Asian Diet and How It is Affecting Everyone

Lifestyle: Then and Now

We were always taught about the idea of ‘Simple Living and High Thinking’ which sounds ideal to follow, but practically, it is quite challenging to practice.

People nowadays are always busy in doing their jobs and are unable to find some time for themselves and living a fast lifestyle. This fast lifestyle has automatically made us slow, as we need instant food that we can eat fast and resume our work. But this lifestyle ultimately takes a toll on our lives due to the number of unhealthy constituents in the food that builds up in it.

The saturated fats, artificial colors,
preservatives, etc.are used while making
fast foods, which alter our body's
functioning and hinder its growth and
development.

In present times, people have become more aware of healthy eating and lifestyle habits and trying to follow it to lead a happy and disease-free life.

One of the popular diets that have been gaining popularity nowadays due to its many nutritional values is the Asian diet.

We can observe that people living in Asian countries like China, Japan live quite a long life. Some years back, it was even observed that there are more older people alive in China than youngsters, which tells us about the lifestyle they had, which helped them lead such a long life.

Asian Diet

Asian diet covers a wide range of palettes as there are many Asian countries like China, Japan, India, Cambodia, Singapore, Indonesia, Myanmar, Nepal, North and South Korea, Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, etc.

If we combine the food that was traditionally eaten by people in all these countries, we can note that most of them were whole grains and had one of the essential things – Rice, Millets, whole grains, and other seasonal vegetables have always been an undeniable part of daily food here.

Let’s know what consists of this diet, which makes it healthier.

This diet is kind of like a pyramid which consists of different constituents on different levels.

• 1. The lower level constitutes green vegetables, soy foods, legumes, whole grains, spices, etc. which should be consumed daily.
• 2. The next level consists of seafood like fishes, poultry, eggs, sweets, which should be taken weekly or bi-weekly.
• 3. Red meats and other meat items which should be taken on a monthly basis.

Thus, including all these things make up a nutritional diet that consists of all the necessary ones for the body.

This food has many advantages due to

• 1. The extensive use of seasonal vegetables and legumes helps in providing the body what it needs as per the season and that provides the maximum output.
• 2. This diet encourages plant-based foods more than meat, which is healthy.
• 3. It provides a very good amount of fibre in it, which helps the body flush out toxins.
• 4. Fermented foods are also a great source of nutrition in the Asian diet, which helps the gut bacteria to aid digestion and increases metabolism.

In research in 2018 by the Journal of Ethnic Foods, it was proved that some of the patients with health complications like high-BP and diabetes changed their diet to Asian. The results were quite surprising for them. Some of the people were the same, and some were feeling healthy as they had to stop taking BP medicines.

Thus, this diet covered quite many factors which are required for good health.