Healthy Eating on a Tight Schedule: Tips for Waimai Lovers

Delivery is convenient—just a tap on your phone can bring your favorite cuisine right to your doorstep. Who wouldn’t be tempted by such ease?

Regardless of gender, age, work, there is a noticeable trend toward choosing fast and affordable food options. Helen Tao, Jiahui’s chief nutritionist, encounters many individuals who eat takeout almost daily. She shares her insights on how to maintain balance and nutrition while ordering from the hundreds of options available to us every day.

What are the effects of eating takeout on the body??

Lack of Nutritional Value

Once you develop a habit of eating takeout, the lack of nutritional value becomes concerning. Typically, one-person orders, like pasta, rice bowls, or burgers, contain very few vegetables. This often means a limited variety of leafy greens and other whole foods, resulting in insufficient vitamin C, carotene, calcium, magnesium, and other essential antioxidants.

Excessive Carbohydrates

The carbohydrate portion in common food delivery options is excessive, primarily consisting of refined white rice and noodles, with no whole grains included. This leads to several drawbacks: higher blood sugar levels, lower dietary fiber, and inadequate minerals like potassium, calcium, and magnesium, as well as insufficient B vitamins.

Poor Casual Eats

Additionally, casual bites such as rice noodles, spicy noodles, and cold noodles are essentially pure starch and lack adequate protein and vitamins. Often, they contain only a few bean sprouts or a small amount of shredded chicken as garnish, resulting in poor nutritional quality. As a result, one may feel hungry soon after eating, leading to snacking and ultimately causing a cycle of calorie overload and nutritional deficiencies.

High Oil, Salt, and Sugar Content

Then comes the problem of high oil, salt, and sugar content. Most consumers prefer more intense flavors and often perceive lightly-seasoned dishes as less tasty. As a result, businesses must adapt to public preferences by intensifying the flavors of their dishes.?

Quality of Condiments

Another aspect to consider is that, at times, the condiments used in takeout are low in quality. The variety of cooking oils may be limited, which can lead to imbalanced fatty acid ratios. Dishes may not be made with pure brewed soy sauce or vinegar, and the soup could sometimes be reconstituted from powder.

Food Safety Risks

Lastly, there are certainly risks associated with food safety. After preparation, it often takes a considerable amount of time for the food to reach the diner. During transportation, the food is not always kept above 60 degrees Celsius or properly refrigerated between 0 to 6 degrees Celsius, increasing the risk of microbial contamination.

As a result, relying on takeout food long-term can lead to imbalanced nutrient levels and deficiencies in certain nutrients, which can have both short-term and long-term health consequences.

What kind of delivery should I order then??

With long working hours and a busy social schedule, you may still need to rely on ordering delivery.?What kind of delivery should?you order then??

01 Eating Both Protein and Vegetables

A stir-fry dish with a bowl of rice is the most common takeaway combination. Meat lovers might choose sweet and sour pork chops, while vegetable fans might opt for shredded potatoes. But any stir-fry dish served alone with just a main carbohydrate will result in nutritional deficiencies.?

• When ordering delivery, choose a dish that includes both protein and vegetables. If ordering two dishes seems like too much food, opt for a dish that includes both protein and veggies, like green pepper and shredded pork stir-fry or tomato and egg stir-fry.
• Alternatively, you can order meat and prepare a blanched vegetable at home for a quick, healthy meal.

02 Cutting down on oil?

When ordering takeout, many people prefer dry pot and stir-fried dishes like braised eggplant and stir-fried string beans. However, these dishes are often high in oil and salt, requiring large amounts of oil during cooking. Restaurants frequently reuse stir fry oil, which is not healthy.?

It is recommended to avoid or minimize ordering fried dishes and instead choose steamed, boiled, or lightly stir-fried options.

03 Picking healthier carbs?

There are a variety of carbs you could choose from while ordering delivery such as fried breads, fried noodles, and fried rice. They’re typically high in oil, salt, or sugar.?

It’s best to choose simple, mild-flavored staples. Opt for plain rice, mixed grain rice, steamed buns, or dumplings and buns with vegetable or mixed fillings. Ideally, you can also incorporate some whole foods like sweet potatoes, corn, or taro into your staples for a healthier option.

04 Noodles with vegetables

Noodles are also quite popular take-outs. Generally, noodles are served with a few pieces of meat and a few vegetable leaves, which makes the dish look abundant in ingredients, but in reality, the nutrition is quite limited.?

A bowl of noodles or rice noodles mainly consists of carbohydrates, and the amount of meat and vegetables is far less than what a balanced diet requires. This is especially true for vegetables, which are often just a garnish, leading to insufficient nutrient intake in a meal. Therefore, if you order noodles, remember to add a separate portion of vegetables.

05 Bring your own fruits and vegetables to balance the nutrition

The most practical way to get enough nutrients is to bring some fruits and vegetables suitable for raw consumption to work every day, such as cucumber, cherry tomatoes, and apples. While enjoying takeout, adding vegetables can help supplement your meal.

I often plan my meals for the day, not just one, to ensure balanced nutrition. If I have a burger or ravioli for lunch or dinner, I focus on including more vegetables in my other meals. Helen TAO

06 Delivery

Lastly, when ordering takeout, it's best to choose restaurants that offer timely delivery and have proper storage and preservation conditions. For example, they should use sealed containers for dishes and employ low-temperature cold chain delivery. These measures help inhibit microbial growth and prevent foodborne illnesses.

What is the environmental impact of takeaways?

A meal I ordered was wrapped in three layers—paper, plastic, and aluminum foil—resulting in a pile of waste afterward. Similarly, ordering from a congee shop meant paying extra for multiple containers for side dishes and pastries that wouldn't have been needed if I'd dined in. Helen TAO

Takeout often comes with excessive and wasteful packaging.?

Excessive and luxurious packaging for takeout is essentially a form of "forced waste." Nowadays, disposable foam containers have largely disappeared from the market, and takeout packaging mainly consists of polypropylene or polyethylene plastics, aluminum foil, and paper-plastic composites. Plastic is favored for takeout packaging because it is heat-resistant, sturdy, oil-proof, and inexpensive.

Data shows that the three major delivery platforms—Meituan, Ele.me , and Baidu Takeout—handle over 20 million orders daily. With each order averaging two containers and one plastic bag, the total height of stacked containers would reach from the Earth to the International Space Station over three and a half times (approximately 2,400 km). Additionally, if each plastic bag covers 0.06 square meters, the total used daily could cover 168 football fields (about 1.2 million square meters).

Department of Nutrition

The Department of Nutrition provides comprehensive and personalized nutrition consultation services for both inpatients and outpatients. Our clinical dietitians have extensive experience and a broad knowledge base, providing high-quality nutritional services, to taking care of your health, and supporting you in establishing and reaching your personal nutritional goals.

Helen TAO is a Clinical Dietitian at Jiahui International Hospital. She is a registered dietician in China and is a clinical dietician from China’s Ministry of Health, as well as a member of both the Chinese Nutrition Society and the Shanghai Nutrition Society. She has a master's degree in Public Administration, and during her more than 15 years of clinical work, she has served as a board member of the Capital Healthcare and Nutrition Cuisine Society, and a member of the Catering Committee of the Chinese Aging Well Association. She has provided clinical nutritional support for chronic diseases, perioperative management, weight management, pregnancy nutrition, etc. Helen is specialized in nutrition management throughout all stages of life, providing personalized dietary guidance for pregnancy, children, and aging period.

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