Doctors warn Chinese about their New Year eating habits (Feature)

By David Chang Feb 14, 2010, 10:36 GMT

Taipei - Chinese around the world began to celebrate the Chinese New Year holidays on Sunday, but doctors were also warning them to stay away from snacks and oily food to avoid gaining weight.

On the eve of the holidays, Taiwan's Bureau of Health Promotion held a news conference and posted a notice on its website to caution people against careless eating during the Chinese New Year holidays.

The notice included a chart showing the calories of snacks, especially nuts, and the amount of exercise needed to get get rid of the extra weight.

'If you eat 200 grams of watermelon seeds, which has 1,100 calories, you must jog for three hours to get rid of the calories,' bureau director Chiu Shu-ti said.

'A bottle of sugared drink has 180 calories. You must jog for half an hour to wipe out those calories,' she also noted.

Food served during the Chinese New Year holidays - like sticky rice cakes, fried meat balls and fatty pork - are usually rich in calories and protein, but also fattening.

The bureau said that even eating small quantities of such snacks, people could gain 1.5 kilograms during the holidays.

The bureau gave four tips on healthy nutrition during the holidays, including advice to eat less meat and fried food with sauces while eating more fruits and vegetables. It also urged moderation in high-calorie foods and snacks and to cut down or completely stop drinking sugared drinks and alcohol.

Nutritionist Hsieh Fang-yi offered a harsher warning: Do not touch snacks at all.

'I tell people not to touch snacks because if you eat one, you want to eat two and more, and you can't stop,' she told the German Press Agency dpa.

'It takes great will power to suppress the urge to eat snacks, but we must control the urge because overeating not only put make us fat, it can also cause stomach and vascular diseases,' she said.

'My slogan is: Our hand controls our happiness,' Hsieh said. 'Our mouth controls our happiness. So if we want to stay slim and healthy, we should watch our hands and mouth.'