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Healthy Living in Singapore

June 30, 2013

The problem with the Singaporean Diet

June 30, 2013

What’s wrong with the Singaporean Diet? Our obesity rates are nothing compared to the US and the average Singaporean looks quite slim and healthy. So why do we have to worry about our diets? What’s wrong with eating out at hawker centres for lunch everyday? The food in Singapore hawker centers is so irresistible! And it’s cheap too! How bad can it be to just eat lunch and dinner out? Cooking at home is such a hassle!

SO, today, in order to assess the problem with the average Singaporean diet, here’s a look at an average office worker’s daily diet:

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In total, a day’s worth of meals like this would come up to 1692 calories, 211.73g carbs, 67.73g Protein, 63.63g Fats, 11.3g Fibre and 3149mg Sodium.

1692 calories is not an excessive amount of calories. Most people need a minimum of 1200 to function and the average daily recommended calorie consumption for people range from 1500 for women to 1800 for men.

So if you need about 1500 calories a day and you are eating on average, about 1692, you are not going to be morbidly obese or anything. You might find your work pants getting a little tighter day by day but it will not something that you’ll really be too concerned about.

And that’s the problem with most Singaporeans I think. In general, our calorie consumptions may be a little high but not excessively high enough to warrant everyone to be up in arms against high calorie consumption.

Rather, it is what is in our food that worries me.  I know that this is likely a daily menu for friends and family and my parents actually. (This meal plan was inspired by what I see my dear parents eating usually. They believe fish soup and other soupy dishes are the best choices in the hawker centre and feel safer eating such dishes but what irks me is that these dishes may be ‘the best’ in the hawker centre but it really is the one eye jack in the land of the blind. It is, in truth, still TERRIBLE.)

The recommended daily intake for fibre for women and men is 20g and 26g respectively. On a diet like this, you are only getting 11.3g of fibre. Lack of fibre has been linked to high cholesterol, heart disease, diabetes, cancer, hemorrhoids and IBS.

The recommended daily intake for sodium is NOT EXCEEDING 2000mg or 6g of salt (1 teaspoon) as salt = sodium x 2.5 but a safe zone to be would be 1500mg. If you eat out at hawker centres daily, you are sure to cross the 3000mg mark everyday.

High salt consumption has been linked to hypertension (high blood pressure), osteoporosis, stomach cancer etc.

The recommended daily consumption of fat is about 57g for women and 79g for men respectively. Ideally, this should be in the form of fat that is good for your brain and heart such as monosaturated fat and omega 3s from salmon, nuts and coconuts. However, whatever you see in the daily intake chart is 64g of non beneficial fat. This animal fat (which is likely filled with antibiotics and hormones injected into the animal to fatten them up) clogs up arteries and leads to heart diseases, high cholesterol and a whole host of obesity related problems.

The carbs most Singaporeans are eating also don’t contribute to health as there are far too many refined carbs which is useful for quick energy but since most Singaporeans don’t run to work, the carbs they are eating are not that beneficial. Wholegrain carbs would provide better nutrition as the average Singaporean diet is so severely lacking in fibre and minerals.

So you can see, for Singaporeans, it’s not really how much we eat that is the problem. It’s what we are eating and what we are not eating. It’s the lack of healthier choices around that’s really doing us in. Will we die of obesity? I doubt so, not yet anyway, though high salt, sugar and fat food can cause blood sugars to soar and crash and make you crave more food which may in turn lead to overeating.

But what is more worrying is if this continues and if we continue to lead such stressful lives
sitting in the office all day long 
eating in hawker centres everyday, (who has time to cook these days?) then we will likely end up having a nation of (not morbidly obese) people whose daily dietary habits are leading them (unknowingly!) down the path of hypertension, heart disease and diabetes.


We will grow up and be left wondering how we are not fat at all, don’t eat a lot- what’s 3 square meals a day and a couple of snacks?- and yet face all these illnesses.  Many also believe that the next generation would be the first generation to not outlive their previous generation if such bad eating carries on.

Well, what can we do then? 

Firstly, learn to assess your food. Eat like a nutritarian- the greatest amount of nutrition for your calorie buck.

Ideally for a meal like lunch, it’ll be filled with a fist sized amount of whole-grains, lean/ plant based protein and fibre/ veg dominating the plate. You would like to stick around 500 calories, not be too carb heavy and
be filled with lots of vitamins, fibre and sodium not exceeding more
than 500mg.

I hate to break it to you, but you will likely not find a low sodium dish in a hawker centre at all. Even a simple bowl of wanton soup has 670mg of sodium in it.

In the table above you have 3 choices. If you are a calorie counter, you may end up with choice 2 which obviously is not as nutritious as choice 3. (This is why, PLEASE STOP LOOKING AT FOOD AS NUMBERS) If you are gunning for the most nutritious lunch in a hawker centre then choice 3 would obviously win over the other two.

Learn to assess your food in such a way that you make the better choice. Swap your high fat meats for leaner protein options, don’t just think that veg is the best option- consider if it’s been fried to oblivion in oil. Swap your white rice for brown if you can but don’t think that that magically makes your meal top of the class. It makes it healthier but if your accompanying dishes are unhealthy, why then congratulations, you’ve added a grand total of 2g of fibre to your meal only.
 
There is a lot of misconception with brown rice being better than white. (see post on Brown Rice vs. White Rice) In my opinion, brown rice is better than white rice ONLY if there are very little high fibre/ mineral rich options around (like, sadly, in a Singapore Hawker Centre) and you need the carbs for high energy work. Brown rice essentially only has about 2+g more fibre than white rice and a couple more vitamins and minerals. If you are an office worker and not going to run a 5k post lunch, then you are better off spending the 216 rice calories (whether on white or brown rice) on more vegetables or other types of food to get whatever you may be lacking. A swap like that will give you more fibre, more vitamins, more minerals than rice but not the post lunch carb snooze.

Essentially, what you are doing with the swopping is replacing 216 calories of 4g of fibre (brown rice) with 2 additional servings of veg, which will give you 6g of fibre instead and a whole plethora of vitamins and minerals based on the fact that you want the fibre and vitamins/ minerals but don’t need the wholegrain carbs since you are not engaging in any manual labor post lunch.

However, if you do swop rice for veg, you are going to have to eat A LOT of veg to hit 200 calories for your daily calorie intake to maintain your metabolic rate. If you are unsure how to do it, I suggest replacing half of your rice with more veggies first (hopefully not the oil drenched ones from the caifan store), while you educate yourself on nutrition swapping. Also, I know rice is just comforting to some (myself included) so it’s important to at least have SOME at every meal for some people.

The bottom line here is that there is no bad food, there are only smarter choices- choices that are lower in unhealthy fats, sugar, salt and give you more nutrition calorie for calorie.

Secondly, learn to pack food to work. The idea of ‘healthy food’ in Singapore is just too westernized. Everybody thinks it’s salads and museli and oatmeal etc. And have you seen the price of a salad recently? $12 for a bowl of leaves? It may be nutritious and good for my heart but my wallet is having a cardiac arrest right now. Packing food helps you save money and helps you eat better. Healthier eating is not oatmeal and salad everyday. It can be curry with less salt than the hawker centre’s offering, it can be veg, otah and salmon or rice and hot, nourishing soup- the possibilities are endless. As long as it’s homemade, it’ll be healthier, and that’s all your heart needs. Actually caifan or anything in the hawker would be great if it went back to the portion sizes and oil/salt levels of yesteryears. But since it wouldn’t, the healthiest would be to bring your own food till all the hawkers moan the lost of your dollar and start slashing the salt/oil levels to woo you back.

I’ll be doing a series of posts soon on the most time/ money saving ways to plan, prepare and pack lunches for work. I promise you only need to cook once a week and preparation in the morning is 15 minutes, tops. Bringing your own food to lunch is the best as it gives you full control of what goes into your food and helps you to eat a better and wider variety of food to get a range of nutrition. (I think that hawker centers generally always serve the same thing so it’s hard to get a rainbow of vitamins and minerals). If you just switch 1 meal a day to a highly nutritious home made meal, you will still reap a lot of benefits from that single meal.


HAPPY JULY EVERYONE!

