Are food scraps healthy? Food lovers, read this

Faced with the problem of "food scraps sold cheaply" being popular among consumers online, many media friends recently came to consult me. I gave the following answer from the perspective of nutrition and health.

Hot-selling "leftover snacks" on the Internet

First of all, food scraps, as long as they are made from qualified ingredients and produced through normal processing techniques, can be sold and eaten as food.

For example, the nutritional value of a biscuit does not differ from that of a whole biscuit just because it is crushed; and the nutritional value of a cake does not lose its nutritional value just because a side is cut off. Fish and meat also produce scraps during processing and trimming. In supermarkets, you can see the scraps of salmon when they are trimmed, as well as minced meat when ham and beef are trimmed. As long as they are fresh enough, they are all natural ingredients, but they are not so good-looking in appearance, and there is no essential difference in nutritional health. Buy them home in time, chop them up and use them for cooking or fried rice, which is also a delicious dish.

Salmon scraps on takeaway platforms

Secondly,

Buy food scraps,

There's nothing wrong with that.

Since food scraps are always produced during production, using them can reduce food waste for environmental resources, reduce economic losses for food companies, and save money for consumers who love to eat these foods. I remember when I was in college, I also bought "snack scraps", which were some crushed cakes, which actually belonged to this kind of food scraps. Eliminating "waste on the table" is a virtue.

third,

Regarding the management of food scraps,

It is not standardized yet.

Since it is a type of food, although it cannot be completely managed as pre-packaged food, the relevant departments should include it in the management method of bulk food and provide consumers with as much information as possible. On the packaging of pre-packaged food, consumers can see important information such as the manufacturer and contact information, production date and shelf life, ingredient list and nutritional composition table. Bulk food does not have this information. It is weighed or divided into small packages by the seller, but the manufacturer, production date, ingredients and other information should be indicated on the packaging of large packages. Distribution stores should also inform consumers when the product was shipped from the factory, which manufacturer produced it, which product it is, how many days it can be stored, what the storage conditions are, etc.

Fourth, when consumers purchase food scraps, they should also keep their eyes open and judge the quality of the product.

Check whether there are signs of insects or mold, whether the smell is fresh, whether there is any odor of wormwood caused by fat oxidation, etc. Since food scraps are not packaged and are already broken up, they are more likely to come into contact with oxygen in the air. In theory, the shelf life will be shorter than that of intact packaged products. To a large extent, consumers have to bear the food safety risks themselves.

Finally, although food scraps are relatively cheap, if they are the crumbs of products such as biscuits, snacks, and candies, they are high in calories, fat, and sugar, and their nutritional value is not ideal.

Even if the edges of the cake are not covered with cream, the cake itself contains a lot of fat and sugar, plus flour, and it is not a food that can be enjoyed in large quantities at will. If you indulge yourself in eating these food scraps every day because they are cheap, it will not be good for controlling blood sugar, blood lipids and body fat.

Source: Popular Science Times

Author: Fan Zhihong, Director of the Chinese Nutrition Society, Associate Professor of the Department of Nutrition and Health, China Agricultural University

Editor: Mao Mengnan

Review: Wang Fei

Final judge: Chen Lei