The light meal I bought for 25 yuan is not as good as the spicy hot pot for 12 yuan? Is light meal really worth eating?

Office workers who don't have time to cook must have eaten light meals, right? It looks low in fat and calories, and it is a combination of meat and vegetables, so the nutrition must be doubled! It is really suitable for those who can't eat.

But is light food really worth eating?

We went to two food delivery apps and bought two popular light meals each, and then bought one light meal at a convenience store:

Then I manually picked out the staple food, meat, eggs, vegetables, fruits, and beans of each light meal, weighed them separately, and evaluated their nutritional value. It turned out that there were too many problems, and they were even worse than the spicy hot pot I bought for 12 yuan.

In this article, let’s talk about this: Is light food worth eating?

1. Schrödinger's Energy Before analyzing light meals, let us first understand how much we should eat at each meal and how much we should eat to lose weight.

Based on the daily dietary energy requirement (EER) for adults recommended by the Chinese Dietary Guidelines (2016), and the recommended energy ratio of 3:4:3 for three meals, we calculated how many calories are needed for each meal:

Then, we sorted out the food of each light meal into different categories and estimated their calories, which are as follows:

*Ingredient calories are based on Mint Health. Calorie data for chicken breast and steak are calculated based on cooked weight.

This No. 2 and No. 3 light meal is just like your mom: she tells you that you won’t get fat by eating these, but she keeps picking up food for you.

The actual calories of No. 2 are 30% higher than the labeled calories; and the labeled calories of No. 3 are 486.5Kcal, while the actual calories are 725Kcal, which is almost 50% higher! It's really worse than your mother, who is afraid that you will starve!

Some greedy friends think that the light meals they eat are healthy and low in calories, and they secretly cook for themselves after eating.

After eating like this for a month, I found out...I was getting fatter the more I ate this light food!

In addition to being high in calories, several light meals also have the problem of being low in calories.

For example, No. 1 and No. 5, their calories are far lower than the calories needed for each meal. Eating such light meals for a long time is tantamount to dieting.

If you are a friend who is so hungry that you can’t sleep at night after eating a light meal, you can come to the comment section and give a 1. I believe there will be quite a few of you.

I believe that some of you will say: No problem! I eat light food to lose weight, low calories can help me lose weight quickly!

But losing weight is not just about starving yourself. Some people will binge eat out of revenge after dieting because of hunger; more seriously, it will lead to a decrease in basal metabolic rate, which will become a real:

2. Unbalanced Nutrition In addition to losing weight, there are certainly a large number of friends who choose light meals for balanced nutrition. After all, it looks colorful and has both meat and vegetables, and it feels like you can get all the necessary nutrients in one meal!

But after actual testing, we found that their nutritional value is not as good as we imagined.

The amount of vegetables in these 5 light meals is as follows:

The Dietary Guidelines for Chinese Residents recommend that adults need to eat 100-200g of vegetables per meal. Of the five light meals we bought this time, three did not meet the recommended intake of vegetables.

Some friends like to eat a light meal before or after a big meal, under the pretext of clearing the intestines.

What you thought: I ate a lot of vegetables today, and it was another "smooth" day!

Practical: Only eat half the amount of vegetables you need, and be thankful if you don't get constipated.

If you want to eat enough vegetables, you have to eat at least this much lettuce at every meal...a small takeout box can't even hold it all.

In addition to the insufficient amount of vegetables, the types of vegetables are also very limited. Let's take salad No. 2 as an example. Its vegetable composition is as follows:

The Chinese Dietary Guidelines recommend:

You should eat more than 5 kinds of vegetables every day, and fresh dark leafy vegetables should account for at least 50% of your total vegetable intake.

The only dark vegetables in this light meal are 2 florets of broccoli, which is really pitiful.

In addition to these problems, light meals also generally have problems such as insufficient meat, a single type of meat, and insufficient fruit. For those who often eat light meals, it is recommended to have an apple after a meal to ensure a daily fruit intake~

3. Not to the Chinese palate. Light meals are almost all the same taste, and they are cold food, which is really hard to satisfy our Chinese stomach. Anyway, my colleagues lost their smiles after eating light meals for a month.

In fact, light food is an imported concept. It originally refers to food that is lightly cooked and retains the original flavor of the ingredients. It does not specifically refer to the combination of salad + chicken breast/steak.

To be honest, we have so many Chinese cooking methods: stir-fry, steam, boil, and so many delicious dipping sauces: garlic, spicy, chicken sauce. Steamed sea bass, boiled shrimp, braised lion's head, celery fried beef, Longjing shrimp, asparagus fried shrimp, cold cucumber salad, stir-fried choy sum, can actually be called Chinese light meals.

So many delicious and healthy methods can not only make us eat happier and more comfortably, but also avoid overeating caused by hunger.

Moreover, after vegetables are cooked, their volume becomes smaller and the taste is also sublimated. Raw vegetables that originally took 10 minutes to eat can be happily swallowed in just a few bites after being cooked. You no longer have to eat with a mask of pain!

4. Low cost-effectiveness. Based on my many years of experience in ordering takeout, the cost-effectiveness of light meals is really too low!

We opened the food delivery app and ordered a spicy hot pot with similar configuration to the No. 2 light meal (24.8 yuan), and it only cost 12.1 yuan. We saved more than 12 yuan!

*I am not recommending you to eat Malatang, I am just comparing the prices for reference.

I know some of my friends will say:

You don’t understand! The ingredients of light meals are fresher and cleaner, so it’s understandable that the price is higher.

But if the food doesn't taste good and is hard to stick to, no matter how expensive it is, it won't make you healthier. Choose some cheap vegetables, cook them and eat them. They are cheap and delicious. Isn't it delicious?

In fact, we don’t mean to completely deny light meals. We just want to tell those friends who choose light meals for health and weight loss: you have more choices.

The essence of light meals is a healthy, balanced diet that contains less oil, salt and sugar, so any diet that follows the Chinese Balanced Diet Pagoda can be considered light meals.

If we want to be healthy, we can actually eat like this:

Of course, we understand that for some people who like light food, light meals are their favorite. If you also like to eat light meals, then when eating, remember to pay attention to the following points: