Eating Bean Curd with Other Food

Jun 10
11:17

2011

Yan Hu

Yan Hu

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Bean curd has a history of over 2000 years. It is as important as tea, china, and silk in Chinese culture. With the increasing intercultural communica...

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Bean curd has a history of over 2000 years. It is as important as tea,Eating Bean Curd with Other Food  Articles china, and silk in Chinese culture. With the increasing intercultural communication and the development of global economy, bean curd has entered the houses of families at home and aboard. Eastern people eat bean curd once or twice a week. And many western people would order spicy tofu when they go to eat Chinese dishes. Nowadays, bean curd serves not only as a dish, but also an important participant of culture. The Economic Outlook magazine has predicted that Chinese bean curd will overwhelm electronic products, cars and computers, and become the most potential product. Bean curd is beneficial to health. Usually, it is made of soybeans, which are rich in protein. It provides people with eight necessary amino acids, some fat, adequate carbohydrates, various vitamins and minerals. According to Chinese medicine, bean curd does well in detoxification and adjusting of body liquid. But bean curd has limitations. It contains little methionine. Therefore, it should be cooked together with other food. The dish becomes more nutritious when bean curd is cooked with meat and eggs. If we cook bean curd only, the utilization of protein is not satisfactory. But when it meets meat and eggs, the various amino acids can be fully made use of. Bean curd and kelp also work well. Kelp and bean products are all inexpensive but valuable. They supply nutriments, such as high quality protein, lecithin, oleic acid, vitamin B1, vitamin E, iron and calcium, to people. Meanwhile, bean curd is rich in saponin, which not only prevents the absorption of fat, but also promotes the excretion of iodine as well. Fortunately, kelp provide a large amount of iodine. They successfully complement each other. Besides, it is good for health if people cook bean curd and radish together. Eating too much bean curd would lead to indigestion because bean curd contains only plant protein. In contrast, radish, especially turnip, would accelerate the activities of stomach and intestines. It will not cost you too much time to cook these two kinds of food. You just need to boil them and mix them together with some flavoring. In addition, bean curd and fish perfectly match with each other. As we know, bean curd is lacking in methionine but rich in phenylalanine. But fish is just opposite. It is an ideal source of methionine but has little phenylalanine. If people cook them into one dish, the value is doubled. Except for protein, bean curd and fish offer vitamin D and calcium to people. More importantly, the ingestion of vitamin D can speed up the ingestion of calcium and improve the efficiency at the same time. Therefore, such a dish is in particular suitable for the elderly, children and pregnant women.