Confucius Say, “Chinese Food Will Make You Fat”

Not a big surprise—Chinese food, my favorite just behind pizza, is tremendously fattening and unhealthy for the most part. Ignorance was a kind of bliss, though; I knew it wasn’t healthy, but I was unaware of exactly how unhealthy it was, until I read this AP article that broke it down for me. I am shedding tears into my General Tso Chicken over this.

It’s not so much the caloric intake, but the kind of calories that I’m slurping down per egg roll, per dumpling. My favorite dish is loaded with saturated fat and far too much sodium than my family’s history of heart disease will really allow me to get away with.

Dig a particularly painful excerpt:

An order of six steamed pork dumplings has 500 calories, and there’s not much difference, about 10 calories per dumpling, if they’re pan-fried.

Okay, so on the one hand, I feel slightly more off the hook if I go head and order them the way I like them, but if I order them at all, I’m still fucking myself over. Well, it isn’t like I’ll never pig out on a Chinese dinner again, but I’ll have to wait until a really worthy occasion, like my birthday in freakin’ July before I can do it in good conscience.

Until then, I will be researching low calorie, low sodium Chinese recipes to try out at home; if I come up with any winners [read: nutritious, delicious, not going to kill me], I will share here. Meanwhile, if any of you health conscious chefs out there care to help me out, I’d love any recipe tips along the way.

Chinese restaurant food draws criticism [hosted.ap.org]