Too Much Salt
Salt is habit-forming. New arrivals to China often remark how salty the food is here, then after a few weeks or days even of eating out regularly, the complains trickle down and stop. The food is suddenly not that salty anymore. Why? Simply put, the taste buds have readjusted their threshold for salt. The more salt one gets, the less salty the food tastes. In other words, the more salt (especially plain salt) you eat, the more you will end up needing. I won’t go too much into why here. Safe to say that when cutting back on salt intake, it might make things taste bland for a while, but the body the amazing at readjusting when given a chance.
How to avoid it? Eat home-cooked food as much as possible and use salt very sparingly at home. Eating out? Ask for no MSG and less salt, please. You get strange looks, mumblings about it being buhaochi, but it is your heart and kidneys we need to take care of, yes?
Too Much Oil
Ok, shuizhuyu aside, some dishes really do not need the swimming pool of oil at the bottom of the dish. Oils are great. I am a big fan of oils and fats – of the healthy kind. With restaurants here, they really do like using a lot of oil. This is totally understandable, of course. It makes the food look good and carries flavor molecules to your nostrils better. Now, with recycled gutter oil possibly being used in your meal, it just ups the health risk ante a little more in this country.
What to do? Again, eat at home during the week, bring leftovers to work, and eat out only when you really have to for work or social reasons.
Attributing Everything to Heat vs. Cold Theory of Food
There is nothing wrong with viewing the link between food and health through the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) lens. It does encourage people to diversify food intake and the use of whole foods rather than processed foods. What gets my goat is that sometimes I get people attributing clear-cut medical and scientific causes of certain illnesses to the cold and heat of food.
For example: Food-borne diseases do indeed typically cause symptoms of vomiting and diarrhea. However, some symptoms such as weakness and sore throat can be caused by specific types of food bacteria (or their resulting toxins), too. Most people associate food poisoning with dirty hands, meat, milk and eggs. However, if cooked rice or pasta were to be left out for too long, even if they were well-covered, they could still get a nice colony of Bacillus Cereus growing on them. A surefire way to get a case of nausea and serious vomiting. Watch that innocent sore throat, too. It may not be a case of shanghuo le.
What seems like a simple sore throat could be an easy way to spread the Streptococcus bacteria into food if the handler does not practice good hygiene.
Most cases of food poisoning tend to resolve on their own, but some types need a little extra medical help. Here is more info on food poisoning and what to do.
Olivia Lee is beijingkids’ nutrition columnist. When she’s not working on her next article, baking healthy treats, or having fun with her lovely family, she holds interesting seminars (mini-group sessions) about nutrition from home. Find out more at Olivia’s website, Nutritioneer. This blog post originally appeared on Nutritioneer last November.
