Jimu news reporter Liu Xun
Correspondent Co-propaganda
February 15, 2022 is the 15th Lantern Festival of the first month, Tangyuan is an absolute "main coffee" food, dominating the hot list of major supermarkets and e-commerce platforms.
In the past few days, Jimu News reporters have visited and found that this year's traditional taste is still "undiminished", but merchants have played new tricks on the filling, such as chocolate filling, blueberry filling, durian filling, cheese filling and other "niche" flavors, which are also loved by young people. Experts remind that eating tangyuan needs to appropriately reduce the intake of staple foods, "sugar friends" blood sugar is unstable, and combined with hypertension, coronary heart disease do not eat.
Chocolate stuffed dumplings
Durian stuffed tangyuan
Three rice balls are equivalent to 2/3 bowl of rice
Cai Honglin, director of the Nutrition Department of Wuhan Union Hospital, said that the most important ingredient of tangyuan is glutinous rice flour, and the calorie of 50g of glutinous rice flour is about 170kcal, which is equivalent to about 300ml of pure milk. And 50g glutinous rice flour can be made into about three medium-sized tangyuan, which is only the "skin", plus a variety of fillings, in addition to the most sugar is a variety of grease, cream, black sesame, peanuts, etc., three tangyuan combined calories are about equivalent to 2/3 bowl of rice, indeed relatively high.
Eating tangyuan healthily, choosing the right tangyuan is the first step. Cai Honglin said that there are fewer homemade tangyuan now, most of them buy pre-packaged quick-frozen tangyuan, then we must pay attention to the ingredient list and nutrition ingredient list on the packaging. First of all, the higher the ingredient list, the more the amount of ingredients used, the public should look at the sugar and oil when purchasing, what ingredients are used, whether the source of the color of the colored tangyuan is natural, etc.; and for the most important calories of gaining weight, the public should take a good look at the nutrition content list.
Don't use tangyuan as an after-dinner dessert or snack
Cai Honglin said that tangyuan is a kind of glutinous rice and sugar-based food, from the classification point of view should be regarded as a staple food, but many people boiled tangyuan as an after-dinner dessert, and some are made into dry eating tangyuan as snacks, so it is easy to overstock, so every 3 medium-sized tangyuan should be reduced accordingly, so that the starch intake can basically be balanced.
For the current popular variety of fancy fillings, Cai Honglin said that not only high sugar, usually also contains more fat, such as sesame peanuts, nut kernels, chocolate, etc. are high-fat raw materials, mixed with fat such as lard, butter or cream, which contains more saturated fat, if you are not careful, it is easy to exceed the standard. As for the dumplings stuffed with bacon, there is more fat and very little to offer.
"Tangyuan is best eaten while hot." Cai Honglin gave advice, glutinous rice flour is easy to form a resistant starch that is not easy to digest after cooling, and the texture of sticky glutinous rice is more compact after cooling, plus a lot of oil, it is difficult to digest, so it is best to eat tangyuan while hot, so that glutinous rice flour is in a gelatinized state, which is easier to digest and absorb.
Do not exceed five healthy people at a time
Tangyuan will have a more obvious peak in blood sugar after eating, Xia Wenfang, an expert in the Department of Endocrinology of Union Hospital, said that for diabetics, Tangyuan is one of the foods that are not recommended, but if the blood sugar is up to standard, you can eat about 3 homemade "healthy Tangyuan" to feast on the mouth, and sugar friends who have bad stomach, high blood pressure, high blood lipids, and coronary heart disease do not touch Tangyuan.
Xia Wenfang suggested that you should not believe in "sugar-free" tangyuan, which is actually a pseudo-concept. Tangyuan is based on glutinous rice, contains more amylopectin, is easily converted into glucose, and has a lot of oil and sugar, even if there is no sugar, tangyuan can also make blood sugar rise rapidly.
"Sugar Friends" can make their own healthy rice balls, and mix and match glutinous rice with coarse grains such as buckwheat flour, oat flour, corn flour, and sorghum flour on the outer skin to reduce calories. In the filling, healthy foods such as fruits, vegetable purees, etc. can be added. When eating tangyuan, you may wish to eat some low-fat and high-fiber foods, such as beans, vegetables, fungi, etc., and then eat tangyuan first, so that the blood sugar reaction will be more stable.
Experts have repeatedly reminded that healthy people occasionally eat a tangyuan without too much entanglement, it is recommended that the best medium size is not more than five; the elderly and children have a weak gastrointestinal tract, eat two or three at a time, do not eat more because of cooking too much for fear of waste. For patients with poor blood sugar control, eating tangyuan is undoubtedly "worse than worse", it is forbidden to eat tangyuan, and it is recommended to monitor blood glucose before and after eating tangyuan.