Healthy Eating in Taipei
As part of an effort to know what other blogs are out there related to Taiwan, I did a quick search of:
and looked at the top few blogs.
and looked at the top few blogs.
Quick aside -- I have a love/hate relationship with using search to find blogs. On one hand, using search will help me find the information I want as quickly as possible. On the other hand, I feel that search heavily favors sites that have been clicked on a bunch of times and have good SEO -- which unfortunately means my blog would probably not show up in a search. As a reader you can help me in many different ways (one of which is making my blog your homepage).
The top search results were [1] [2] [3]. This post from blog [1] I found to be of particular interest, since there was a mention of one negative of Taiwan being that the most famous foods “are not very healthy”. I agree with that sentiment since I personally know that eating out all the time in Taiwan can quickly cause weight gain. I first became chubby as a child after a 6 month stint in Taiwan, and wasn’t able to lose that weight for a long time.
As such, I thought it would be useful to some to write a post about healthy eating in Taiwan (yes, it’s possible -- depending how much you want to trade off eating tasty treats).
First of all, I want to debunk some things that are not healthy. Foursquare has a list of “The 15 Best Places for a Healthy Food in Taipei”. I thought there were some restaurants there that are worth trying, but they had a few very suspect choices.
Some examples from there:
Soy bean milk may arguably be semi-healthy if the sugar added is little (make sure to add half sugar!), but for health purposes I would highly advise against getting any of the other non soy bean milk items there, including the sesame bread (燒餅）and the famous long fried donut (油條). This applies to 7. 永和豆漿大王 as well.
This is just a horrible suggestion. Only one thing on that list that isn’t a complete travesty is stinky tofu, which is still only *arguably* healthy. Stinky tofu is also often fried or deep fried, which really elevates it to the unhealthy level. This applies to the stinky tofu that is listed on any of the other items in their top list.
As for the other items, milk tea with tiny tapioca (boba) is a definite no. The tapioca pearls are made from brown sugar, sweet potato, and starch. The milk tea is made with tea, and a bunch of condensed milk and sugar syrup. Just not a good idea to be drinking this too much on a healthy diet. Shaved ice isn’t that bad in itself, but usually a bunch of condensed milk is added as well. Fried chicken and fried milk balls -- they speak for themselves as pretty much anything with “fried” can be considered unhealthy.
There are definitely healthy items to get at Din Tai Fung, but definitely should not be eating too many meat-filled dumplings or Xiao Long Bao (小籠包).
Now to the important part -- how you *should* eat in Taipei in order to stay healthy. The trick here is to make sure that wherever you go, you go somewhere that has the option to get some fresh, non-greasy, non-sugary items that don't have too many preservatives (this rules out night-markets for the most part -- though getting fruit skewers there is a nice snack!).
For instance, here are some healthy meal ideas:
- Hot pot in Taipei is excellent. A great way to get a variety of meats and veggies. There are quite a few good places in Taipei -- just make sure to find a place that is using fresh veggies and unspoiled meat!
- Sashimi and spinach ohitashi. Taipei is known to have great sashimi and sushi restaurants, due to a close relation with Japan: Addiction Aquatic Development is very good, albeit a bit pricey.
Enjoy these healthy options, but don’t remember to treat yourself once in a while!