TheFittChick Gets The Skinny On Chinese Food…

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Who doesn’t love Chinese food? It is definitely a Sunday staple in our house, and has been since I was little. However, some of us are under the wrong impression that most of the food served in Chinese restaurants are healthy, since there are generous amounts of veggies used to make them.

“Traditional Chinese food is a healthy mix of vegetables and grains. It is usually prepared and cooked with unsaturated oils, and has no use for dairy ingredients such as cream, butter, or cheese. Unfortunately, many of the foods at Chinese restaurants are cooked with dark meats and a lot of oil, so they are loaded with calories, fat, sodium and a lot of sugar.”Don’t let your Chinese dinner sabotage your diet. Egg Foo Yung and Sweet and Sour dishes can have over 1,200 calories per serving, and that’s before you add egg rolls, rice, fortune cookies, and extra sides. The average Chinese food meal has about 3,500 calories, which is more then the average person eats in 2 days…let alone one meal!. It is possible to eat healthy at a Chinese restaurant, provided you follow a few rules to make your meal FittChick “approved.”

Save your waistline with these FittChick tips…

1. Start your meal with a soup. Chinese soups made with clear broths such as wonton soup and hot and sour soup are generally low in calories, yet very filling.
2. pick a meal off the menu that says “steamed” rather than “fried.” A Chinese restaurant is the one place you can count on to steam your food, without added oil and fat.
3. Use chopsticks! They will force you to eat slow and get full faster.
4. If rice is something you can’t live without, make sure its brown. Brown rice is full of fiber, while white rice is just empty calories.
5. Make up your own meal. Ask the cook to prepare exactly what YOU want! You could order using light oil, less salt, no MSG, and/or light sauce.

When TheFittChick goes for Chinese food, I order steamed chicken (or shrimp) and vegetables. Then I add a little salt and soy sauce to make it taste great. I sometimes bring my own sugar-free sweet n’ sour sauce to make it taste amazing! For under 300 calories and around 40 grams of protein, it’s a dinner I could eat every night!