[]As a city of great food and cuisine in the world, Hong Kong provides lots of options for eating out - a favourite relaxing and socialising activity for many Hong Kong people. Eating out also gives cooking housewives a break and those people with limited cooking skills an opportunity to taste various dishes. However, when you choose restaurant dishes, do you only focus on the appearance, smell and taste of the food, but ignore the importance of having a healthy and balanced diet?
Health Alert
Compared with home-cooked foods, restaurant meals are often higher in fat, sugar and salt, as well as served in larger portions. Thus, regularly eating unhealthy energy-dense meals in fast food restaurants or cha charn ting may increase the risk of overweight and obesity.
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Practical Tips for Eating Out
Eating out is not necessarily unhealthy. Practising the same guidelines as home-cooked meals would ensure that eating out provides nutritional benefits. The following are some suggestions on food options and eating behaviours when dining at restaurants.
Food options
[A picture showing a balanced meal, taking the food pyramid as reference, which provides grains and cereals, vegetables and meat in the ratio of 3:2:1 by volume.]
- Choose a balanced meal, taking the food pyramid as reference. Among the food you choose, the most should be grains, followed by vegetables and the least should be meat. They should be in a ratio of 3:2:1 by volume.
- Choose dishes with low-fat ingredients, such as lean meat, skinless poultry or non-fried soybean products that are prepared by low-fat cooking methods like steaming, boiling in soup, grilling or stir-frying with small amount of oil.
- Choose less food that are relatively high in salt, such as ham, bacon, sausages, salted fish, salted eggs or pickled vegetables.
- Be cautious of additional sources of salt and oil to the dishes, such as table salt, chilli oil, oyster sauce, soy sauce and gravy.
- Boost up vegetables intake. Apart from ordering a dish of green salad or boiled vegetables, it is good to choose dishes that use vegetables as the main ingredients with small amount of meat, such as stir-fried celery with chicken meat or stir-fried beef with assorted capsicums.
- Choose fruit or fruit-based options as dessert.
- Choose water, Chinese tea or clear soup as the drink of first choice.
Eating behaviour
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- Order the right amount of food.
- Ask restaurants to serve sauces and sugar separately.
- Ask for change if the food or drink is too oily, salty or sweet.
- Eat slowly, allowing at least 20 minutes to finish your meal.
- Eat to 70-80% full.
- Feel no pressing need to finish the remaining food if full. You can save up and take away the food while observing proper food safety and hygiene.
When eating out