If you want to attain or maintain a healthy weight without cutting calories, consider a traditional Chinese diet. A Chinese diet may protect you from chronic diseases, including diabetes. A Chinese diet focuses on vegetables, grains and lean protein. The Chinese diet, practiced for centuries, differs from the fare common to Chinese-style restaurants in the United States.
Vegetables
A traditional Chinese diet includes a lot of complex carbohydrates from vegetables. You can obtain important nutrition from vegetables, including calcium, iron, vitamin C and beta-carotene. Vegetables high in calcium include broccoli, bok choy, collards and leafy greens. Vegetable sources of iron on a Chinese diet include soybeans, black beans, tofu and spinach. Broccoli, baked potatoes with skins, red pepper and green pepper contain vitamin C. Carrots contain beta-carotene, a factor in skin and eye health.
Grains
A traditional Chinese diet also includes white rice, a refined carbohydrate. Refined carbohydrates contain less fiber than complex carbohydrates and elevate your blood sugar levels. If you follow a strict Chinese diet, this may not prove important -- all the vegetables will counteract the effects. Still, you could improve a Chinese diet by using brown rice. Eating brown rice instead of white could reduce your risk of type 2 diabetes, according to a study published in the "Archives of Internal Medicine" in June 2010. Qi Sun and colleagues at Harvard School of Public Health examined the diets of 39,765 men and 157,463 women and found that persons who ate brown rice instead of white suffered from fewer chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes.
Protein and Fiber
A traditional Chinese diet includes 10 percent as much protein as do American diets, and only 10.8 percent of that protein comes from animal sources, according to a study of eating patterns and incidences of chronic, degenerative diseases among more than 6,500 persons living in 65 rural Chinese counties. The 20-year study, led by T. Colin Campbell, a researcher at Cornell University, also found that a traditional Chinese diet contains three times as much fiber as a typical western according to the report published in the "American Journal of Clinical Nutrition" in May 1994. Protein sources include tofu and other soybean products, black beans, chicken, beef, soup broth and seafood.
Considerations
Several important benefits accrue to persons on a Chinese diet, according to Campbell's research. Benefits include reducing your risk for type 2 diabetes, cancer and heart disease. A Chinese diet may also help you achieve a healthy weight. People in the study consumed 30 percent more calories than people in the United States but weighed less, according to Body Mass Index calculations. A follow-up study found that more people in China had adopted Western eating habits. The switch correlated with increased incidence of chronic disease.
References
- "American Journal of Clinical Nutrition"; Diet and Chronic Degenerative Diseases: Perspectives From China; T.Colin Campbell and C. Junshi; May 1994
- Cornell University: China Study II: Switch to Western Diet May Bring Western-type Diseases; Roger Segelken
- Harvard School of Public Health: Calcium is Important. But Milk Isn't the Only, or Even Best, Source
- Office of Dietary Supplements, National Institutes of Health: Iron
- Office of Dietary Supplements, National Institutes of Health: Dietary Supplements Fact Sheet: Vitamin C
- University of Maryland Medical Center: Beta-Carotene
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