Don’t know how many dishes to buy for dinner? This article will help you calculate!

"Not wanting to eat breakfast or eating casually, having a simple lunch outside, and eating a crazy dinner at home" is the current situation of three meals a day for many students and office workers.

Nowadays, most families attach great importance to dinner, because this meal not only allows every family member to eat the dishes they want, but also is a happy moment for the family. How can such a good time and beautiful scenery be without delicious food and wine.

For dinner, we currently have two extreme phenomena, one is eating more, and the other is not eating dinner. We should treat both phenomena correctly, otherwise it will affect our health. Eating too much or too greasy food will lead to obesity, affect blood sugar control, and increase the burden on the gastrointestinal tract. If you don't eat dinner for a long time, hunger may affect your sleep, cause hypoglycemia, and even induce diseases such as gastritis and gastric ulcers.

So how should we eat dinner? And how much can we eat? Let's do the math!

1. Based on the "Dietary Guidelines for Chinese Residents (2022)", our dinner accounts for 30%-35% of the energy and nutrients of the day, including 4-5 kinds of food, and it is best to consume it between 18:00 and 20:00. The specific intake of different types of food can be evenly distributed to dinner according to the food in Table 1.

2. Regarding vegetables, considering that we consume less vegetables for breakfast, our daily vegetable intake is 300-500 grams. We might as well purchase about 250 grams of vegetables per person for dinner. A family of four can buy 2-3 kinds of vegetables (about 1-1.5 pounds) and cook dishes with two kinds of vegetables.

3. For meat dishes, we may purchase two for breakfast, one is livestock and poultry meat (such as pork, beef, chicken, etc.), and the other is fish and shrimp, and cook two meat dishes. For the quantity of meat dishes, we can purchase 1/2 of the quantity of meat dishes in Table 1.

4. Staple food is an indispensable food for our dinner. Basically, 1-1.5 bowls per person can meet the needs of dinner. We should pay attention to adding some grains when steaming rice, about 1/3 of the amount. If our vegetables of the day include potatoes, yams, and taro, we can appropriately reduce the intake of rice or steamed buns. In addition, we can also steam corn, sweet potatoes, purple sweet potatoes, etc., to replace part of the rice or steamed buns as staple food, half a corn or a purple sweet potato per person.

5. In addition, we can also make a lighter soup such as vegetable and mushroom soup, seaweed egg soup, tomato egg soup, etc., with a small bowl for each person.

6. For cooking oil, we basically use 3 tablespoons per person per day. Considering that breakfast uses less oil, we can cook 1-1.5 tablespoons per person for dinner. In order to reduce the amount of cooking oil, we can choose more cooking methods such as steaming, boiling, and stir-frying, and use less oil for frying.

7. If we do not consume fruit or milk during the day, we can consume about 200 grams of fruit or a glass of about 300 ml of milk some time after dinner.

If you know the amount of food each person eats, you can cook without panic and avoid taking in too much energy. Of course, for food intake at different ages and under different disease conditions, we can go to the hospital's clinical nutrition department to consult a nutritionist in detail.

References:

[1] The picture is from the Internet.

[2] Chinese Nutrition Society. Dietary Guidelines for Chinese Residents (2022).

Author: Niu Yang

Instructors: Feng Yi, Tang Qingya

Department of Clinical Nutrition, Xinhua Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine

Project source: Shanghai Health Science Popularization Youth Talent Project (JKKPYC-2022-06)