Mid-Autumn Festival: Check the labels on mooncakes to control sugar and sodium, and mix your own sauces for barbecue side dishes
Next weekend is the Mid-Autumn Festival. The Taipei City Department of Health inspected a total of 80 products on the market, including mooncakes, barbecue ingredients and seasoning sauces, and all met the quality standards; however, a total of 15 businesses, including SunnyHills, had nutrition labels that did not comply with regulations, accounting for 34.9%. The Department of Health stressed that all of them have been instructed to make improvements, and that businesses may only continue selling once the improvements are completed.
Under the new "Matters to Be Observed for Nutrition Labeling of Prepackaged Foods" that took effect on July 1 this year, businesses must calculate the sugar content of the product itself together with any added sugar; at the same time, sodium content must be expressed as a whole number.
The nutrition format has also been changed from the original 5 types to 2, meaning businesses can only choose between "per serving and per 100g/ml" or "per serving and percentage of daily reference value."
Well-known businesses such as SunnyHills and Shang Cheng Bakery make the list
Besides eating mooncakes, since people are also in the habit of having a barbecue during the Mid-Autumn Festival, Lin Yung-pei, a dietitian at the Zhongxing Branch of Taipei City Hospital, suggests that people should reduce their use of seasoning sauces and barbecue sauces. Because commercially sold barbecue sauces mostly contain sugar, sodium and fats, spreading them on marinated meats that already contain salt can easily lead to excessive intake of salt and sugar.
"In fact, people might consider making their own barbecue sauce," Lin Yung-pei said. People just need to take2tablespoon of commercially sold barbecue sauce and mix it with2tablespoon of mirin, half an orange, and apple and pineapple150grams and stir together; or2tablespoon of barbecue sauce, with1tablespoon of mirin,2teaspoon of minced garlic,50grams of tomato, onion, celery,25grams of scallion, cilantro,20grams of pepper, etc.
During the barbecue, she also suggests using "vegetable-wrapped meat rolls" or eating more mushrooms to increase fiber intake, and eating vegetable juice after the meal and exercising more to boost metabolism.
As for mooncakes, she pointed out that the average commercially sold egg yolk pastry has as many as250calories, and a green bean paste pastry also has224calories. For an adult weighing50kg, it would take6hours of continuous brisk walking at a speed of1km/h to burn off these calories, so she suggests that people share them among several people to reduce the burden on the body.
Download (PDF, 86KB)
Download (PDF, 148KB)