Key points for healthy eating: Avoid high-temperature cooking, choose healthy kitchen utensils, and use good quality oils.

Key points of healthy eating

Choosing the right ingredients is important, but cooking techniques and the choice of cooking oil are equally crucial. You might say, "It's just cooking a meal, why make it so complicated?" No, even if you use the finest natural ingredients and eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, using the wrong cooking methods can turn good food into bad food. Learn to cook correctly, align with a cosmic diet, and keep your body free of toxins; you'll find yourself much healthier.

Avoid high-temperature cooking

What exactly constitutes high-temperature cooking? In many Chinese cooking methods, such as stir-frying, high heat is often used to achieve a crispy texture. However, high heat destroys many enzymes in food, directly burdening the digestive system. Meat and carbohydrates are also unsuitable for high-temperature cooking because grilling meat produces several carcinogens. High-temperature heating of carbohydrates produces acrylamide, which can damage nerves and cause premature aging. Therefore, you might notice in a Western restaurant kitchen that they don't use high heat, but rather slow-cooked dishes. French fries and toast, these high-temperature cooked carbohydrates, are unhealthy and should be consumed sparingly.

High-temperature cooking is unhealthy, and frying and oily foods are off-limits. So what should we do? Steaming, boiling, and blanching are the answer. Water boils at around 100℃, which won't produce toxins in food, and these methods also reduce the amount of oil used. Many people might think that eating healthily means eating bland and boring food. Actually, with some delicious sauces, you can make delicious and healthy dishes. For example, you can make your own healthy sauce to eat with noodles. Like me, I eat lightly before work. Boiled vegetables are really bland, so I add a tablespoon of cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil and then my homemade sesame paste. If you like spicy food, you can add a little chili. As long as you know how to pair natural sauces, it can be both healthy and delicious. Steamed and boiled foods are beneficial to the health of the whole family.

Choose healthy kitchenware

Some friends who live alone say they love eating frozen packaged vegetables, which they reheat in the microwave because it's less greasy and convenient. This is a big misconception. While vegetables may seem healthy on the surface, microwaving them destroys many of their nutrients, significantly reducing minerals and vitamins.

So, can I use a non-stick pan instead of a microwave? While non-stick pans do reduce oil usage and prevent sticking, they are coated with a layer of chemicals (PTFE and PFOA). This black coating can peel off easily when heated or scratched. A report from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency indicates that these substances may even be carcinogenic. Therefore, my first choice for cookware is Le Creuset, made of cast iron. Le Creuset has over eighty years of history and is a pioneer in the French cast iron cookware industry. Their cookware conducts heat quickly, has a uniform thickness, distributes heat evenly, retains nutrients well, and preserves the original flavor, making it especially suitable for braising and stewing dishes. Most importantly, it does not release toxic substances during cooking.

If you don't like eating raw vegetables, you can boil them, blanch them, and mix in some homemade sauce for a healthy and delicious meal.

Cast iron kitchenware is not processed with chemicals, ensuring health benefits.

Eat good oil

There are good and bad oils. Many friends ask me if they can't eat any oil if they want to lose weight. Many girls always say they shouldn't add oil to this or that food, but that's not true. If you want to eat healthily, using good oils can actually help you lose weight. I know many European friends who eat a lot of olive oil, even dipping oranges in it, but they don't easily gain weight because our bodies need to consume some good oils in moderation.

Extra virgin olive oil, virgin coconut oil, and grapeseed oil are all good oils. Many people mistakenly believe that vegetable butter is healthy and should be consumed, but this is incorrect. Vegetable butter contains trans fats, which can easily lead to the accumulation of toxins in the body, causing heart disease and obesity. Common household oils such as peanut oil, corn oil, and pure olive oil are all "refined" oils; long-term consumption of these oils can easily lead to weight gain and cardiovascular problems. Also, when I mention olive oil, I mean virgin olive oil, but virgin olive oil should not be heated over high heat; it should only be heated over medium-low heat. This is because every oil has a specific smoke point, and if the temperature exceeds this point, the oil will spoil, turning good oil into bad oil.

That's why I often say that every household should have two bottles of oil: one is grapeseed oil or cold-pressed coconut oil, suitable for high-temperature frying; the other is extra virgin olive oil, which is very good for your health. I personally prefer cold-pressed coconut oil because it's very fragrant, has a high smoke point, and its lauric acid content helps with antibacterial and antiviral properties, as well as accelerating metabolism and aiding in fat burning. I use coconut oil for cooking during the fall and winter months when colds are common. Some people who experience a plateau in their weight loss journey can also benefit from consuming two tablespoons of good oil daily to achieve faster weight loss.

Low-temperature oils: flaxseed oil, sesame oil, extra virgin olive oil

It can only be used in cold dishes, not for frying or stir-frying.

High-temperature cooking oils (cooking at temperatures exceeding 200°C): grapeseed oil, almond oil, coconut oil, avocado oil