I have been chatting to a few of my clients over the last few weeks and a few times the words Chinese Takeway have popped up, OK so everybody gets a takeaway once in a while but when it becomes your "Friday night thing", it's no longer a treat it's now a part of your weekly routine. I'm going to single out the Chinese fast food industry as recent research has found that Chinese takeaway and restaurants are the single most popular style of take-away or restaurant meal in the Island of Ireland (IOI). I'll also go into how bad it really is and the nutritional content of some of their dishes and how they match up against your GDA (Guideline Daily Amounts). So as I was doing a bit of research into this topic I came across a study commissioned by Safefood, an implementation body who promote nutrition issues in Ireland. Visit http://www.safefood.eu or http://www.fsai.ie if you want to look into anything regarding food safety and nutrition in Ireland, they are great sites. The study took 3 of the most popular starters and 3 the most popular mains in Ireland along with boiled rice and egg fried rice, over 220 dishes were ordered and the nutritional composition analysed, these dishes were ordered from all parts of Ireland and the results found were quite eye-opening. If you would like to read the study in full click below. http://www.safefood.eu/SafeFood/media/SafeFoodLibrary/Documents/Publications/Research%20Reports/What-s-in-your-Chinese-Takeaway-FINAL.pdf I have taken a few screenshots of some of the key aspects of the study, note that on average a meal containing Vegetable Spring Rolls, Sweet and Sour Chicken and Egg Fried Rice provides approximately 2184 calories. For females that is 109% of your calories for the day, 106% of your Fat and 160% of your GDA for Salt!! All this is without including a bag of Prawn Crackers they throw in for free, which on average comes in at a whopping 608 calories...but you only have half a bag right? So 304 calories. All of the red coloured circles indicate the highest parameter values and all those circles green represent the lowest.
Boiled rice as you can probably guess is much less in all aspects when compared to the egg fried rice which comes in at 727 calories. The King Prawn Satay has the least of the parameter values on most aspects when compared to the Beef Curry and the Sweet and Sour Chicken. It's fair to say that most people know that Chinese food isn't great for you, but when you do choose to treat yourself always bear in mind that there are slightly healthier options on the menu. This will be a lot easier from 2016, you may have heard earlier in the year that the Irish government passed a bill which states that every restaurant, take-away and food service outlet will have to display calories on their menus. This information will have to be posted alongside the price for the item and at the point where the food is ordered, whether at counters or tables. The action came after recent research showed that 2 out of every 3 adults in Ireland and 1 out of every 4 children is overweight or obese. This tool has been tried and tested in the U.S and has proved to be very effective. The Food Safety Authority of Ireland has created http://www.menucal.fsai.ie, an online calorie counting model, for all outlets to use for free to calculate the calorie content of each product. 95% of consumers want the calories displayed on menus and currently on 8% of fast-food outlets are currently displaying calories on menus so 2016 will be a big year of change. Hopefully this will encourage more people to make the right choices when it comes to eating out! Gary Robb Garyrobbpt@gmail.com 083-179-6648
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