Why the Chinese Don't Count Calories (11 page)

Chinese people know when they have had enough, but that is because they have had enough; the Chinese have a positive relationship with eating and are in control of their appetites, but they also eat substantial amounts of good food. My journey into Chinese food culture has led me to believe that denial or restriction of a person’s natural appetite will never solve the West’s burgeoning obesity problem and health-related issues. A person who is constantly hungry will never fit comfortably into his or her body. If the Chinese can
chi
bao le
at every meal without getting fat, then so can you.

The basics

The first four secrets of the Chinese diet come together into a common-sense eating plan: enjoy your eating, base your meals around vegetables, accompanied by a generous portion of a staple food, and eat as much as your appetite dictates. Before you know it you will find that you are forgetting to count calories.

‘But that’s too simple!’ you cry – and perhaps a little boring? ‘There must be more to the Chinese food culture than vegetables and rice?’You are right: read on . . .

Chi bao le –
‘Eat till you are full’

In order to
chi bao le
, try to incorporate these principles into the way you eat:

• Listen to your appetite. If you are experiencing pangs of hunger or a sugar low mid-morning or mid-afternoon, you are not eating enough at meal times. The aim is to eat three good meals a day, and not feel the need to snack in between them. Gradually increase the amounts you eat until you get a feel for the ‘right’ amount.

• Conversely, if you regularly find yourself feeling sated and bloated after a meal, you are eating too much of the wrong foods. Take your time over eating, think about what you are putting into your mouth, and leave food on your plate once you begin to feel full.

• Use the multi-dish approach. Place the food in the centre of the table and place small amounts onto your plate.

• Savour each mouthful. The multi-dish approach allows you to think about what you are eating, rather than clearing a plate without even noticing.

• Don’t eat too quickly. Remember that your appetite takes a while to register how much you have eaten.

five
Take liquid food

‘As long as there is rice, there should be soup. ’

LI YU (1611. 80)

Cai
and
fan
, dishes and staples, should now be completely within your grasp, but lurking behind them are two other categories of food. The rich and flavoursome
cai
has its partner in the light and often insipid watery soup known as
tang
.
Fan
,which encompasses cooked rice, noodles and all manner of delicious breads and pancakes, has a liquid equivalent called
zhou,
consumed by the gallon all over the China, particularly first thing in the morning. Made by simmering rice in about ten times its volume of water,
zhou
is sometimes known in the West by its southern Chinese name,
congee
. ‘Porridge’ is a common, though rather a florid translation, though ‘gruel’ is more accurate.

No Chinese meal is complete without a bowl of soup, but
tang
rarely resembles its Western counterpart. The south of China is famous for its rich but delicate consommé-type preparations, served towards the beginning of the meal, as in the West. But in the north a water-based broth is usually served after the rice, in the same bowl so as to ensure that not a single grain of the precious
fan
is wasted. More of a drink than something to eat, these Chinese soups could be mistaken for the water left after washing up the saucepan.

If you have taken on board the ideas expressed in the preceding chapters you will be eating more vegetable-based
cai
, experimenting with new ingredients and increasing the variety in your diet. Your whole food experience will be enhanced, whether you are eating in Chinese style or adapting your Western cooking. Adopting the Chinese approach to
fan
and eating more and different staple foods may have been an effort at first, especially as there are so many prejudices about starchy foods, but it will have simply involved a change of emphasis rather than a totally new food experience.

As we move on to the fifth secret of the Chinese diet, and I introduce the concepts of
tang
(soup), and
zhou
(porridge), you may have to move out of your comfort zone in pursuit of a new relationship with food. My teaching experience showed me that if there were any leftover dishes after a meal it would be the stews, braises and soups. Western appetites, I have seen, show a strong preference for rich foods over light ones, solid textures over soft and dry over liquid dishes.

As our Western diet is generally too dry, some of the worst offenders are the ‘healthy’ products like rice cakes, oatcakes, cereal bars and toasted muesli. The need to drink water seems to have increased in direct proportion with the denaturing of our diet. In recent years Western nutritionists have been urging us to drink more water, providing yet another opportunity for food and drink manufacturers to foist hoards of new designer brands on us all. Drinking water with meals may have a negative effect on digestion and absorption and drinking copious amounts of water through the day does not necessarily benefit health, as Jill Fullerton-Smith showed in the BBC TV series
The Truth about Food
. In China you seldom see anyone drink water while they are eating. While Chinese restaurants have begun to offer a range of soft drinks, presumably because they are good earners, traditionally taking a drink with food has been considered damaging to the stomach. Instead, every meal contains a liquid element, and of course the vegetable bias of the meals ensures a high water content.

Yin
and
yang

I have met very few Westerners who like
tang
or
zhou
, Chinese soups or porridge on first tasting. So why should we include them in our diet? Isn’t Chinese cooking all about making ingredients taste good? Generally this is true, but it is also about achieving balance and harmony.

