers and now that we know that they are also very beneficial for our health, we can eat them with gusto and without guilt.
Regardless of the experience of the high tension that people feel when consuming chili peppers, the effect within their bodies is quite the opposite. What gives pepper its hot sizzling properties is capsicum. This active ingredient helps lower blood pressure levels through its ability to relax the blood vessels. Peppers also possess various compounds that help thin the blood and lessen its “stickiness,” which facilitates and enhances circulation.
The spicier and hotter the chili pepper is, the more good for the body it becomes. What’s not to like about something that enhances health as well as the sensation of taste? Hunan, Szechuan and other provincial Chinese dishes are usually packed with ginger, garlic, and red hot chili peppers.
Chinese cooking regularly includes a significant amount of beneficial ingredients that are now and then omitted from our diet and this includes unique spices and fresh vegetables. Moreover, the quick and frenetic style of Chinese cooking in woks can be more advantageous compared to Western styles as it never remises in the use of nutrients and natural flavors.
Therefore, from all of these, we can see that Chinese food really takes high marks for healthy eating; nevertheless, it has also undesirable viewpoints that its fans have a tendency to pooh-pooh or even completely overlook.
The truth is there are some Chinese foods that can cause your blood pressure to shoot up or result in even worse health issues.
What’s the reason for this? Well, some of these foods often combine nutritious vegetables, spices, and herbs with heaps of vetsin (mono-sodium glutamate or MSG), salt, sugar, and shockingly, fat. Some of us experience a bad reaction to foods that are laced with MSG and this happens a lot in several Chinese restaurants. Fortunately, more often than not, the effects are only transitory.
Many people in the West have no idea of the huge differences between the dishes served in Chinese restaurants and the typical Chinese diet. You will usually see Chinese people slurping large bowls of soups with noodles if you happen to visit a local food establishment. These soups contain large amounts of vegetables and few meats and are very healthy ways of eating. You will never see a Chinese person eating this type of dish who is overweight.
The Hong Kong Style of Cooking
What most people in the West consider Chinese foods are foods usually served for special events and are considered “banquet” foods. These foods are sticky, pungent sweet, and sour and are really delicious!
These incredibly crispy, sweet, and sour dainty morsels are cooked and served with lots of fat, salt, and sugar: ingredients fast-food joints use with reckless abandon! Even worse, these foods, especially those toothsome appetizers, are deep-fried. We now understand why these foods are only served in special occasions, eating them on a regular basis would guarantee you a heart attack.
Be that as it may, the booming economies of Asia have contributed greatly to the normalization of this kind of eating. Thus once unheard of in the Orient, heart disease, high blood pressure, and obesity are now becoming a serious health problem there. The number of obese children in China is fast catching up to the childhood obesity epidemic in the States.
It is not good to separate pleasure from eating. But Chinese banquet dishes that are deep fried and loaded with salt and sugar should only be eaten occasionally as consuming them frequently would result in diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, stroke, or a heart attack. If you want a delectable but healthy kind of dish, avail yourself of the traditional Chinese diet and enjoy healthy soups mixed with noodles and fresh vegetables.