Eating Like a Normal Person

For dinner, my mom turned the leftover rice from lunch and yesterday into two bowls of egg fried rice, boiled a few Chaoshan-style beef balls, and served the lunch leftovers: diced chicken breast stir-fried with carrot and celtuce.

On a normal day, we're honestly a bit lazy about cooking dinner. Most of the time it's lunch leftovers, and if all else fails we can boil some noodles. Convenience comes first.

I told my mom she could buy some chicken breast, chicken thighs and beef shank, pan-fry or braise them, and freeze them. That way, on nights when we don't know what to eat, we can just take some out and heat it up.

I told my mom she eats too little protein. Most of it comes from two eggs at breakfast, and at lunch she has a bit of lean meat at most. All told, she probably gets no more than 40 g of protein a day, which is short of the ideal by around half or more.

I told my mom she should eat more protein. In her situation, she needs at least 1 to 1.2 g per kg of bodyweight a day, or she could easily lose muscle faster.

Take 60 g of protein as an example. How much food does a normal person need to eat to get 60 g of protein?

Two eggs at breakfast. I usually count 7 g per egg, so two eggs give 14 g. For most ordinary people, apart from eggs, the rest of their daily protein can only come from meat.

Pure lean pork or tenderloin has about 20 g of protein per 100 g. That means, on top of two eggs a day, you'd still need about 250 g of pure lean meat, raw weight. With pork belly, you'd need close to 500 g.

Note that this is raw meat. Half a kilo of raw meat doesn't actually amount to much once it's cooked, and most people can eat that in a day.

Then I told my mom how beef, chicken breast and chicken thigh compare with pork.

I treat all of these meats as roughly 20 g of protein per 100 g.

With pork, unless it's pure lean meat, the fat content is a bit higher. But for ordinary people, a bit more fat is fine. What matters is getting the protein.

Chicken breast is the lowest in calories, so it's great for building muscle or cutting. Chicken thigh and beef are about the same in calories, while pork is higher in fat.

Beef is expensive, but it's also rich in iron, zinc, magnesium and B vitamins. It's excellent quality, worth having a few times a month.

Chicken is cheap, most of its fat is unsaturated, it's easy to cook, and it tastes great. The absolute best of the best. No wonder people joke that the whole chicken family are loyal heroes.

When you think about it, if you're not someone who trains, getting 1 g of protein per kg of bodyweight entirely from food really isn't hard.

Most families aren't short of meat on the table. The meat is just often so greasy that you fill up on fat and carbs before you've eaten much of it.

And in a lot of places in Sichuan and Chongqing, people don't eat much pure lean meat. It's mostly fatty-and-lean pork belly, which is extremely high in fat. The same weight makes you just as full, so you end up eating too much fat and too little protein.

So when I say "under half a kilo of meat a day," I mean lean meat.

Most people already eat more fat than they should, so eating less fatty meat is fine.

On top of that, eat as many vegetables as you can.

Wouldn't you call that eating like a normal person?