Food & Receipts

Should I eat vegetables or meat first when having hot pot? Surprisingly common mistake.

Eating hot pot may seem like a free-for-all, but according to food experts, there are a few rules to follow to make the most of your meal. Here are some principles to keep in mind for a fulfilling hot pot experience.

Administrator

9 December, 2023

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Don’t eat meat before vegetables

Usually, the main food in hotpot dishes is meat. However, from a health perspective, if there are vegetables, potatoes, and sweet potatoes, eat them first before the meat. The reason is that potatoes and sweet potatoes contain a large amount of starch that can form a protective layer in the stomach, helping to avoid stimulating components such as heat in hotpot that can damage the stomach. Vegetables are foods that provide fiber and help the body get used to the food.

Eating meat first causes the gastric mucosa to produce more digestive juices to digest dry, hard foods, which can lead to stomach pain.

Avoid eating food that is too hot

When eating hotpot, it is easy to burn the digestive tract lining. The reason is that the oral cavity, esophagus, and gastric mucosa of humans are very thin. Typically, they can withstand temperatures from 50 – 60 degrees Celsius.

If the food is too hot, it can cause damage to the digestive tract lining, leading to esophagitis. Therefore, when picking up food that is boiling hot from the pot, you should not eat it immediately. It is best to wait for it to cool down a bit before eating.

Avoid prolonged eating

Usually, there is a specific time period for you to choose to eat hotpot. Some hotpot sessions can last for several hours. This can have a serious impact on the health of the person eating.

Prolonged eating will cause digestive fluids such as gastric juice, bile, and pancreatic juice to be continuously secreted, causing internal organs to not have proper rest, leading to disturbed gastric function, causing stomach pain and diarrhea. In severe cases, it can lead to diseases such as gallbladder inflammation and pancreatitis.

Do not use shared chopsticks to pick up raw and cooked food

If you only use one pair of chopsticks to pick up raw food and then use that pair of chopsticks to pick up cooked food and put it in your mouth, it will create conditions for bacteria in raw food to invade your oral cavity. Therefore, you need to prepare two pairs of chopsticks to use separately for picking up raw and cooked food when eating.

Avoid eating partially cooked or raw dipping ingredients

Many people prefer the fresh and tender taste, so when they put raw meat into the pot, they quickly pick it up and eat it without carefully checking if it is fully cooked inside. When you eat partially cooked or raw dipping ingredients, it will create favorable conditions for parasites to invade your digestive tract.

Therefore, you need to wait for the meat to be fully cooked before eating. Before that, wait for the hotpot broth to boil high to ensure that your food is fully heated and cooked.

Avoid eating hotpot and drinking cold beverages at the same time

If you eat spicy hotpot, you will often sweat while eating. Many people usually drink cold water to relieve the heat sensation in their body. However, do you know that this eating method can be harmful to your intestinal and gastric lining?

When you eat hotpot and drink cold water, it will stimulate the contraction of the stomach, reduce the secretion of digestive fluids, and reduce the amount of digestive enzymes. This hampers your digestion process.

Change the hotpot broth if you eat for a long time

As the hotpot broth cooks for a longer time, it becomes saltier towards the end. Boiling the hotpot repeatedly will cause the vitamin content and beneficial substances in the food to decrease. Instead, the levels of saturated fat, sodium, uric acid, and other harmful components for your body increase. They can increase the risk of obesity, atherosclerosis, gout, diabetes, or other diseases.