Don’t envy the exquisite fat-reducing meals, eight-treasure porridge can also be a weight-loss weapon

Every summer that is about to come, someone will post a high-value fat-reducing meal on WeChat Moments from time to time. Young girls around me sometimes complain to me that they also want to lose weight, but they don’t have the time and energy to make such exquisite weight-reducing meals, which leads to their failure to succeed in weight loss. So I comforted her and said that there is really no need to envy the fat-reducing meals they posted. There are many convenient, healthy and delicious fat-reducing foods in our traditional cuisine, such as multi-grain rice, eight-treasure porridge, etc. As long as it is used properly, the effect is not inferior at all. Compared with multi-grain rice, eight-treasure porridge is a weight-loss weapon that I am more willing to recommend to my friends to try.

Image source: Tuchong Creative

1. Where is the treasure in Eight Treasure Porridge?

Eight Treasure Porridge, also known as Laba Porridge or Monk Porridge. As the name suggests, this porridge includes a variety of ingredients. Traditional Eight Treasure Porridge is usually sweet, and the ingredients are mainly grains and beans such as red beans, kidney beans, coix seeds, purple rice, brown rice, and millet. There is also salty Eight Treasure Porridge, which, in addition to grains, also adds diced tofu, diced carrots, vegetables, minced meat and other ingredients. Lu You has a poem that says, "Today, Buddha porridge is given to each other, and the festival items in Jiangcun are new." It can be seen that for the Chinese, Eight Treasure Porridge is not only a kind of food, but also conveys people's expectations and wishes for a good harvest.

Eight Treasure Porridge is an excellent healthy food because, on the one hand, it achieves food diversification in a simple and convenient way, giving people the opportunity to supplement the B vitamins, minerals and dietary fiber lacking in refined rice and white flour through coarse grains; on the other hand, it can be varied and delicious. As long as you master the core essence of Eight Treasure Porridge - diversification of ingredients and coarse grains as the staple food, you can draw inferences from it and make Eight Treasure Porridge with various effects and flavors suitable for all kinds of people.

For example, if we want to achieve the effect of beauty and skin care, we can focus on adding soybeans, black sesame, wolfberry, red dates, etc. to the eight-treasure porridge. Not only does it taste sweet, it can also regulate estrogen levels and supplement vitamin E, making the skin and hair more beautiful. For another example, if you want to control blood sugar and blood lipids, choose more beans and grains, and don't add sugar when cooking porridge. For example, red beans, mung beans, brown rice, oats, purple rice, etc. These ingredients are slowly digested and absorbed, and have less impact on blood sugar and blood lipids than refined rice and white flour, but be careful not to cook the porridge for too long.

2. Why can Eight Treasure Porridge become a weight loss tool?

In addition to being delicious, eight-treasure porridge is also very suitable as a diet meal, and is very suitable for those who want to lose weight scientifically by adjusting their diet. The main reasons are as follows:

1. The ingredients are diverse and nutritious.

Eight Treasure Porridge has a variety of ingredients, but the main ingredient is coarse grains, including beans and coarse grains. You can also add potatoes, nuts, fruits, etc. This highly diverse combination of ingredients can provide a wealth of nutrients. For friends who need to control the total amount of food intake during weight loss, being able to eat foods rich in nutrients at this time is an important prerequisite for ensuring healthy weight loss.

2. Low in calories and strong satiety

The same weight of eight-treasure porridge, without adding extra sugar, usually has lower calories than white rice porridge. This is mainly due to the fact that the content of dietary fiber, vitamins and minerals in eight-treasure porridge is higher than that of white rice porridge, and the content of carbohydrates is lower.

In addition, compared with the smooth rice porridge, the dietary fiber brought by a large amount of coarse grains can not only make people feel full, but also effectively prolong the chewing time. Chewing slowly can help the brain better receive the "full" signal and control appetite. The stronger feeling of fullness after eating eight-treasure porridge can further inhibit eating behavior and prevent people from getting hungry soon after eating or accidentally overeating.

