With feasting a traditional feature of the Lunar New Year holiday, a dietician at New Taipei City Hospital’s Chung Hsin Branch encouraged people to follow six principles designed by the Ministry of Health and Welfare to create healthy and balanced meals.
This year’s Lunar New Year holiday begins on Feb. 9.
Dietician Hsu Pei-li (徐裴莉) said many people are worried that they will eat too much over the holiday and lose control over their body weight, so she encourages people to remember the ministry’s six principles introduced along with the “my meal plate” for promoting healthy and nutritionally balanced meals.
Photo courtesy of New Taipei City Hospital Chung Hsin Branch’s Department of Dietetics and Nutrition
The Health Promotion Administration in 2018 published the “my meal plate” illustration to demonstrate what an ideal meal — including the proportions of six food groups — would look like as suggested by the Dietary Guideline of Taiwan.
The first principle is to eat “about the same amount of rice as vegetables,” Hsu said, adding that “rice” means starchy foods (or carbohydrates), including whole grains, rice, noodles, pastry and starchy vegetables such as taro, pumpkin, sweet potato and corn, and as people often easily overeat this type of food, eating them with vegetables could help them feel full and prevent overeating.
Second, “eat a little bit more vegetables than fruit,” Hsu said, adding that vegetables are rich in dietary fiber, vitamins and minerals. People should consume about 1.5 times the size of their fist each meal, she said, adding that this is beneficial for controlling body weight, lowering cholesterol and preventing blood sugar spikes and constipation.
Hsu said the third principle is to “eat fruit about the size of a fist” at each meal and only about twice a day, as fruit usually has a higher amount of natural sugar and calories compared with most vegetables, and people with diabetes should especially be mindful of the portion sizes.
Fourth, “eat about a palm-size serving for beans, fish, eggs and meat” per meal, she said, adding that people often eat too much protein-rich foods — meat, seafood, eggs and bean products — during feasts, foods that are often high in fat or cooked in ways that absorb more oil, so she suggested only eating a palm-size serving per meal, apply low-fat cooking methods, such as steaming, baking, broiling or poaching, and choose more low-fat ingredients such as tofu and fresh fish.
The fifth principle is “eat one teaspoon of nuts” per day, and as some nut-containing desserts — such as peanut brittle, caramelized nut tart, walnut cookies, almond tuiles and crispy sesame rice — have added sugar or oil in them, people should limit the amount they consume during the holiday, Hsu said.
The final principle is “one cup of milk in the morning and one at night,” she said, recommending that people drink a cup of milk (240ml) every morning and night to increase their calcium intake and keep their bones healthy. She recommended sugar-free yogurt, cheese and other dairy products as alternatives.
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