Does soup have the "five sins" and is it junk food?

Chinese people have loved drinking soup since ancient times, but some people have listed five sins of soup: high salt, high purine, high fat, lack of nutrition, and esophageal burns. Can we still drink soup?

Written by reporter Li Li, Photo and text editor Chen Yongjie

New Media Editor/Chen Xuanzhi

Interview experts:

Xiao Zhiyun (Senior Health Manager, Department of Preventive Health Care, Beijing China-Japan Friendship Hospital)

There is a saying in China since ancient times that "it is better to eat without meat than to eat without soup", which shows that drinking soup occupies a very important position in our Chinese diet. Recently, there is a hot topic: Is soup "junk food"?

More and more people are finding that soup is not as "healthy" as we thought, and that long-term stewing may destroy the nutrients of the ingredients. They also listed five sins of soup:

One is high salt. In order to enhance the flavor, a lot of salt is often added to the soup. However, the "Chinese Dietary Nutrition Guidelines" recommends that adults should not consume more than 6g of salt per day.

The second is high purine. For example, the common ingredients in "old-fashioned delicious soup": liver, beef, ox tongue, pork, pigeon, fish, shellfish, beans... These ingredients have a high purine content. After a long time of stewing, most of the purine will dissolve into the soup.

The third is high fat. Pork, beef, mutton and bone marrow all contain a lot of fat, and cooking them into soup will make us "drink" a lot of fat.

Fourth, it has no nutrition. After a long time of stewing, the water-soluble vitamins in it are basically destroyed.

Fifth, it can burn the oral esophagus. Soup tastes better when it is hot, but eating hot food may cause damage to the esophageal epithelium and increase the susceptibility of the esophagus to carcinogens.

Does soup become junk food because of these five sins? Is it really impossible to enjoy soup?

Xiao Zhiyun, a senior health manager at the Department of Preventive Health Care at the China-Japan Friendship Hospital in Beijing, told reporters that soup is neither a must-have for health preservation nor a junk food. In fact, some soups, such as those made with eggs, green vegetables, and tomatoes, do not contain high levels of purine. In addition, high-purine ingredients such as fish, meat, and liver are blanched before cooking, which can reduce the purine content dissolved in the soup to a certain extent.

In fact, different people can choose different soups for how to drink soup healthily. For example, obese people should try not to drink meat soup, bone soup, chicken soup, but can drink duck soup. Hypertension needs to control the salt intake in the diet the most, so whether it is fish soup or meat soup, you need to put less salt, and they should drink light soup with less salt and less oil. Gout patients and people with high uric acid should pay attention to the choice of ingredients when making soup. Gout patients have disordered purine metabolism and should usually avoid taking too much purine from food. Purine is high in meat, seafood and other foods, and it is easy to dissolve into the soup after stewing. Therefore, gout patients should avoid drinking meat soup, fish soup and seafood soup, etc.; instead, they should choose vegetable soup or egg drop soup without meat. Diabetic patients should pay attention to drinking soup, not only to light, less oil and less salt, but also to avoid drinking sweet soup with a lot of sugar. Patients with cholecystitis should control their fat and cholesterol intake. When drinking soup, they must skim off the floating grease in the soup, and thick soup and oily soup must not be drunk.

Secondly, the method of making soup can be improved when making soup. We often think that the longer the soup is boiled, the better it tastes. In this way, not only will the purine in the soup increase, but some nutrients will also be destroyed. Generally, it is appropriate to boil meat soup for about an hour, and the boiling time of vegetable soup should be shortened. When boiling soup, pay attention to adding seasonings reasonably. The longer the soup is boiled, the thicker it will be. Therefore, do not add too much salt, and add salt when it is out of the pot. In the "Dietary Guidelines for Chinese Residents (2016)" (hereinafter referred to as the Guidelines) officially released by the National Health and Family Planning Commission, it is mentioned that adults should not consume more than 6 grams of salt per day, which is equivalent to the size of a beer bottle cap.

In addition, when to drink soup is also important. Some people say "drinking soup before meals makes you slim and healthy", while others say "drinking soup before meals is not good for digestion". In fact, it does not make sense to simply say whether it is healthier to drink soup before or after meals. The key lies in how much soup to drink and what kind of soup to drink. Whether it is before or after meals, for normal people, drinking a small bowl has little effect. Among them, for obese people, drinking soup before meals is helpful for weight control. Just don't drink a lot, otherwise it will inevitably affect digestion. Because foreign studies have shown that drinking soup before meals can reduce the intake of about 15% during meals, and there is some water in the stomach in advance, the food will swell in the stomach, and the feeling of fullness is less likely to make people eat too much. In addition, for people with gastroptosis and insufficient gastric motility, drink less soup before and after meals.

In short, don’t be too superstitious about the health benefits of soup, but don’t reject soup so much that you lose the joy of drinking it.

Produced by: Science Central Kitchen

Produced by: Beijing Science and Technology News | Science Plus Client