Chinese Food Calories

There was an interesting theory going around at one point that Chinese food was not high in calories and was quite healthy. I think this came about because everyone saw that Chinese people were pretty skinny and believed that this was because of the food. The fact is, the Chinese food we eat in our restaurants has very little in common with the food in china. Our local Chinese food calories are clearly much higher than proper authentic Chinese, and in addition to the preparation and the ingredients, another factor that plays into the equation is how the food is eaten.

We tend to eat with forks and spoons, unlike the Chinese, who almost always eat with chopsticks, this means that we get a lot more of the sauce on our food when we eat. This is not an issue if you do eat with chopsticks, but there is a significant amount of extra sauce that you consume when you use a spoon and this can elevate the amount of calories consumed. Another way to minimize the calories, is to order more vegetable dishes. These tend to be lower on the calorie scale and they are either steamed or stir fried so there is a higher chance of the nutrients still being intact. Choose steamed rice over fried rice as it can contain almost half the calories.

I have put together the calorie counts of some of the more popular chinese foods: