MemeStreams | RE: Dim Sum Too High in Fat, Sodium

It really baffles me the way that some people seem to think about nutrition: that there are certain foods that are just plain bad, and should never be eaten, or that there are other "good" foods (like carrots), and if they eat a lot of them, that they'll lose weight. In reality, neither is true.

There is nothing wrong with eating Dim Sum (or french fries). Also, just because carrots are good for you, does not mean that eating a diet of nothing but carrots is even better (indeed, I've been reading articles lately about something called "Vitamin A Toxicity").

The secret is balance. :) For example, for someone of my body size, the recommendation is a max of 22 grams of saturated fat per day. My total "all kinds of fat" target: A minimum of 40 g, max of 97 g/day. Sodium intake recommendations are a bit more controversial, but I personally try to shoot for a minimum of 500 mg/day, max of 3300. If I had high blood pressure or some other salt-sensitive condition, that max would probably be lower.

Now where I choose to get my 2 g of sodium or 22 g of saturated fat from, is up to me. Like if I have an Egg McMuffin, that's 5 g of saturated fat. Or a Big Mac (11 g). Or if I head to a restaurant and order a meal with lemon/butter dipping sauce, that's 15 g of saturated fat. None of which are pushing me over my daily max, and any of which I could eat on a *daily* basis, without a problem, as long as it was part of that oft-repeated to the point of cliche "balanced diet". :) In other words, along with the saturated fat that day, did I also get a couple hundred grams of carbs? 25 of fiber? 50 of protein? Was cholesterol intake under 300 mg? And all within the constraints of a healthy calorie max for a typical desk job person? (ballpark 2000/day)

The article panics that steamed bean curd has 12 g of fat. So what? That's not saturated fat, and even if it were, it still wouldn't be a problem, depending on how *much* of it was eaten, and what's going on in the rest of the diet.

Now if someone is wolfing down dim sum, *every day*, and regularly consuming twice their recommended max of saturated fat, then yes, that's a problem. But they could do the same damage with Dim Sum, or McDonald's, or too many mixed nuts, or even yogurt and oatmeal (granted, it would be faster to do with McDonald's than oatmeal).

So my advice is, especially to those that are smart enough to crunch the numbers (and I'm still highly recommending the program "Diet Organizer" as a way of charting the spreadsheet):

Eat what you want. Don't feel guilty about Dim Sum. Just try to pay attention to *how much* of it that you're eating, and make sure you're eating enough other kinds of stuff that you're getting *all* the nutrients you need, and not just the saturated fat part.

Elonka :)

RE: Dim Sum Too High in Fat, Sodium - Study