[Celebrate the New Year in Health] How to eat healthily and recover your strength as quickly as possible during the recovery period of COVID-19?

As the first Spring Festival after the implementation of "Class B and Class B Management" for COVID-19 infection, going home to gather with relatives and friends and having a big meal has become the main theme of this year's Spring Festival. However, many people are in the infection period or the recovery period after the COVID-19 turns negative, and after the infection, their appetite decreases and they experience bitter taste in the mouth and decreased digestive ability, making it difficult to supplement nutrition according to their usual eating habits. Therefore, how to eat healthily during the recovery period, restore physical strength as soon as possible, and achieve a healthy New Year is a question of concern to everyone. In this regard, the editor has sorted out the relevant content and gives the following answers.

How to eat this Spring Festival?

For those who can eat normally, it is generally recommended that they should follow the basic requirements of the Dietary Guidelines for Chinese Residents (2022) (Figure 1) after "Yang Kang" and do the following:

1. Maintain food diversity (more than 12 kinds of food per day, more than 25 kinds of food per week), maintain good eating habits, arrange three meals a day or small meals, and eat regularly at regular times and quantities.

2. Food should be soft and easy to chew, swallow and digest. If necessary, a blender can be used to prepare a homogenized meal. Avoid fried, greasy, sweet, spicy and other foods and condiments.

3. Provide appropriate energy and maintain moderate physical activity; try to achieve and maintain a healthy body mass, maintain a reasonable body fat and waist circumference; maintain moderate physical activity; avoid large fluctuations in body mass in the short term.

Cereals and potatoes are rich in carbohydrates, which are the most important energy source for the human body and have the function of protecting protein. Try to match coarse and fine grains, and there should be more than 3 types. Whole grains include purple rice, millet, rhubarb rice, black rice, brown rice, oats, etc., which are rich in B vitamins and fatty acids and more nutritious; beans include red beans, mung beans, peas, broad beans, kidney beans, etc.; potatoes include sweet potatoes, potatoes, purple potatoes, etc., which help to take in sufficient dietary fiber, prevent constipation, and maintain intestinal health.

Recommended intake: 250-400 g/d.

4. Ensure adequate intake of high-quality protein. Infants and young children should ensure adequate milk intake, and children, adults and pregnant patients should appropriately increase the intake of foods rich in high-quality protein, preferably fish, poultry, eggs, lean meat, milk, soybeans and their products, etc. If necessary, protein supplements can be taken as an auxiliary, and the intake of processed meats such as fat, smoked and pickled meats and animal oils should be avoided as much as possible.

Recommended intake: Animal high-quality protein, 150-200 g/d. Eggs, 1 egg per day. Milk 300 g/d. Soybeans about 10 g/d.

5. Ensure adequate intake of fresh vegetables and fruits. Eat vegetables at every meal, with dark vegetables as the main ingredient. Eat fresh fruits or drink freshly squeezed juice every day, and avoid replacing them with fruit drinks.

Recommended intake: more than 500 g/d of vegetables and 200-350 g/d of fruits.

6. Ensure adequate drinking water. Try to choose boiled water or light tea, and do not drink or drink less sugary drinks. Avoid drinking alcohol. Drink water regularly in small amounts and multiple times. In addition to boiled water, you can also choose light tea, such as black tea, green tea, white tea, jasmine tea, oolong tea, Pu'er tea, etc. In addition, vegetable soup, fish soup and chicken soup not only promote appetite but also help fight influenza viruses, which are also good choices. Drinking water should follow the principle of small amounts, multiple times, and drinking slowly. Don't wait until you are thirsty to drink water. In addition, use less salt when making soup, and skim off the grease on the chicken soup before drinking it.

Recommended intake: 1500-2000 ml/d for adults. Children’s intake varies according to age and gender. 2-3 years old: 600-700 ml/d, 4 years old ≤ age < 5 years old: 700-800 ml/d, 5 years old ≤ age < 7 years old: about 800 ml/d, 7-10 years old: about 1000 ml/d, 11-13 years old boys: 1300 ml/d, girls: 1100 ml/d, 14-17 years old boys: 1400 ml/d, girls: 1200 ml/d.

Figure 1 Balanced Diet Pagoda for Chinese Residents (2022)

For patients with poor appetite, insufficient food intake, and elderly patients who have recovered and been discharged from the hospital, they can continue to take oral nutritional supplements (including special medical purpose formula foods or oral enteral nutrition preparations) for nutritional supplementation.

Dysbacteriosis often occurs after infection, especially after bacterial infection is treated with antibiotics. Therefore, on the basis of ensuring a reasonable diet, attention should be paid to supplementing probiotics to improve intestinal microecology, and nutritional status and metabolic indicators should be monitored during routine follow-up in the clinical nutrition department's outpatient clinic.

Eat well, get well quickly

1. No need to over-supplement

Professor Yu Kang, director of the Department of Clinical Nutrition at Peking Union Medical College Hospital, answered the question of whether tonic food is needed at the press conference of the Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism of the State Council. He pointed out that after recovery, nutritional management is still needed to improve nutritional status, accelerate recovery, reduce the risk of recurrence (reinfection), and improve the quality of life.

However, you should not rush into nutritional supplements, nor should you overeat or binge. After "Yang Kang", it takes a certain amount of time for gastrointestinal function to recover (it varies from person to person). Excessive supplementation will not only make it difficult to achieve the goal of nutritional supplementation, but will also increase the risk of gastrointestinal intolerance. You must follow the principle of gradual progress, that is, steadily advance from less to more, and pay attention to observe the gastrointestinal reactions after eating different foods.

2. Scientific supplementation can help

Professor Yu Kang pointed out that protein supplementation is crucial for recovery after infection. Protein intake should be increased compared to daily intake, but not excessively. The increase should be 20% to 30%, and should not exceed 50% of the usual intake. Specific methods include:

(1) Increase the intake of high-quality protein, such as milk, eggs, lean meat, aquatic products, etc. You can also supplement with tofu and its products. If the food intake is less than before the infection, or if the appetite is poor, you can choose to supplement with protein supplements on top of meals.

(2) It is recommended that protein supplementation should be evenly distributed in the three meals of breakfast, lunch and dinner. Some "Yangkang" people have relatively rich dinners or lunches, but the intake of high-quality protein in breakfast is relatively small, which may lead to unbalanced protein synthesis.

(3) Protein-rich foods are often animal foods. When increasing protein intake, we should avoid excessive fat intake. Therefore, we should try to choose high-protein, low-fat foods, such as egg white, low-fat or skim milk, steamed fish, and tenderloin. For those who are sensitive to protein intake and have renal insufficiency, they should be supplemented under the guidance of a professional doctor and should not be supplemented blindly or excessively.

In addition, the supplementation of micronutrients also plays a key role in the recovery process after Yang Kang. Including vitamins and minerals, you can supplement multivitamin and mineral preparations on the basis of meals, under the advice of doctors or nutritionists. Studies have shown that multi-supplementation is more effective than single supplementation. At the same time, if necessary, you can pay attention to the supplementation of vitamin C, vitamin D and complex B vitamins on the basis of multi-supplementation.

References

[1] Kang Junren, Yu Kang, Liu Yanping, et al. Expert recommendations on nutritional support for patients infected with novel coronavirus (2023) [J]. Journal of Peking Union Medical College, 2023, 14: (11): 75-80.

[2] Chen Wei. Reasonable nutrition helps rapid recovery from COVID-19 infection (Part 1) [EB/OL]. 2022-12-28.