3. Slow absorption, less impact on blood sugar

The presence of dietary fiber greatly slows down the digestion and absorption of carbohydrates, avoiding rapid and large-scale absorption and storage of energy. It can also effectively slow down the rise in blood sugar after a meal and prevent the large-scale release of insulin that leads to fat synthesis. These two reasons can help us control the stability of blood sugar and blood lipids, thereby achieving the goal of controlling weight.

4. Avoid "rebound" and achieve lasting effect

Among the vitamins and minerals provided by Eight Treasure Porridge, B vitamins and potassium participate in multiple processes of human energy metabolism, helping to maintain normal energy metabolism levels during weight loss. It effectively avoids the rebound dilemma of "eating less but gaining weight" caused by a decrease in metabolic levels due to weight loss.

It seems that this eight-treasure porridge, which is a combination of all kinds of cereals and grains, is really a great tool for weight loss!

3. How to eat Eight Treasure Porridge to maximize the weight loss effect?

Considering that multi-grain rice has less water content and a rough texture, some friends may find it difficult to accept. Therefore, I prefer to recommend eight-treasure porridge, which has a high water content and a soft texture after cooking, as the staple food during weight loss. So, how to maximize the weight loss effect of eight-treasure porridge?

1. No sugar or less sugar

Avoid adding honey or sugar to eight-treasure porridge for flavoring to prevent excessive intake of refined sugars and affect weight loss. According to the recommendations of the Dietary Guidelines for Chinese Residents (2022), it is best for adults to control their daily intake of added sugars to less than 25 grams. Considering that added sugar is unavoidable in our daily diet, especially in pre-packaged foods, it is a wise choice to avoid adding sugar when making homemade food. If you really can't get used to light porridge, you can add a few red dates, raisins, or cut a few pieces of snow pears to enrich the taste with the sweetness of natural foods.

2. Soak grains and beans in advance

Because grains and beans are less processed, they are harder to cook than white rice. If the cooked eight-treasure porridge is too hard and rough, it will make people lose their appetite and even difficult to swallow, and naturally it will not have any weight loss effect. Therefore, it is recommended that you wash and soak the grains and beans with clean water a few hours in advance, let the grains and beans absorb water, and then use a pressure cooker to cook the porridge, you can easily get delicious and sweet eight-treasure porridge.

It should be noted that you don’t need to cook the eight-treasure porridge too soft or cook it for a long time for the next meal if you can’t finish it in one meal. This is because the grains are easier to cook after being soaked. Cooking for a long time will make the grains more gelatinized, and the digestion and absorption speed will be faster, so the blood sugar will rise faster after eating. At the same time, it is recommended that if the grain porridge is cooked too soft, you can add more high-fiber foods such as fresh vegetables, or high-protein foods such as lean meat, eggs, milk and beans to balance the overall blood sugar response after eating this meal.

3. Add more water

If you want to improve the weight loss effect, you can increase the water content of the eight-treasure porridge and reduce the dry goods. But be careful not to add too much water, otherwise the porridge will be "water and rice separated" and it will be difficult to stimulate appetite.

4. You can add vegetables and potatoes appropriately

Referring to the method of making salty eight-treasure porridge, you can add some hard-boiled vegetables, such as tender beans, carrots, mushrooms, and potatoes. On the one hand, adding vegetables and potatoes can make the eight-treasure porridge more nutritious; on the other hand, the addition of these fiber-rich vegetables and potatoes can replace some dry goods, thereby further reducing the calories of the eight-treasure porridge, while not affecting the original sense of fullness.

In short, as long as you choose the right ingredients and don't add sugar, eight-treasure porridge is really a very healthy and nutritious weight loss food. I believe that you, like me, will gradually find the taste of white rice porridge bland after tasting the natural fragrance brought by whole grains for a period of time, and then develop the habit of eating whole grains.

The article is produced by Science Popularization China-Starry Sky Project (Creation and Cultivation). Please indicate the source when reprinting.

Author: Wang Lu, Chinese registered dietitian, Master of Public Health, Peking University Reviewer: Xue Qingxin, the first nutrition instructor of the National Health Commission, Chinese registered dietitian