Eating too much vs. eating too little, both affect life expectancy! You should eat like this →

We are used to eating cereals as staple food, such as rice, wheat, corn, etc. In fact, as long as the food has a high starch content, it can be eaten as a staple food. Moreover, after starch enters the human body, it will turn into glucose to provide calories to the body, and it is also a nutrient necessary for the human body to maintain life activities.

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"Low-carbohydrate diet" and "ketogenic diet" are popular nowadays... and staple foods are the main source of our daily carbohydrate intake.

When it comes to losing weight, the first thing that probably comes to mind is to eat less staple food, or even no staple food.

However, is it true that the less staple food you eat, the better? Previously, the internationally recognized authoritative medical journal The Lancet published a study on dietary health that proved that there is a clear correlation between staple food and life expectancy. Eating too much or too little staple food can lead to premature death, and eating too little can even increase the risk of premature death!

Eating too much or too little affects life expectancy

A study published in the world's leading medical journal The Lancet Public Health in 2018 found a U-shaped correlation between overall carbohydrate intake and life expectancy.

Horizontal axis: energy ratio provided by carbohydrates; vertical axis: risk ratio

In this study, researchers tracked the intake trends of 15 dietary factors in 195 countries from 1990 to 2017, and analyzed the mortality and disease incidence rates caused by dietary structure in countries around the world. At the same time, a 25-year follow-up survey of more than 15,000 people in the United States was conducted, and the results found that:

A 50-year-old who follows a moderate carbohydrate diet (50-55% carbohydrates) can live an average of 33.1 years longer. And -

▼Live 4 years longer than people on a very low-carb diet (less than 30% carbohydrates).

▼Live 2.3 years longer than low-carbohydrate people (carbohydrates account for 30% to 40%).

▼Live 1.1 years longer than people with high carbohydrate diet (carbohydrate ratio greater than 65%).

You can understand it this way: if the carbohydrate intake ratio of the food you eat and the energy you consume throughout the day is less than 40% or greater than 70%, the risk of death will increase; those with moderate carbohydrate intake (50%-55%) have the lowest risk of death.

This means that a proper intake of staple foods can help people live longer. Compared with people who eat more staple foods, the less staple foods they eat, the higher their risk of death.

The "Scientific Research Report on Dietary Guidelines for Chinese Residents (2021)" also pointed out the dietary conditions of Chinese people: the problem of dietary imbalance is still prominent, and high-oil and high-salt intake is common.

How to Eat Healthy

The Lancet magazine once published a systematic review and summary of research, using extremely authoritative data to tell us that dietary fiber from whole grains and beans can help people reduce all-cause mortality.

How to eat staple food in a healthy way?

Remember the following three points!

What to eat

The staple food is divided into:

Rice and flour products, such as rice, bread, steamed buns, dumplings, noodles, etc.;

Whole grains and beans, such as oats, black rice, brown rice, buckwheat, mung beans, red beans, black beans, etc.;

Tubers, such as potatoes, taro, sweet potatoes, and yams.

Whole grains contain more natural ingredients than refined grains (see table below).

The essence of eating staple food lies in the combination of coarse and fine grains, such as adding some millet and red beans when steaming rice, and adding a handful of oats when cooking white rice porridge. However, if you eat too much coarse grains, it will affect digestion, increase the burden on the gastrointestinal tract, and cause problems such as bloating and indigestion. Long-term and large-scale consumption will also affect the body's absorption of minerals such as calcium and iron, and reduce the body's immunity.

How much to eat

For healthy adults, it is best to ensure that they consume 250g to 400g of cereals and potatoes every day, which is half a catty to eight taels. People who exercise a lot can increase the amount appropriately. To make it easier for everyone to measure, you can roughly calculate it like this: a full small bowl at home is 3 taels, and a full large bowl of rice is 5 taels.

This is the daily amount, and any high-starch food can be considered a staple food, so the 5-8 liang requirement does not just refer to the rice and flour you eat every day. From a health perspective, it is good for women to eat about 6 liang of staple food a day and men to eat about 8 liang a day.

Image source: Dietary Guidelines for Chinese Residents (2016), please delete if infringed

How to eat

Steaming is the best. In three meals a day, at least one meal should use whole grains, beans and potatoes as staple food.

Image source: Pixabay

It is better to choose staple foods without oil and salt on the table, and use more cooking methods such as fermentation, steaming and boiling. Staple foods that add a lot of oil during processing, such as bread, biscuits, instant noodles, biscuits, etc., as well as fried dough sticks, twisted dough sticks, and pancakes, generally contain a lot of fat. The fat content is 10 to dozens of times that of ordinary steamed bread and rice. Some also contain more harmful trans fatty acids and more salt. Frequently eating these delicious "fancy" staple foods can easily cause excess calories and fat, which is not conducive to the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases.

For the sake of your health, don't go to extremes. Don't not eat staple foods at all, and don't eat a lot at one time. It is most reasonable to control the amount of staple foods within an appropriate range.

References:

[1] Chinese Nutrition Society. Dietary Guidelines for Chinese Residents (2016). Beijing: People's Medical Publishing House, 2016.

[2] Seidelmann SB, Claggett B, Cheng S, et al. Dietary carbohydrate intake and mortality: a prospective cohort study and meta-analysis. Lancet Public Health. 2018;3(9):e419-e428.

[3] Dehghan M, Mente A, Zhang

[4]Reynolds A, Mann J, Cummings J, et al. Carbohydrate quality and human health: a series of systematic reviews and meta-analyses. Lancet. 2019;393(10170):434-445.

[5]Zazpe I, Santiago S, Gea A, et al. Association between a dietary carbohydrate index and cardiovascular disease in the SUN (Seguimiento Universidad de Navarra) Project. Nutr Metab Cardiovasc Dis. 2016;26(11):1048-1056.

Source: Chongqing Tianji Network Co., Ltd.

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