Diet, Nutrition and Hygiene Courseware

First, keep the bottom line of food safety and don’t step into pitfalls. Second, establish a diet structure that can be adhered to for a long time based on your physical condition and living habits. "Long-term implementation" is more useful than any "perfect formula".

Don’t underestimate the bottom-line issue of hygiene. I met Aunt Zhang when I was doing nutrition education in the community last year. She usually eats whole grains with organic vegetables, and even soy sauce has zero added ingredients. But in the summer, she ate cold cucumbers that had been kept in the refrigerator for three days. She was dehydrated and went to the emergency room. It was found out that she had bacterial gastroenteritis caused by cross-contamination. Nowadays, there are two extreme opinions about food hygiene: one is the "sterile health party", which steams tableware for 30 minutes every day, soaks fruits and vegetables for an hour and then rinses them. They wish they could even sterilize the rice before cooking. ； The other school is the school of "you won't get sick if you don't eat it cleanly". It is said that the bacteria at the contact point can nourish the intestinal flora, and you can eat the vegetables that have been dropped on the table. In fact, both sides are a bit extreme. Here is the data from the WHO: 600 million people around the world get sick every year from ingesting contaminated food, 420,000 of which are fatal. The basic bottom line must be adhered to: separate raw and cooked chopping boards, store leftovers at room temperature for no more than 2 hours, refrigerate for no more than 3 days, and freeze for no more than 3 months. These are proven safety standards. But there is no need to over-sterilize. Rinsing fruits and vegetables with normal water is enough to remove most pesticide residues. Soaking food in disinfectants every day may destroy the balance of intestinal flora and even ingest unnecessary chemical residues, which is not worth the gain. Oh, by the way, let me dispel a rumor: Many people say that all overnight vegetables are carcinogenic. In fact, the nitrite content of overnight vegetables stored in low-temperature seals is much lower than that of the pickles you often eat, and the toxic dose is not reached at all. Just don’t heat the green leafy vegetables repeatedly. There is no need to beat them to death.

Having settled the bottom line of hygiene, let’s talk about nutrition that everyone is more concerned about - this is also the hardest hit area with the most confusing opinions now. A while ago, a little girl weighing 165 or 90 pounds came to me for consultation. She said that she strictly followed the "golden diet formula" on the Internet: one punch of rice, two punches of vegetables, and one punch of meat. After half a month of eating, my aunt postponed it for 10 days. After asking, I found out that she still had to run 3 kilometers every day. That little carbohydrate could not support her metabolism at all. There are a lot of controversies about nutritional structure now. For example, low-carb diets and balanced diets have been arguing for several years. In fact, there is no universal standard answer: for people with abdominal obesity and insulin resistance, short-term use of low-carb structures to control weight and stabilize blood sugar is indeed effective. A middle-aged male diabetic I have contacted adjusted to a low-GI carbohydrate + high-protein structure for 3 months, and his fasting blood sugar dropped from 7.8 to 6.1. ； But if you are thin and do a lot of daily exercise, long-term low-carb diet can easily lead to muscle loss and endocrine effects. The little girl just mentioned is a typical example. I added two small spoons of rice to her, and paired it with some coarse grains such as sweet potatoes and corn, and she returned to normal within a month.

To be honest, what bothers me the most is when people ask for "universal recipes". Can you eat the same thing as someone who sits in an office for 8 hours a day and does manual labor at a construction site every day? My mother is 70 years old and her blood pressure is a little high. I asked her to put less salt and eat more spinach and bananas with high potassium content. My friend in his 20s works out every day and sweats a lot, so he needs to add more sodium. There is no recipe that can fit everyone. There are also many people who have eating anxiety. They feel so guilty after drinking a cup of milk tea or eating a barbecue. It is completely unnecessary. I went to eat skewers with my friends last week. Nutrition is based on the long-term average level, not the "perfection" of a certain meal. There used to be a young man who ate boiled vegetables all the time, even adding a little salt, for the sake of health. Within half a year, he developed low blood pressure and lost a lot of his hair. Going to extremes would be much more harmful than eating "junk food" occasionally.

Oh, by the way, there is another question that gets asked a lot: Should I take supplements? Unless pregnant women need to take folic acid supplements, vegetarians need to take B12 supplements, or the doctor clearly says that you are deficient in a certain nutrient, people who eat normally do not need to take supplements at all. I have seen people taking large doses of vitamin C supplements every day and eventually developing stones, which is not worth the gain. You don’t have to be totally against taking out. Choose a merchant with formal qualifications, don’t order from a small workshop that you can’t even find in a physical store. Pair it with some steamed egg whites and stir-fried vegetables. It’s much healthier than cooking instant noodles at home. I often order takeout when I’m busy. The time I save is to walk two more steps, which is better than anything else.

After working in nutrition-related work for five or six years, my biggest feeling is that diet is a part of life. Don’t regard it as a KPI to be completed, and don’t be tied down by various anxiety-mongering internet celebrity statements. There is no need to pursue "health standards" every time. As long as you stick to the bottom line of hygiene, eat comfortably, feel no physical discomfort, and have normal physical examination indicators every year, this is the best diet, nutrition and hygiene.