Three meals a day is a traditional Chinese dietary practice. With fast-paced lifestyles, dinner often becomes a time for family gatherings and communication. Prioritizing dinner is reasonable, but some make it overly lavish, inadvertently overeating and risking excessive calorie intake, which increases obesity and chronic disease risks. Others skip dinner entirely to lose weight. Both approaches are misguided.
1. Eat dinner at home whenever possible. The ideal place for dinner is at home. Homemade meals are more delicious and satisfying than eating out, and more importantly, they can be prepared with less oil, salt, and calories.
2. Keep dinner portions moderate. Dinner should provide 30%–40% of your total daily energy needs. As the saying goes, "Eat well at breakfast, eat your fill at lunch, and eat lightly at dinner."so dinner should be light and easily digestible, eaten at least two hours before bedtime.
3. Make grains the main component of dinner. Include about 125 grams of grains, primarily steamed buns. Porridge is essential, and options like brown rice, millet, whole wheat, or mixed grains are also good choices. These increase satiety and promote gastrointestinal motility.
4. Include about 50 grams of animal-based foods, primarily fish, beef, or lamb, prepared by steaming, simmering, or braising. Alternate with soy products by stewing meat, tofu, and cabbage together for diverse nutrition.The Chinese Dietary Guidelines for Balanced Nutrition (2016) recommend consuming 300–500 grams of vegetables daily, ensuring vegetables are present at every meal. Dark-colored vegetables offer higher nutritional value, so they should constitute half of your vegetable intake.
6. After meals, enjoy a small portion of fruit or nuts. A healthy diet should include "fruit every day." If you lack time or consume insufficient fruit during the day,a moderate amount can be consumed after dinner. Nuts are widely popular; after dinner, while chatting with family, you can enjoy a few cashews or pistachios, or one or two walnuts, but be sure to choose unsalted varieties.
7. Try to get up and move around half an hour after dinner—do some housework or take a walk outdoors. Avoid watching TV after meals. This allows you to enjoy your dinner while maintaining a healthy weight.