I hope you’re more aware of what you are eating now! If you want me to assess your nutrition intake for the day, just comment or email me at vegsmoothiebunny@gmail.com your meals for the day! 🙂

Posted by grace 9 Comments
Filed Under: Nutrition, Physical/ Mental Health Articles, Uncategorized Tagged: Health Articles, Nutritional Information, Singapore Hawker Centres, Tips and Tricks to Eating Well

May 28, 2013

Healthier options in Singapore’s Hawker Centres

May 28, 2013

I LOVE SINGAPORE HAWKER CENTRES and I always lament to my dad I’m very afraid when I grow older, there would be no more hawker centres! The horror!

Most days when I don’t know what to eat for lunch, I secretly scan and see which stall has the oldest person frying up something and order from that stall instead. Guaranteed yumminess! 🙂

But while hawkers sell really tasty food, I personally think hawker food is really
terrible for daily consumption especially if you are an office worker
and you eat out for breakfast, lunch and dinner then go back to your
desk for the rest of the day with minimal activity. I think we would all
agree that hawker centre food in general is too high in fat salt and
refined carbs lacking in vitamins, minerals and fibre. 

It’s not wonder then if you are an average Singaporean looking to eat better in Singapore’s
Hawker Centres, you might find the task a strangely difficult and uphill
one. You start off the day all determined to Eat Right! and Eat Better and
you troop down to the nearest hawker centre for lunch and you are faced
with all these options that sound kindaaaa healthy but make you feel bloated and full and greasy and lethargic post meal.

I’m still dreaming of the day where EVERY hawker uses less salt, fat and sugar in their meals and offer a choice between brown and white rice (why don’t they, really?)  instead of a couple of little red triangles on their menus.

Anyway, this list is a
couple of suggestions on how you can cut the fat and salt and try to
get in a little more fibre and balance the composition of fat, protein
and carbs a little more evenly.



#1: Thunder Tea Rice

 If you are lucky enough, the hawker centre you are at has a Thunder Tea Rice store. This is possibly the only thing sold in Singapore hawker centres that gives you the most fibre for your buck without all the unnecessary oils and fats. The portion of rice is sometimes still a little too much (especially for an office worker) but you can always half it and up the cabbage.

Thunder Tea Rice, Changi City Point’s Koufu.

Personally, I usually order it with less brown rice, no ikan bilis (too hard, I don’t like!) and fill up all the remaining space with veg please! For extra protein, you can also ask for more beancurd. The combination is really flavourful. The egg and tau gwa side is usually overfried and really oily too but I would eat it if I felt like it or omit it entirely depending on how I felt that day. I’m not a fan of the tea too though I love green tea usually. But there’s just something about that herbally-ness of the Thunder Tea one that just makes it bleargh.
 
  #2 Popiah

Popiah is another option that wouldn’t drive you into a deep post prandial stupor. Go easy (or totally omit!) on the sweet sauce and load up on the veg for more fibre. It’s pretty sad because I’m only at #2 of this list and I’ve run out of things to recommend already. 
The next few are options you can find at hawker centres but it takes a little bit of tweaking to make them healthier choices.
#3 Yong Tau Foo
I’m not sure if I’m the only one but I actually find Singapore’s Yong Tau Foo a better choice compared to the rest but not exactly healthy either. (Then again, aren’t all hawker centre food like that?) If you pick a relatively healthy dish as shown above, it’s still going to be a dish that is not nutritional enough for you. The “meats” it provides like fishballs, meatballs etc are too full of refined flour and very little fibre or protein. The soup stock is usually way too salty as well. Assuming you pick the above items, green veg, deep fried tau gwa, fishcake, white beehoon, you’ll end up with a dish that’s okay on the calorie count but not much on the nutritional front. It’s too high in salt and too low in fibre and protein. What this does is likely to send your heart palpitating,  blood sugar levels racing and making you insanely thirsty and sleepy when you get back to the office. Alas, it will also make you reach for a 4pm snack when your sugar levels crash after spiking from all the refined carbs and it’s not filling enough either.

