Just out of curriosity, is Chinese food good for ya? I’m hooked to stuff like Honey Chicken, Pepper Steak, and Seseme Chicken, and I’ve always wondered if this stuff is good for ya. Oh yeah, with a side of fried rice, lol.
Over a billion Chinese people can’t be wrong. 
I suspect the stuff that Chinese people eat in China is nothing like the stuff we eat at Chinese restaurants here.
That said, hmmm. Well, it depends.
It’s full of carbohydrates, which turn to sugar, which turn to the fat that resides on your hips.
However, there’s lots of veggies, thus full of vitamins.
And plus chicken is loaded with protein.
Dunno.
It’s gotta be better for you than, say, Burger King.
Traditional chinese cuisine actually uses very little meat and a large portion of vegetables. The veggies are cooked for a short period of time at a very high heat, keeping them crunchy and preventing the vitamins from leeching out. Very few food is actually fried, and little or no pan seasoning such as butter or oil is ever used.
Well, not really. They don’t eat nearly as many carbs as we do, and the carbs they do intake are healthy ones at that. They eat very little fat and oil like I said before, and not much of it isn’t burned off. Rice is filling without containing many of the so called “bad” parts of food, fat, oil, sugar and calories.
The majority of meals consists of rice, which is a starch but high in healthy carbohydrates, and when you add to that a serving which is more than 85% more vegetables than meat and you have a healthy meal. The chinese food we eat in America is very much not anything like what real chinese cuisine is.
I was going to say the same thing- I doubt the average Chinese person eats with the same decadence as we do when we eat Chinese food here.
I’m sure there are other examples of this; other places offering ‘American’ food that we would not find palatable.
Trust me, real Chinese cooking is far superior in taste and quality over the type served in Western ‘Chinese’ restaurant. And the fat that is used apparentlly gets converted rapidly by the generous ahelpings of green tea.
Just thought I’d echo what others have said and say that authentic chinese is not what you get served in a typical American Chinese restaurant. That however pretty much goes for just about every kind of ethnic food from Italian to Mexican. It should also be noted that China is a huge country with an incredibly large and diverse population so there is no single ‘chinese’ cuisine. Hard to go wrong with fresh stir fried vegetables and buckwheat noodles though.
I’m just going to reflect what lokij said.
Which China?
Look for enchaladas in Southern Mexico and watch the funny looks you get.
It’s like expecting grits with your breakfast in Seattle.
It’s kinda funny that you say that. AudreyK recently moved to Seattle from Hawaii. She’s kinda sad that you don’t get rice served with breakfast. 
No rice with breakfast?? What kinda backwater is that?? 'Round the 'pad, we have rice for breakfast ALL the time! 
Forget the stuff you get in US restaurants with a fortune cookie (totally unknown here)…
4 main types of Chinese food:
- Cantonese, mainly ultra fresh veg and rice with pork, seafood or chicken as garnish. Soy sauce, garlic, ginger, black bean to season. The simpler stuff is very very healthy (except highly salted preserved fish can produce a type of nose cancer - I risk it anyway). The more ambitious/expensive cuisine (shark’s fin, abalone, etc) tends to be prized for supposed semi-medicinal properties and I’m a bit more dubious about how healthy it might be.
- Schechuan, very spicy. Lots of chilli. More oily in my limited experience
- Beijing. Lots of great dumplings. Also more oily in my limited experience.
- Shanghai. Will leave to China Guy.
There’s also chiew chao, which includes tons of goose, notably goose skin. About as healthy as living off pate, I reckon.
In most cases, these are far more healthy than the high-dairy products/sugar/meat, low-veg/fruit diet many Americans like killing themselves with.
I suspect even the faux-Chinese food in US restaurarants is probably better for you than pizza.
Hey, if you’re worried about the health effects of Chinese food…
…pass it on over here!
(Cantonese and Schechuan especially!)
I hope so; I’ve been eating it all my life! :rolleyes:
D&R
what kind of chinese food? In China, following the deprivations of the post revolutionary era, most food is swimming in grease. Especially here in Shanghai. Also, late onset diabetes is becomming quite a problem. At lot of starch (white rice), grease (cooking oil, lard) and sugar combine to be not such a healthy diet at the same time that exercise is going way down.
Ask a nutrionist, but the diet is getting less healthy.
Chinese food, that you’d get in an American Chinese restaurant is very unhealthy -definitely not healthier than a pizza -lots of heavy sauces, less vegetables, more meat, lots of fat and sugar (in the sauces). I read one cite that said “Most Chinese food is diet-defying, with 65 to 80 percent of its calories coming from fat.”*
Here’s a web site that talks about how unhealth American Chinese food can be, and gives tips on eating “healthy Chinese”
Cricket
Nothing much to add, but I’ll agree that Chinese food in the US is way different from what people eat in China, and Chinese people don’t all eat the same food either. Chinese food in Korea bears little resemblance to either, and is characterized mostly by grease.
But here’s an American Chinese food story for ya: During my first teaching job, in the US, I went to lunch at a Chinese restaurant one day with a group of teachers and the department chair. The chair was a dignified older woman, near retirement, white hair, very proper. The restaurant was doing a lunch buffet. We all filled our plates and sat down, and just before we started eating, the chair announced: You know, they’re saying now that MSG causes anal seepage.
Chinese food in America is often heavy on MSG. I like Chinese food, but I ate that meal with my butt cheeks clenched together. It was the first time I had ever considered that an anus could seep.
Bottom line: it depends what you mean by “Chinese food.”
If you’re eating stir-fried vegetables over a bowl of rice, that’s perfectly healthy.
On the other hand, if you’re going to a typical American “Chinese” joint, where you’re eating deep-fried egg rolls, deep fried sweet and sour chicken, et al, then you are NOT eating healthy.
China Guy! I’ll be in Shanghai in a couple of months. Where’s the good eats in town?
There are tons of great places.
Di Shui Dong (Hunan food) Mao Ming Nan Lu Road #56. Cheap and great. A bit spicy. Get the ribs. I’ve taken hedge funds, fund managers, economists, head of Ernst and Young, and they all love it.
Yang’s Kitchen (Shanghaiese a) Heng Shan Lu Road, Lane 9, No. 3. There is a sign on the Heng Shan Road in English, and then maybe 200 yards down an alley. Set in an old villa. English menu. Good selection of Shanghaiese food, plus you can get decent Beijing roast duck for about $8.
These two restaurants may not be the “best” but westerners are never disappointed. Everyone and I mean everyone loves the Di Shui Dong and it’s usually 98% full of locals.
I would steer clear of the western food. Not bad but nothing special.
The other thing would be if it’s clear weather, going to Cloud Nine at the top of the Hyatt hotel for a drink and panoramic view of Shanghai. You can check out this column by Cecil where the Perfect Master sets me straight http://www.straightdope.com/columns/000721.html for more information.
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Maybe I spend too much time in the sticks, but in my experience, if you can get Western food in China that’s even close to the real McCoy, you’re lucky. Every time I’ve done Western in China, it’s like my meal was cooked by someone who heard about what the dish was, but had never actually seen it or tasted it before. Even the fast-food franchises were subtly different than their Western counterparts.
Then again, given how much Westerners mangle Chinese food (moo shu is an abomination that must be destroyed!), maybe it’s just turnabout… 
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