Many people don’t realize that they eat too much fat. To make the dishes more tasty, the chefs use a lot of oil, which gives the dishes a better texture, color, smell and flavor. But these 10 common dishes are so “oil-absorbing” that even heart doctors never touch them.
For better health, try to limit the amount of food that you eat from these categories:
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Fried eggplant Eggplant
This dish is a good source of protein, iron, calcium, and vitamin P, which can help protect blood vessels and lower cholesterol. It’s a great food for people with heart problems. But frying eggplant is the worst way to eat it. Eggplant is like a sponge that soaks up oil. A plate of fried eggplant with thick sauce can absorb about 40 grams of oil. Not to mention, frying eggplant at high temperature and for a long time destroys most of its nutrients. Eggplant loses 36% of its vitamin C when fried in oil for 5 to 10 minutes. And if the temperature reaches 250°C, it can also produce a lot of harmful substances, such as benzopyrene, volatile nitrosamines, heterocyclic amines, and other known cancer-causing agents.
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Di San Xian
Di San Xian is a “vegetarian dish” made of potatoes, eggplants, and green peppers that are deep-fried. But after deep-frying, it has more oil than a bowl of fatty braised pork, and it also loses a lot of nutrients: potatoes, eggplants, and green peppers all have inorganic salt – potassium, which is greatly reduced after high-temperature deep-frying; green peppers and potatoes also have a lot of vitamin C, but they are almost gone after deep-frying.
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Dry-fried green beans
Dry-fried green beans may not seem related to excessive oil, but to make them, you need to fry the green beans until they have a “tiger skin” pattern. This not only adds a lot of calories, but also reduces the B vitamins, vitamin C, and other nutrients. And it may also be risky for your health. Because when deep-frying, the green beans may be burnt on the outside and raw on the inside, and the cyanide in them may not evaporate during high-temperature cooking, which may lead to food poisoning.
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Spicy shredded potato
To make this dish, you usually need to cut the potatoes into shreds, wash off the starch with water, drain them, and then fry them in hot oil at 200°C until they are golden and crispy, and then stir-fry them with some oil. The shredded potatoes lose a lot of nutrients such as vitamin C, potassium, magnesium, etc. after being washed with water. After high-temperature frying, there are few nutrients left. And after frying, each potato shred is coated with oil, making this dish a calorie “bomb”. Moreover, starchy foods that are cut too finely will produce a lot of acrylamide, which is an internationally recognized carcinogen, when fried at high temperatures.
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Fried lotus root cake
Lotus root is a healthy ingredient, but it has a starch content similar to potatoes, and it needs to be dipped in batter and deep-fried, absorbing a lot of oil, which is really bad for your health if you eat too much. Besides, lotus root cake will also produce acrylamide and other carcinogens during the frying process, which can easily cause cancer.
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Sweet and sour pork, squirrel fish
Sweet and sour pork is a high-sugar, high-oil dish. The pork loin absorbs a lot of oil after being deep-fried, and then it is coated with a lot of sugar in the sauce. Squirrel fish may look and taste good, but it is also very oily. It is coated with starch and deep-fried, which makes it lose a lot of nutrients and absorbs a lot of oil. It is not a healthy dish to order, it is better to choose steamed fish instead.
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Dry pot dishes
Dry pot dishes are very common in Chinese restaurants. Dry pot baby cabbage, dry pot thousand-layer tofu, dry pot cabbage, these are some of the examples. But to make them “spicy and fragrant”, most of the ingredients have to go through the “over-oil” process, which reduces the vitamin content and increases the oil content. Also, because dry pot dishes are usually kept on the heat, most of the oil will be soaked up by the vegetables. When eating dry pot dishes, it is best to stir them often with a wooden spatula, and limit the heating time to half an hour, eat them quickly and then turn off the heat.
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Boiled pork, boiled fish
Boiled fish and boiled pork are two of the most common “boiled dishes” we order, but actually, they are not really boiled, they are “oil-boiled”. There is oil on the top and water on the bottom, but when you pick up the meat, the oil on the top will stick to the meat and vegetables, which is very unhealthy. Moreover, the salt level in boiled fish is way too high, and eating too much can make you feel anxious, raise your blood pressure, and damage your blood vessels.
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Roasted fish
Most of the roasted fish in restaurants are first deep-fried and then roasted. But frying destroys the omega-3 fatty acids (a kind of unsaturated fatty acid, good for heart health), and it may also create carcinogens in the process. Studies show that eating fried fish, pan-fried fish, etc., not only has no benefit for heart health, but may even be harmful. The truly healthy roasted fish does not use any cooking oil, but just wrap it in aluminum foil and bake it in the oven. If you don’t have an oven at home, you can make steamed fish.
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Guo Bao Rou
Guo Bao Rou is a Northeastern-style dish, made by marinating pork loin slices, coating them with starch, egg, and sweet and sour sauce, frying them once in warm oil, and then frying them again in high-temperature oil until crispy. This dish is very oily, as the pot has to be filled with oil several times.