eating habits

1. Staple food in China are rice, various kinds of bread and noodles. Rice is a major staple food for people from southern China.

  Usually we drink/eat congee in the morning, eat steamed rice for lunch and dinner. Congee is made of rice and water, it is usually boiled in a pot and served with side dishes, sometimes additional ingredients are added to make it tastes good.

In northern China, people usually eat flour-based food, for example, noodles, bing(chinese fried/baked bread), jiaozi(a kind of chinese dumplings),mantou(steamed bread/buns);

2. We eat many kinds of soybean products(Toufu, soybean juice/milk, bean curd, bean oil). I like eating green soybean a lot.

3. We eat a lot of vegetables, tomato/sweet corn/potato/green pepper/mushroom/celery/green onion/garlic/cucumber/carrot/sweet potato/broccoli/cabbage/green soybean/ginger/horse bean.

4. We usually use plant/vegetable oils as edible oil.

5. The most popular meat we eat is pork. We also eat fish, chicken, beef, mutton, shrimp.

  Pork fat makes dishes tastes good when it is stir-fried with fresh vegetables. Compared to pork, beef and mutton are way too expensive, so it's unlikely that we can eat beef and mutton frequently. Beef tastes good, but mutton tastes a little weird for someone because it's goat meat smell. In ancient China, it was illeagal to kill/slaughter cattle, so ancient chinese seldom ate beef. Another reason is related to fake beef.I'm not sure if the beef I bought is real beef, as I know, those who sale beef may add other meat into beef, for example,  chicken meat and pork or something else I don't know, so those immoral dealers can make profits.

  I like eating pork ribs very much and seldom eat pork that cut from other parts of pig.

  We usually eat beef/mutton/chicken during a vacation, for example, we eat various kinds of meat in Chinese New Year.

6.  Daily meals made at home usually contain one or two meat dishes and two or three vegetable dishes(maybe a bowl of soup included).  But we usually treat our guests with several meat dishes to show hospitality, if most of the meals served are vegetable dishes,  it's usually considered as impolite.

7. Potatoes are usually considered as dishes in China, not staple food. The most common dish made of potato is Shredded Potato with  Green Pepper, it is cooked in the stir-frying way.

8. Generally speaking, Chinese people pay much attention to dish taste,smell and color, but we are seldom concerned with other factors such as nutrition, calorie/vatamin intake and fat content. We are used to sit around the dinning table while eating meals together with family. Dishes are usually ordered around the table, so they can be shared with all family members. We usually like talking about something or watching TV and making comments on it when eating meals. Sometimes people like refilling other's bowl with chopsticks, especially parents like refilling their children's bowl or hosts like refilling the bowl of guests. All these manners are supposed to make the atmosphere relaxed/activate the atmosphere.

  Disease can be spread more easily in the way of eating meals, beacause dishes are shared with the family. Westerners prefer eating meals individually, this way is good for personal health.

9. We eat three meals a day, and seldom eat snacks between meals.

10. We usually buy fresh vegetables/meat for cooking every day.

  My wife often bought some vegetables/meats at the grocery store when she got off work, then went home.  Usually it would take her less than an hour to cook a meal for supper.

11. We usually add some seasonings when cooking a dish, for example, green onion, ginger root, garlic, salt, sugar, vinegar and  soy sauce. Salt is necessary for almost all kinds of dish. The amount of salt intake per day is excessive, this increases the risk  of high blood pressure and stomach cancer. My wife and I don't like adding too much salt when cooking. Our parents didn't like the dishes we cooked, because they are used to eat the dishes that are salty.

12. Many chinese like eating animal organs/innards, also we like eating fruits or drinking a cup of hot water after having a meal.

13. We like eating lots of soybean products(green soybean/toufu). We also consume lots of pickled foods that are harmful to body health.

14. Most chinese people lived in poverty twenty year ago, we rarely ate meat dishes, so I seldom saw someone who was fat/overweight.

  Now people's quality of life have been improved a lot, more and more folks eat lots of meat dishes, and at the same time some  health problems also arised, many people suffered from high blood pressure/sugar/fat, cancer and sugar diabetes. My grandmother  had suffered from sugar diabetes for many years, she didn't eat any rice foods or wheaten foods.

15. Many chinese like drinking spirits/beers, some of them often get drunk every time, some of them wouldn't stop drinking until they  became drunk, and some of them likes persuading others to drink spirits, this confused me a lot.

  Salesperson of a company usually engages in lots of social activities(attends many social occasions).  They usually drink spirits for business reasons, they deal with customers on daytime, it's likely they will treat the customer in the restaurant. There are always some bottles of spirits served on the table in such an occasion, salesman often drink much to show  their respect for customers, because the quote "The Customer is God".

  Throught years of drinking spirits, they may find out the liver doesn't work well, the worst case is that some of them may died of liver cancer. A relative of mine died of liver cancer in his fourties, he didn't know he had cancer until a month before he died.  One of my classmates in the elementary school drank too much spirits so that he fainted, his family called for an ambulance, he had been in coma for a few days, but he survived luckily.

16. Planting vegetables in front the house

  I grew up in the rural village, every family owns a vegetable plot in front of the house, usually folks in the village plant some vegetables, for example, green pepper, soybean, cabbage, sweet potato, cucumber, tomato, corn and so on. They seldom spray farm chemicals, because most of these vegetables are for self-consuming.

What Do You Think?

1. I agree with this opinion. People in China actually eat more meat than before.

2. I don't agree with the opinion.

  That depends, someone may make a decision to stop eating meat and take it into action, some other may try to meat less meat. I think most people wouldn't like to give up eating meat totally. It's more acceptable to eat less meat.

3. I don't agree with the opinion. We could eat less meat, if someone already suffered from high blood fat/pressure a lot, it's better  for her/him to eat more vegetables and less meat, or he/she may die in the near future.

4. I don't agree with the opinion. Although it sounds healthy that we eat just fish and vegetables, but animal products should not be totally given up, we could appropriately eat some animal products if someone likes it much. Air crash was reported a few times every  year, would you like to give up taking a flight.

5. I agree with the opinion.