How to have both delicious food and good health?

In recent years, the country has paid more and more attention to food safety issues. Every year on March 15, some unqualified foods are reported, which is shocking. It is said that "diseases come from the mouth". Indeed, if the food we eat every day is not safe, how can we ensure the health of our body? In fact, it is not only the source of food that affects our health, but also the amount of various foods we consume. Speaking of this, will everyone be very entangled? Can we have both health and delicious food? How can we have both?

The answer is of course yes, it is possible to have both. In fact, it is clear that the food we eat every day has been screened during the long process of human evolution. Those that are not tasty or unhealthy or even poisonous have been eliminated. The food on our table basically tastes good and will not cause obvious harm to the human body.

(Source: Reference 1)

So, if this is the case, why do we still encounter so many health problems and even have calls to promote healthy eating?

There are actually two main reasons:

1. Illegal vendors on the market selling inferior products as good ones and product quality issues

Food quality has always been a highly concerned issue. However, as long as the profit is high enough, some people will take risks to pass off inferior products as good ones. As a result, there will always be various fakes or inferior products.

For example, cod is a common impersonation target. As a fish with high nutrition, good taste and few bones, cod has always been a popular seafood in the market. This gives unscrupulous vendors the urge to counterfeit. They will choose oily fish that looks similar to cod to impersonate cod in order to make huge profits. Oily fish itself contains high levels of wax esters, which cannot be decomposed and absorbed by the human body and easily irritate the intestines and cause diarrhea. Therefore, many countries do not recommend or even prohibit the consumption of oily fish.

There is also clenbuterol, which is an illegal additive in itself, but some farmers add clenbuterol to animal feed to increase the lean meat rate. As a result, clenbuterol enters the human body through diet and affects human health.

2. Imbalanced human intake

Sometimes, even if there is no problem with the quality of food, why do many people still have health problems? One important reason is the problem of unbalanced intake.

There are two factors involved. One is the problem of excessive intake. The calories you eat exceed your consumption, resulting in continuous weight gain. In this case, the best solution is to control your diet and exercise. The second factor is dietary imbalance. Our diet requires a balanced intake of various nutrients. If this balance is disrupted, it will lead to nutritional abnormalities in the body. For example, excessive intake of high-fat and high-sugar foods can easily lead to obesity, and in severe cases, it can even lead to diabetes and cardiovascular diseases.

(Photo source: Internet)

So, how do we deal with these problems?

Personally, I think it can be layered and progressive.

In the case of product quality problems, the most worry-free way is to go to large shopping malls, which generally do a much better job in product quality control. Especially for supermarkets that serve a large number of users, in order to avoid quality problems, quality control is not only done by the manufacturer, but often additional quality control is also added. After all, once a quality problem occurs, it will cause serious social impact.

So for most people, the large shopping malls around are highly recommended.

Of course, there are things to be careful about when shopping in a mall. After all, health is not just a matter of quality, but also a matter of dietary balance.

What is strongly recommended here is the dietary pyramid released by the country. You can refer to the dietary pyramid below to see whether your daily diet is healthy. You can print out this picture and put it in the kitchen, so that you can refer to it when preparing meals.

Of course, if you are too lazy to remember or think it is too complicated, then remember a few principles:

1. Less oil, less salt and less sugar

Many people have probably noticed the use of less oil and less sugar, after all, these are well-known high-calorie ingredients, but many people ignore the use of less salt. One of the common problems in Chinese cuisine is that a lot of various seasonings are used, so many people unknowingly become "heavy taste", but excessive salt intake is actually very bad for health, especially strongly related to high blood pressure. my country's dietary guidelines recommend that each person consume less than 6 grams of salt per day, so everyone should reduce their daily salt intake.

Of course, there is another easily overlooked source of salt, which is soy sauce. Many people also like to use soy sauce to increase the flavor and color, but soy sauce itself actually contains salt, which leads to excessive salt intake even though the salt content is clearly controlled. Therefore, when buying soy sauce, you might as well choose low-salt soy sauce.

2. Eat less red meat and fatty meat, and increase the intake of unsaturated fatty acids.

In fact, traditional meat is somewhat unhealthy. For example, too much fat can easily lead to obesity and other problems. Therefore, don't consume too much.

However, not all meat is bad. For example, meat rich in unsaturated fatty acids, such as salmon, is good. Salmon is a healthy food with high protein and low fat. It is rich in omega-3 unsaturated fatty acids, various vitamins and minerals, astaxanthin, etc., which are very beneficial to health.

The Mediterranean diet has been recommended by many nutritionists in recent years. One of the important aspects is that it recommends eating more fish. The Mediterranean diet has been widely proven to be beneficial to health and can effectively reduce the incidence of age-related diseases such as cardiovascular disease. Therefore, it has become a dietary pattern recommended by many nutritionists [3].

3. Eat more dietary fiber

Many foods produced modernly are refined grains. In fact, these grains lack dietary fiber and can also cause gastrointestinal discomfort. Therefore, we should increase the intake of dietary fiber moderately. For example, eating more vegetables, fruits and whole grains can supplement dietary fiber well.

In fact, for most of us, as long as we choose more reliable large shopping malls and make more reasonable combinations, we can still achieve delicious and healthy food.

1 Andrews, P., and RJ Johnson. "Evolutionary basis for the human diet: consequences for human health." Journal of internal medicine 287.3 (2020): 226-237.

2 Ferguson, Lynnette R. "Meat and cancer." Meat science 84.2 (2010): 308-313.

3 Willett, Walter C. "The Mediterranean diet: science and practice." Public health nutrition 9.1a (2006): 105-110.