Speeches on healthy eating

Take an extra chopstick of dark green vegetables with each meal, replace 1/3 of the polished rice and white flour with whole grains, and drink 1 cup less sugar-sweetened beverages, which is enough to touch the threshold of healthy eating.

Don't think I'm faking it. I just accompanied a friend to see a nutritionist a while ago. For the sake of so-called "health", she ate oil-free boiled vegetables for three consecutive months and only dared to eat half a corn for carbohydrates. As a result, her aunt postponed her treatment for two months and lost hair so much that she could insert a finger into it. The first thing the doctor said after reading her food record was, "You are not eating healthily, you are punishing your body."

In fact, there is a lot of quarrel about healthy eating on the Internet right now. The low-carb party says that rice and noodles are the root of all evil, the vegan party says that eating meat will increase the burden on the body, and the supporters of the Mediterranean diet say that we should eat more olive oil and deep-sea fish. I have seen fans from both sides arguing in the comment area for hundreds of floors. To be honest, these opinions are all correct, but they are only useful for specific groups of people. For example, I have a relative who is pre-diabetic, and the doctor asked him to strictly control his intake of refined carbohydrates. It has only been three months since he replaced white rice with brown rice, and his fasting blood sugar returned to the normal range. Can you say that low-carb water is useless? But another friend of mine who is a designer followed the trend and quit carbs. He couldn’t think straight at three or four o’clock in the afternoon for a week. The revised plan was full of mistakes and omissions. After checking it out, I found out that insufficient carb intake affected his cognitive function. Do you think he is suitable for this? There is also a girl I know who works in animal protection. She has been vegan for five years and takes B12 and iron supplements regularly. All the indicators in her annual physical examination are better than mine, which eats meat every day. But a while ago, there was a girl who followed the trend and went vegan. She was diagnosed with severe anemia in three months and could not even climb three floors without breathing. Is there any standard answer that is universally applicable?

I checked the survey data of the "Dietary Guidelines for Chinese Residents 2022". The average daily intake of dark green vegetables by residents in our country is less than 90 grams, and the recommended amount is 150 to 200 grams. To put it bluntly, if you add an extra chopstick of spinach, lettuce or broccoli to each meal, you will reach the recommendation line. There is also the intake of whole grains, which is only 14 grams per person per day, and the recommended amount is 50 to 150 grams. When you steam rice, you can grab a handful of oats, corn grits or quinoa and mix it in. The taste will not be much different, but the intake of dietary fiber and B vitamins will go up directly. Will your cheeks hurt from eating brown rice every time?

I find that many people’s anxiety about healthy eating is more harmful than unhealthy eating itself. Last week, I had a dinner with my colleagues. There was a girl who stared at the menu for ten minutes and finally ordered a salad without sauce. After finishing the meal, she turned around and quietly bought a chocolate sundae, saying, "I was really disappointed." What do you think of this picture? I also love to drink milk tea. I drink it once or twice a week, and I always order 30% sugar. I never feel guilty - healthy eating is a long-term lifestyle habit, not a one or two days of asceticism. If you occasionally eat fried skewers and drink a cup of full-sugar milk tea, it will not have any impact on your health. On the contrary, holding back every day and overeating as soon as you break your guard will really harm your body. There are also rumors that foods are mutually exclusive. Spinach and tofu cannot be eaten together, and crabs and persimmons can be poisonous if eaten together. These rumors have been refuted eight hundred times by laboratories. Blanching spinach removes most of the oxalic acid, and eating it with tofu can help you supplement more calcium. You don't have to eat a meal to feel as nervous as doing a chemistry experiment.

When I was adjusting the diet of my parents, I didn’t even dare to mention the words “healthy diet.” I just said that the corn mash I bought recently was very fragrant and I tried it when steaming rice. At first, they thought it tasted rough, but after eating it for half a month, they took the initiative to tell me that they have not been so hungry recently while walking in the afternoon. My dad’s fasting blood sugar had been stuck at around 6.2 before, but this time it dropped directly to 5.7 during the physical examination. The parents were very happy, and now they take the initiative to put quinoa in the steamed rice. You see, you don’t need to make any earth-shaking changes at all. A little bit of small actions, if you stick to it for a long time, the effect will be much better than if you starve for three months.

Having said all this, what I want to tell you most is that healthy eating never requires you to fight your own appetite, nor does it require you to copy homework according to standard answers. After all, only you know your own body best. As long as you remember to give your body a little more positive feedback, it will definitely give you the most realistic response - for example, if you pick up an extra chopstick of vegetables at noon today, maybe you won't feel sleepy so easily when you go to work in the afternoon? Thank you all.