Replace staple food with healthy recipes and eat less polished rice and white noodles

You don’t have to completely give up polished rice and white flour. As long as you replace 1/3 to 1/2 of your daily staple food with whole grains, beans, and potatoes, you can reap the health benefits of stabilizing blood sugar, prolonging satiety, and supplementing B vitamins and dietary fiber. You don’t need to chew hard to swallow whole grains, and ordinary people can persist for a long time without dieting.

In the past two years, I followed the health trend of "completely cutting out polished rice and white noodles" and ate pure brown rice and boiled oats for a week. On the third day, I had acid reflux and even drinking water hurt. I went to the gastroenterologist and found out that my gastric mucosa is thin. The rough skin of whole grains rubs against the stomach wall repeatedly. It would be strange if there is no problem. Nowadays, many people have two extremes in their understanding of staple food replacement: one group regards polished rice and white flour as the "source of all evil" and refuses to touch even half of it; the other group thinks that "it is all carbohydrates anyway, so replacing it is in vain." In fact, both of these views are a bit biased.

It's true that it's useful. During the processing of polished rice and white flour, all the bran and germ are ground away, leaving only pure starch. The glycemic index (GI) can soar to more than 70. After eating, my blood sugar is like a roller coaster, rising and falling quickly. I used to eat two bowls of white rice with side dishes, and within three hours I was so hungry that I was looking for snacks. After switching to some cereals, it was like replacing a fast charge with a slow charge. The same weight of staple food can extend the feeling of fullness for two to three hours. I changed it for half a year, and my habit of eating milk tea and cakes at three o'clock in the afternoon changed without even realizing it. I quietly lost 4 kilograms in weight without deliberately dieting. My mother has type 2 diabetes. In the past, her blood sugar level often soared to 11 after eating white rice. Now she mixes in half of mixed beans and millet every time she cooks, and it is basically stable at around 7 after a meal. Even the doctor praised her for controlling it well.

But it is true that not everyone is suitable for high-ratio replacement. If you have chronic gastritis, peptic ulcer, or are elderly or children with weak digestive function, eating pure whole grains will increase the burden on the gastrointestinal tract. Replacement of 1/3 is enough. If you feel that brown rice is too hard, soak it for two more hours when cooking, or add some pumpkin and sweet potato to cook together. It will taste soft and sweet without any burden. I have a friend who insists on a low-carb diet. He simply replaced 80% of his staple food with high-quality fats and proteins such as avocados and nuts. He said that his energy was much better than before, and he did not suffer from hair loss or aunt disorder. However, he also repeatedly said that this method is not suitable for ordinary people, especially people with gout and renal insufficiency. The purine and plant protein content of miscellaneous beans and whole grains are high. Eating too much will increase the burden on the body. There is really no "standard answer".

There is no need to think that replacing the staple food means having to cook every time. A lazy office worker like me has saved a lot of trouble-free methods: there are vacuum-packed ready-to-eat corn and steamed sweet potatoes in the office drawer all year round. When ordering takeout at noon, pour out half of the white rice delivered and mix it with half a bag of ready-to-eat multigrain rice. The texture will not be too coarse and you don’t have to wash the pot yourself. If you like noodles, you don’t have to eat pure soba noodles. Just grab a handful of buckwheat noodles and cook half and half of ordinary white noodles together. There will be almost no difference in taste, and the rate of raising blood sugar will be greatly reduced. I want to cook rice at home on weekends, so I soak some red beans, kidney beans, and quinoa in advance, and put them in the rice cooker together with the rice. The cooked rice has the aroma of grains. Sometimes I can eat less than half a bowl by mouth.

Someone said to me before, "I changed my staple food for half a month and I haven't lost any weight. Is it an IQ tax?" ”Then you have to look at what side dishes you eat, such as braised pork and full-sugar milk tea for every meal. Even if you eat all whole grains, you won't lose weight. Replacing staple food is just a part of a healthy diet, not a magic pill. You don’t have to calculate too accurately. The grams and proportions have to be measured to the nearest millimeter. Now my eating depends on my mood. If I want to eat white rice today, just eat a spoonful of diced pumpkin that has been steamed in advance and mix it in. When I don’t want to eat rice, I can steam potatoes as my staple food. It will also taste delicious with some cold dishes.

To be honest, healthy eating never requires you to fight your own mouth. You don’t have to swallow things you don’t like to eat for the so-called “correctness”. Even if you only add a bite of corn or a piece of sweet potato to each meal, it is better than eating all polished rice and white noodles. When eating, you must first be happy so that you can persist for a long time.