How to cook healthier Chinese cuisine (Part 1 of 4) - OILS
Jul 31, 2018Hello. Welcome to Foolish Insights. We are the Foolish Couple, Andrew and Minna, nutrition coaches and success mentors. We created FoCo Academy to guide and mentor people like you to achieve true health and healthy relationships through nutrition, exercise, mindset and lifestyle changes.
Over the next few episodes, we are going to look at why Chinese food is not the healthiest and how we can make small changes to make it healthier.
You will learn how the foods you eat everyday is actually causing inflammation in your body, hurting not only your body but also your brain. Many of our foods can lead to Type 2 diabetes, or even Alzheimers.
If you have not heard,
Alzheimers is now known as Type 3 Diabetes for the brain (Tweet this)
Growing up, I always thought that I was one of the luckiest kids that had a stay at home mom who cooked for us every day. She is an amazing cook and she made all three meals for everyone in my family, for me, my brothers and my dad.
What I didn’t realize was that it might have been her cooking that ultimately caused a lot of our family members to develop chronic degenerative diseases. I am not saying that she intentionally did that, (thank goodness she doesn’t listen to our blogs or she would kick my ass). What I am saying is that the foods we grew up with, over the so many years, may have caused our decline in health, not because of her cooking but because of the ingredients. Everything she cooked was delicious, but looking back it may not be the most nutritious food for our bodies.
And it is not just my mom’s cooking. I am referring to all Chinese cuisines in general and how all Chinese families are brought up. After all, we all eat very similar things, I just like to think my mom’s cooking was better.
The first thing to talk about is what we think is the most important factor and is causing major inflammation in our bodies. And that culprit is oil!
In Chinese cooking, oil is almost used in everything we cook.
It doesn’t matter whether we are boiling or braising or frying or steaming, there’s always oil involved. They marinate the meats with oil, they put oil into steamed vegetables to make it shiny and nice.
So if you, like us, want optimal health, you must pay really close attention to the type of oil that you are using. The majority of all Chinese families use vegetable oils, such as corn oil, canola oil, sunflower oil, and shortening. All these oils are highly processed and they share some common traits that are perfect for Chinese cooking. They all can handle high heat, they are perfect for stir fries and deep frying. They also last a long time on the shelf, so you can buy a big bottle and it last forever without going bad.
However, these oils have one major problem. And the problem, is that they are extremely high in Omega 6!
Some of you may say that Omega 6 oils are needed for your body to function properly. That is true. Our bodies need Omega 6 oils along with Omega 3 oils to function properly.
However, the key to Omega 6 and 3 is the balance. The optimal ratio of Omega 6 to Omega 3 oils is 1:1. The maximum level of Omega 6 to Omega 3 ratio should be 3:1. But if you cook with these highly processed oils everyday or if you eat out at a Chinese restaurants, you Omega 6 to Omega 3 ratio is actually a lot higher at about 20:1.
Our body uses Omega oils to start inflammation, and when you have the right ratios of Omega 6s to Omega 3s then your body would do the job perfectly.
But wait, what? I thought we don’t want inflammation!
What exactly is inflammation? If you ever had sore muscles or a sore throat, you know that inflammation can be uncomfortable and sometimes even painful. Normally, inflammation is a sign that your immune system is kicking in to wipe out a virus, heal an injury or destroy bacteria.
For example, when you cut your finger, you will notice that your finger will get puffy around the cut. This is inflammation helping to seal the cut and starting the recovery process. If your blood doesn’t clot, a slight cut could be fatal. It is this inflammatory response from your body that allows the clotting to happen. So yes, we do need a certain amount of inflammation to maintain good health.
But with the Omega 6 to omega 3 ratios out of control, instead of 1:1 to 3:1, most of the Chinese population have a ratio close to 20:1 because of the vegetable oils we are exposed to through our daily Chinese cuisines, whether at home or out at restaurants.
This high ratio of Omega 6 oils causes our bodies to be highly inflamed on a daily basis. Our bodies live in a constant state of over active inflammation which cause our immune systems to freak out. Our immune system goes into a constant fight mode and is unable to perform their proper defense functions.
Over inflamed bodies make us more susceptible to opportunistic bacteria, viruses and even cancer! Being inflamed on a daily basis makes us more likely to get sick!
That’s not what you would want, right?
So what is the solution bring our Omega ratios back to normal? Do we have to stop eating Chinese food? Wow, if I say that to my mom she would probably kill me! So of course there is another solution.
Our solution is to switch out the oils you cook at home with unrefined, natural oils that are high in Omega 3. Omega 3 oils are Anti- inflammatory and have a lot of health benefits.
However, you will have to choose different oils for different cooking styles because different oils have have different levels of heat tolerance. Also, Omega 3 oils do not have a long shelf life and you will need to store them in a cool, dark place, such as your refrigerator or in your pantry.
Examples of unrefined, natural oils are extra virgin olive oil, avocado oil, grass fed butter or coconut oil.
All these oils are very high in Omega 3s. We use Olive oil for sautéing foods, avocado or coconut oils for stir fries and light frying stuff and grass fed butter to fry eggs or for baking.
You will also notice that oils that are high in omega 3 have a distinctive taste and aroma which adds flavor to the dishes you make. Not only would switching your oils make your food healthier, it will also make it tastier!
On the contrary, oils that are high in omega 6 tends to have no taste and no flavor. That is why they are favored in Chinese cooking. However, that is not a good thing because it means that the oils have been deodorized, meaning that the oil has turned rancid or bad and needs to be deodorized. You know what rancid milk smells like, it smells sour and bad or rancid meat, would you eat that? So why would you cook with Rancid oil?
In our next episode, we will talk about the next ingredient that typical Chinese cuisines tends to use too much of and how that can affect our health!
Until then, Love what you live and live what you love
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