A better option would be to order half a bowl of veg of different colours like (more!) baby bok choy, eggplant, carrot, yam etc and things like egg or mushroom and non fried beancurd. Tang hoon is a pretty great low GI, non starchy option for noodles. Best however, would be to find a vegetarian store in the hawker centre. They usually sell a serving of brown rice for 50cents- $1.00. Limit yourself to a fist sized portion if you are easily affected by blood sugar fluctuations.

If you are having the dry version, ask for the noodles plain and add the sauce yourself.

If you are having the soup version, ask for the soup in a separate bowl and ask the server to pour HOT PLAIN Boiled water into your ingredients bowl. It sounds strange but they will do it and you can vary the levels of saltiness in your food accordingly when you eat it.

Image taken from The Traveling Hungry Boy

 #4 Bak Kut Teh is another one of my favourites!

Buy your brown rice from a vegetarian store (are you starting to see a trend here?) for your fibre needs and go easy on the soup. The rest of the side dishes are way too oily though.

#5 Fish Soup

Once again, if you can, buy your brown rice from a vegetarian store. If not, white rice is okay too. White by itself is not bad/ good for you. It’s just that there are other options out there for your fibre/vitamin A needs etc. But if there is not other option, why not right? Go easy on the soup, I usually ask the stall owner to dilute the soup half-half. Half plain boiled water, half soup base and and add the chilli padi in the soup for some added kick without the sodium from the soya sauce.

#6 Kway Chap
I LOVE KWAY CHAP!!!! But it’s a definite no no if you are going to eat it everyday. TO make it more everyday-safe, I cut the sodium levels by asking that my ‘kway’ comes in plain boiled water/ soup.

So good, i could eat this everyday. Cut the saturated fat by going vegetarian and asking for the toufu, tau pok and egg. Ask for hot water in your kway and cut the sodium levels by more than half. When you dip your tofu/ taupok/egg into your soup, it turns black and soya saucy as well, tastes EXACTLY the same as if you had ordered the normal version, I PROMISE. 
Leave the all out kway chap fest for the weekend or something. 
Image taken from The Real Singapore
Sometimes I just feel like eating #7 chicken rice but when I eyeball it, the mountain of fat laden rice just doesn’t sit well with my soul. Not to burst your bubble or anything but Chicken rice is so crazy yummy because the rice is steamed in chicken fat and each grain absorbs all the stock and fat till it’s a pearly shiny amazing thing on your plate. Want to know what’s in a plate of chicken rice? FORTY FOUR grams of pure fat (an average person only needs about 30g a day), no fibre, no minerals (save a little vitamins from the white rice), and protein from the chicken. 
So when I have a chicken rice craving, I would go to the chicken rice store and buy the chicken alone and go to the vegetarian store and buy brown rice. Sometimes I eat the chicken with brown bread and dip a little of the chili in it. The taste is still there, though the heart heart might take a little getting used to.
Okay, so that’s about it from me. I suppose everything you eat can be tweaked to be a little better Remember that there is no such thing as bad food. Everything in moderation is key and don’t go overboard with the salt and fat so predominant in hawker food! Also remember that this list is not meant to say that you can never eat a whole bowl of pig innards again but to suggest ways in which you can cut down on sugar, sodium, fat and unneeded refined carbs (especially if you work a desk job!) and pick healthier choices on a daily basis while dining at a food court!
How do you choose healthier options at the hawker centres? I’m really interested because I don’t think I’ll be able to afford eating takeout salads (so sad and boring 🙁 ) everyday and I don’t believe that you have to be rich to eat better. Let me know! And start ordering your food this way! Maybe all the hawker centre stall owners would be so irritated/ curious as to why you are doing all these that they might be spurred to offer healthier choices themselves!

Posted by grace 16 Comments
Filed Under: Eat Out!, Healthy Food Places in Singapore, Nutrition, Physical/ Mental Health Articles, Uncategorized Tagged: Eat!, Healthier options in Singapore Hawker Centres, Singapore Hawker Centres, Tips and Tricks to Eating Well

Hello There!

Hi! My name is Grace
and I live in sunny Singapore! :D Welcome to Fithealthybunny.com where I share my love for exploring, healthy eating, mindful living and everything in between

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