Nutrition, Diet and Health Course

The "Nutritional Diet and Health Course" is essentially a practical course that helps ordinary people escape from the traps of food marketing, break misunderstandings about online health care, and establish dietary decision-making logic that suits their own physique and living habits. It is neither a "weight loss recipe package" that can help lose ten pounds, nor a "health lesson" that can replace drugs to treat diseases. The core value is to reduce the cost of your daily diet choices and reduce the "health problems caused by eating" from the root.

I have been a teaching assistant in nutrition courses for 4 years, and I have seen too many students come to class with the mentality of "finding a universal recipe." The one that impressed me the most was a 31-year-old Internet operation girl last year. She followed an Internet celebrity and ate "standard light meals" for three months, which consisted of boiled chicken breast + raw vegetable salad + whole wheat bread every day. She lost 8 pounds. However, my aunt postponed it for 20 days, and her hair fell out one by one. The first thing she asked when she came to class was "Is light food itself an IQ tax?"

The two lecturers in our class had completely different opinions at that time. Teacher Zhang, who was doing clinical nutrition, first tested her blood routine and found that her serum ferritin was only one-third of the normal value. He said that the problem was that the diet was too simple and contained foods rich in heme iron such as red meat and animal blood. I didn’t eat the ingredients at all, plus I always ate raw vegetables. Excessive dietary fiber affected the absorption of minerals. According to the logic of traditional nutrition, as long as one-third of the chicken breasts are replaced with lean beef, animal liver is eaten twice a week, and the salad is replaced with blanched warm vegetables, it can be relieved in two weeks. Teacher Li, who practices traditional Chinese medicine and dietary therapy, felt her pulse and said that she has a weak constitution of the spleen and stomach. Eating ice salad and cold chicken breasts every day is equivalent to pouring cold water on the spleen and stomach. When Yang Qi is depleted, she will naturally have insufficient Qi and blood. In addition to adjusting the food ingredients, she also needs to drink a cup of ginger-date tea every day and avoid ice drinks. Both statements were based on evidence. The girl finally combined the two people's suggestions. Within a month, her aunt became normal and did not regain her weight.

In fact, this is also the most interesting thing about this course: it never has a single "standard answer." The nutrition and diet courses currently on the market have different focuses. Some are oriented toward public health. The core is to explain the "Dietary Guidelines for Chinese Residents" thoroughly. They are suitable for beginners with no basic knowledge. After learning, they will at least understand "how many vegetables and how much meat to eat every day" and will no longer be deceived by low-level rumors such as "eating enzymes to detoxify" and "drinking alkaline water to prevent cancer"; some are oriented toward clinical nutrition and will specifically talk about diabetes. After learning the principles of dietary adjustment for basic diseases such as high blood pressure and gout, many students who have chronic disease patients at home can adjust their own meals for their families, and no longer need to blindly try out "sugar-lowering recipes" compiled by unknown people on the Internet. Others prefer traditional diet therapy and will adjust their diet based on physical syndrome differentiation, which is suitable for sub-healthy people who cannot find organic problems after going to the hospital, but always feel tired, afraid of cold, and prone to flatulence. Of course, some people think that dietary therapy is "metaphysics" and is not supported by large-scale clinical data. This is normal. After all, different people have different needs. Just choose the content that suits you. There is no need to compete with others.

To be honest, what many people gain from taking this course is not "learning how to eat to lose weight" at all, but avoiding a lot of unnecessary money. Last month, a retired Aunt Wang reported to me that she used to follow people in the community to buy "sugar-free health products", such as sugar-free walnut powder and sugar-free protein powder. She spent nearly 20,000, and her blood sugar kept getting higher the more she ate. She only found out after she learned to read the nutritional label in class. Now, those so-called "sugar-free" ones just don't add sucrose. There are 62 grams of carbohydrates in every 100 grams of walnut powder, which raises blood sugar faster than rice. Now when she goes to the supermarket to buy things, she first turns over the ingredient list to look at it, so she will no longer be fooled by sales.

Speaking of controversy, the most frequently asked question in class was "should we give up sugar completely?" Different lecturers have different views on this issue. Some lecturers insist that free sugar has no benefit to the body. If you can't touch it, don't touch it. It is best to completely give up milk tea and cakes. However, some lecturers think that as long as ordinary people control the intake of free sugar to less than 25 grams a day, there will be no problem. Complete abstinence will easily lead to retaliatory overeating, which is not worth the gain. My own experience in teaching students for so long is that there is really no need to turn "healthy eating" into an ascetic life. If you are in a good mood today and want to drink a cup of full-sugar milk tea, just drink it. As long as you don't drink it every day, the impact of that little sugar on the body is far less than the emotional internal friction caused by your fear of getting fat for a long time.

In fact, many people have misunderstandings about this course. They think that they must get a nutritionist certificate to be able to study in vain. In fact, it is completely unnecessary. For ordinary people, they will be able to do this after learning: when ordering takeout, they will know to take more green vegetables, when buying snacks, they will check the ingredient list to see if there are trans fatty acids, if they know that they are cold, they will drink less iced drinks, if they know that their uric acid is high, they will drink less beer and eat seafood, they will not need to compare with others who eats more "healthy", and they will not blame themselves for eating an extra piece of cake. This has already maximized the value of this course.