Balanced diet quotes

All kinds of popular sayings about balanced diet are essentially summaries of experience among specific groups of people and in specific life situations. There is no "universal saying" that can be adapted to everyone and all situations. This is my most realistic feeling after working as a public dietary guide for 6 years and encountering hundreds of cases.

You must have heard the elders at home saying "Eat well in the morning, eat well at noon, and eat less at night" since you were a child, right? My grandma still talks about this. Last month, my cousin worked a 12-hour night shift and didn't get home until 8 a.m.. My grandma chased after her with porridge and said, "You have to eat well in the morning. You are not allowed to eat too much after get off work in the evening." This made my cousin angry, saying that her feet were swollen after standing all night, and she couldn't stand until she was full.

In fact, this sentence is true, but its applicable background is the rhythm of life in the farming society of the previous generation: people work at sunrise and rest at sunset. People do heavy physical work during the day. They must eat enough at noon to have strength, and rest when the sun sets at night. If you eat too much, it will be difficult to digest. Of course, you must eat less. What about now? Doctors and anchors who work shifts, people who have to go to the gym to lift irons at night, or even Internet users who work overtime until 10 o'clock every day, if they dare to only eat two mouthfuls of porridge at night, or if they are so hungry that they bite the sheets in the middle of the night, they may even faint from hypoglycemia.

Not only the old sayings of the elders have boundaries of application, but also the various dietary sayings of Internet celebrities uploaded on the Internet cannot escape this rule. A while ago, I saw a blogger posting a check-in, saying that she strictly followed the principle of a balanced diet of "eating 12 kinds of food and drinking 8 glasses of water every day". As a result, her stomach was bloated and her legs were swollen after sticking to it for half a month. When she went to the hospital for a checkup, she found out that her kidney function was weaker than ordinary people, and she couldn't metabolize it after drinking so much water. In order to make up for 12 kinds of food every time, she forced herself to eat, which put a burden on her intestines and stomach.

Some people must be arguing about this, so "a combination of meat and vegetables, balanced nutrition" is always right, right? This is indeed a very cost-effective choice for ordinary healthy people, but it may not be applicable to vegetarian groups. I have met a teacher who has been a vegetarian for three years. His diet has a high proportion of mushrooms, soy products, and fermented foods. He supplements vitamin B12 and iron as needed. All indicators in his annual physical examination are normal. He is much healthier than many people who eat a lot of fish and meat. Nowadays, there are still many fitness people who believe in "protein first, carbohydrate later", which is a reasonable plan for people who are in the muscle-building period. If you feed this to high school students who have to sit for 10 hours a day to prepare for exams, the carbohydrates will not be enough for the brain. They will make them sleepy in class, which will delay work.

I have encountered an interesting case before. A sophomore in high school was a physical education student. His parents followed the old saying of "one bite of meat and three bites of vegetables" to cook for him every day. As a result, he had cramps every time he ran 1,000 meters. Only after taking a test did he find out that it was because he did not supplement enough carbohydrates and electrolytes. Later, he adjusted his lunch staple food from 1 tael of rice to 3 taels, and added a banana and half a bottle of sports drink after training. Within two weeks, the cramp problem was completely gone. You see, it’s not that the old saying is wrong, it’s just that you haven’t found the right person to apply it to.

In fact, these balanced diet quotes are a bit like the "universal dressing guide" on the Internet, which tells you to "wear a sweatshirt in spring and a windbreaker in autumn." But if you live in the Northeast where it snows in spring, or in Guangzhou where the temperature is still over 30 degrees in autumn, hard-wearing clothes will definitely not be comfortable. There is never a standard answer when it comes to diet. No matter how useful other people's experience is, it is not as reliable as your own eating comfort and normal physical examination indicators. To be honest, if I really want to find a universal quote about balanced diet, I think it would be better to "Don't follow other people's rules, whatever suits you is the best."