Healthy Chinese Food Options

America is sometimes referred to as a fast food nation, which is not an exaggeration at all! Astonishingly, one out of every four Americans eats fast food on a daily basis, and most of the fast food dishes that we tend to consume are Chinese! The food that we generally find at the Chinese restaurants looks tempting and it tastes delicious as well.

It is commonly believed that the Chinese recipes are unhealthy and must be avoided if one is aiming for weight loss. In our opinion, it's not fair as far as the Chinese delicacies are concerned.
When thinking about Chinese food, we tend to imagine only about the deep-fried dishes, heavy meat chucks, and calorie-loaded, sauce-covered noodles! Right?

Well, authentic Chinese food can give a huge blow to this imagination. Actually, there are quite a few healthy Chinese dishes that we clearly neglect. As a matter of fact, you can always order many healthier recipes, without worrying about your health!

The authentic Chinese food, which we were referring to previously, is actually one of the healthiest foods you can have. This cuisine is good for you, if you know what to order! It employs a lot of vegetables and various types of rice, hence, you must always try to capitalize on this point.

Secondly, Chinese food comes in larger serving sizes, hence, you must order smaller meals and ask for extra vegetables (without hesitation)! Well, here are some tips for you to make healthy Chinese food choices.

Most of us believe that the Chinese food is all about healthy lean meats, but we conveniently forget the red meats of pork, beef, lamb, and chicken, which are extremely high in cholesterol and saturated fats. If you just cannot live without that Peking duck, then go for the smaller serving sizes and restrict it to 2 to 3 oz.!

Brown rice contains more than 3.5 gm healthy dietary fibers, while steamed white rice contains 1 gm of it. Fried rice, on the other hand contains 14gm of fats in an 8 oz. serving size! This means, that you'll have to stop consuming fried rice, totally!

The stir fried recipes, which emphasize on steamed noodles (instead of fried noodles) and heaps of vegetables, is a better choice, that takes care of those additional carbs. If you are wondering whether the brown colored noodles are made of brown rice, then let us let you know that those noodles are loaded with the heavy oils, which are used for cooking!

Here is a generalized list of healthy Chinese food choices for you.

Typically, Chinese food has a high sodium content and hence, it is better to avoid any other sources of sodium, like soda and salt, when you consume Chinese foods! Surprisingly, eating with chopsticks actually limits consumption of excessive oils from the foods, than forks or the spoons.

Here is a generalized list which you must try to avoid.

Go for the food recipes which have words like Chu (broiled), Jum (poached), Kow (roasted), Shu (barbecued) mentioned in them.

Foods that are lightly stir fried, dry stir fried and/or braised, can also be included as healthy Chinese food options. It may sound weird at a glance, but you must know what that dish means in Chinese! Anything apart from the previously mentioned dishes including fried, breaded, or coated must strictly be avoided.

As our last friendly advice, we would suggest you to go for the Cantonese cuisine if possible. Most healthy Chinese foodstuff which we have mentioned here actually belong to the Cantonese cuisine. It emphasizes a lot on the healthier cooking methods and also includes lots of vegetables and fresh ingredients.