Now it is time to introduce the Taoist concept of
yin
and
yang
, which pervades every area of Chinese thought and life: every mountain has a sunny and a shady side; one cannot exist without the other and because they contain a small amount of the other’s nature, so they can transform each other. Nothing, therefore, is either all good or all bad.

Gone are the days when we were told to ‘Eat up, it’s good for you. ’ Perhaps the Great Tao can help us understand where our parents and teachers have failed.
Yin
and
yang
are not so much opposites as potential. From the dark and passive female
yin
, the bright and active male
yang
is born. This might be a difficult concept for the Western mind, trained to think of a square as a square and not as a would-be circle; but, once grasped, this idea opens up a world of possibilities. A
like
becomes a potential
dislike
and a
dislike
a potential
like
. When
yin
and
yang
is applied to the Chinese diet,
zhou
and
tang
can be better understood.
Fan
, or rice, is potential
zhou
; in fact I often make
zhou
from leftover rice.
Cai
is a potential
tang
, with many combinations, tomato and egg for example, used both in dishes and soups.

Tang
– soup

Like everything else in Chinese cooking, soup makes sense from a nutritional but also an environmental point of view. My grandfather used to make my mother drink the water he had used to cook the vegetables. This was a standing joke in our family until the time we rented a courtyard house in a small peasant village just outside Beijing and found that the water supply was restricted. Though the owner had warned us to take bottles, of course we forgot, and then were horrified to find that our limited supply had run out. Suddenly my children were faced with the option of either going thirsty or of drinking the water which I had used to blanch the broccoli. Chinese soups are slightly more interesting than tepid broccoli water, but the concept is often the same. They usually combine two or more complementary or contrasting ingredients and a couple of chunks of ginger and spring onion to flavour the stock. Leafy greens feature heavily and other ingredients might include egg, meat or offal, fish, seafood, dried mushrooms or other fungus, seaweed or tofu. Sesame oil or chopped coriander is often sprinkled on the top to add fragrance, and white pepper is used to add a kick and to help digestion.

Because most people do not adopt the Taoist approach to eating, I have made a real effort over the years to find some Chinese soups that are to the Western taste. I used to include three simple recipes in my classes. My favourite was a light vegetable recipe with a mixture of textures, but I found that most of my students felt indifferent to it. There was an unusual combination of winter melon, which is a bit like a marrow but with a smoother texture, and pork balls, which my children loved. ThenXiaoDing introducedme to a delicate white combination of grated Chinese (daikon) radish and cellophane noodles topped with crisply fried Sichuan peppercorns.

The fluid element in your diet doesn’t have to be the washing up water type, either; any type of liquid food is nourishing. This is one area where many food cultures have something to offer. Minestrone, Scotch broth, mulligatawny and various chowders are all packed with nutrients. Practically every leafy or root vegetable can be made into soup, and pulses are a convenient and nutritious addition. Traditional combinations include pea and lettuce, leek and potato and curried parsnip. I like to add Asian flavours to my soups: pumpkin or butternut squash with ginger and red chilli, finished with a splash of coconut milk; red or brown lentils with cumin, coriander, garlic and fresh green chilli. Invest in a handheld blender and you can make all manner of thick soups, and thus find yet another way to increase the range of vegetables in your diet.

One way to make a light and nutritious broth is to boil, rather than fry, all the ingredients, including the supporting vegetables such as onion, garlic or chilli, and then add a splash of a good-quality cold-pressed oil just before serving. Depending on the flavour required, any combination of whole cloves of garlic, pieces of ginger and spring onion, shallots, pieces of dried red chilli or other herbs and spices may be added to the water. The garlic cloves and onion pieces can be peeled and then blended with the main ingredients, although other additions are best removed with a slotted spoon to avoid crunchy bits in the finished soup.

Zhou
– porridge

So much for soup.
Zhou,
or porridge, is something else again. I have now eaten it for breakfast every day for the past two years and quite often as a snack, so if I don’t have it, I miss it terribly. But when my nine-year-old son put it on his list of ‘hates’ for a school assignment, along with jellied eggs – a lightly steamed concoction that is Xiao Ding’s favourite cure for diarrhoea – I had a degree of sympathy. There is nothing visually inviting about a bowl of white slop and the whole eating experience is very different from what we are accustomed to in the West.

I first tasted
zhou
when we were in the countryside up by the Miyun reservoir, under the shadow of one of the tributaries of the Great Wall. We stayed in a traditional courtyard house, devoid of plumbing or central heating, which belonged to the charismatic Guo Gui Lan, a forceful fifty-something country woman. Millet porridge was standard early-morning fare, topped with a fried egg if you were a paying customer, and we all knew better than to ask Guo Gui Lan for an alternative. Unlike rice
zhou
, which is quite slimy and very light in taste, millet porridge has a slightly nutty flavour and grainy texture. In Western terms, millet is full of vitamins and rich in iron, so there are plenty of reasons for persevering with it.