Nutritious diet recipes

There is no need to memorize complex calorie calculation formulas, and there is no need to worry about the precise proportion of macronutrients. The core of daily nutritious diet suitable for most ordinary Chinese families is the "one punch of staple food (preferably 1/3 is whole grains), two punches of vegetables, one punch of vegetables" recommended by the 2022 edition of the Dietary Guidelines for Chinese Residents. "High-quality protein, a small handful of nuts/200-350g of fresh fruit every day" is the meal plate principle. On this basis, fine-tuning based on age, exercise intensity, and basic physical conditions can cover more than 90% of daily nutritional needs. There is no need to follow the trend and buy customized recipes that often cost hundreds of dollars.

The basic one-day meal I prepare for the ordinary office workers around me who work from 9 to 5 and exercise no more than three times a week basically follows this framework. For example, if a girl weighs about 50-55kg, she can have half a whole wheat bagel + 1 hard-boiled egg + 5 small tomatoes + a 200ml cup of sugar-free soy milk for breakfast. If you are in a hurry, replace the bagel with steamed corn and the soy milk with pure milk, and it can be done in 10 minutes. You don’t have to bring rice for lunch, you can also order takeout: a small bowl of brown rice + a stir-fried green leafy vegetable + a braised beef/pan-fried chicken breast. If you are afraid of oil, just rinse it with water more than once. Don’t order braised or sweet and sour. You can have a lighter meal in the evening, a piece of steamed pumpkin + 6 boiled shrimps + a plate of fried lettuce. If you feel hungry in the afternoon, throw in an orange or 10 almonds. This is basically enough nutrition for the day. My friends around me have been following this diet for more than half a year. The blood lipids and hemoglobin indicators in the physical examination are all within the normal range, and the weight has stabilized by two or three pounds.

Of course, this is a universal basic model. If you have special needs, you will definitely need to adjust it. There are several food schools that are hotly debated on the Internet. In fact, no one is right or wrong, but they are suitable for different groups of people. For example, many fitness bloggers recommend a low-carb, high-fat diet that reduces the proportion of staple food to less than 20% of the total daily intake. Eating more protein and high-quality fats can indeed quickly reduce weight in 1-3 months, and the effect of improving body fat rate is particularly obvious. Several fitness friends around me who are preparing for competitions will eat like this 2 months before the competition, but if ordinary people eat like this for a long time, they will easily suffer from ketoacidosis, hair loss, and aunt disorder. There is no need to suffer this crime. There is also the low-fat and high-carbohydrate diet that was popular in the past, which kept the fat ratio to an extremely low level and consisted of all the staple food including polished rice and white flour. This diet is actually more suitable for endurance athletes such as long-distance runners and triathlons. They need a lot of carbohydrates for energy. Ordinary people who eat this diet will easily have high and low blood sugar levels, and they will become hungry quickly and gain weight easily.

To be honest, I have seen too many people when they first started to engage in nutritional matching, they wished they could change their kitchen into a laboratory and weigh every gram of rice on an electronic scale. It is really unnecessary. I met a mother who just gave birth to a baby a while ago. I heard others say that a vegetarian diet is healthier and she doesn't even touch eggs or milk. She was diagnosed with iron deficiency to the point of dizziness and breathlessness after walking two steps. Later, I adjusted her diet. She ate pork liver twice a week, about 50g each time, and added a cup of pure milk and an egg every day. She recovered in half a month. In fact, a pure vegetarian diet is not impossible, but she needs to supplement B12 and iron, otherwise it is easy to cause problems.

There are also many old people who believe in "drinking bone soup to replenish calcium" and "eating porridge to nourish the stomach". In fact, they are all misunderstandings. 90% of bone soup is fat, and the calcium content is not as good as a cup of 100ml pure milk. On the contrary, drinking too much can lead to high blood lipids.； The glycemic index of porridge is particularly high, especially white porridge. The worse it is cooked, the faster it will raise blood sugar. It is fine for ordinary people to drink, but it is easy for diabetics to have high blood sugar levels. For people with stomach problems, long-term consumption of porridge will degrade the digestive ability of the stomach.

If you have special physical conditions, such as diabetes, gout, or chronic kidney disease, don’t just follow the general recipes online. It’s best to go to the nutrition department of the hospital to find a doctor to customize the recipe. They will make the most suitable recipe for you based on your physical examination report. In fact, there is no standard answer for nutrition. If your stomach feels comfortable after eating, your energy is sufficient, and your annual physical examination indicators are normal, then this is the diet that is most suitable for you.