Green Guide to Holiday Eating, Issue 1: Only by Cherishing Food Can You Have Abundance Year After Year

In the past, when resources were scarce, farming families would only slaughter chickens and ducks and buy fish in order to honor the gods and ancestors. A table piled with delicacies was an opportunity that came only once a year, so children were always happy to shuttle around the "kitchen corner," helping to prepare these rare and precious treats. Though times have changed and people do not necessarily cook the New Year's Eve dinner at home, a reunion hot pot gathering is bound to be a table full of abundant delicacies.

Today, national health issues have shifted from nutritional deficiency to chronic disease problems such as obesity caused by nutritional excess. Coupled with the rise of the green eating concept, everyone has begun to learn to control their own diet in pursuit of eating healthily. But the once-a-year New Year holiday gathering has become a health blind spot. From New Year's Eve to the day before work resumes, almost every meal is high in oil, high in salt, high in sugar, lacking fiber, and not fresh. Eating to the point of fullness at every meal, with bottled drinks and festive snacks in endless supply, has turned the New Year family reunion into a period of food waste of "surplus at every meal," with leftovers and garbage increasing at an alarming rate.

Year After Year of Abundant "Leftover" Eating

At a recent "Green New Year Diet Guide" lecture held by the Taichung Chapter of the Homemakers United Foundation, dietitian Sun Pei-chun opened by reminding everyone with the "National Dietary Indicators" that New Year eating should still follow principles such as "sugary drinks should be avoided, drinking more plain water is healthier, less meat and more vegetables, less refined food, fresh whole foods and less processed food"... and stressed in class that during the New Year period one must practice dietary restraint to avoid overburdening the stomach and intestines, because "if you feel full, you are already overfull."