[Medical Q&A] Is it reliable to lose weight by eating only meat and not staple foods?

Author: Chen Wei, Chief Physician, Peking Union Medical College Hospital

Reviewer: Xing Xiaoyan, Chief Physician, China-Japan Friendship Hospital

The weight loss method of "only eating meat and not eating staple foods" involves certain risks.

Because the common meat we eat, such as chicken, duck, and fish, contains more fat in addition to protein. In particular, the saturated fatty acid content in red meat is very high, and long-term consumption of large amounts can easily increase the burden on the cardiovascular system.

Moreover, staple food is vital to the human body. Humans should consume at least 100 grams of carbohydrates every day to meet the daily needs of the human body. Therefore, we recommend that you need to consume no less than 100 grams of staple food a day; or eat some fruit and add some staple food. In addition, when choosing staple food, you should match coarse and fine grains. Because coarse grains have a strong sense of fullness and are not easy to get hungry, there are many benefits to eating coarse grains. However, it is not recommended that all staple foods are coarse grains, because eating like this for a long time will affect the absorption of protein, calcium, and iron, and it is easy to cause malnutrition. Of course, you should also choose fine grains. The same fine grains, eating rice and eating steamed buns have different effects on weight. Because the water absorption of noodles and rice is different, the same weight of rice and noodles, after being cooked, provide different energy. For example, 50 grams of rice, cooked rice is 130 grams, and 50 grams of flour is 75 grams of steamed buns, so eating nearly 2 steamed buns is almost the same as 50 grams of rice. But in fact, the energy of 2 steamed buns is much higher than that of 50 grams of rice.

Therefore, weight loss must be scientific, and you cannot blindly choose unreliable weight loss recipes.