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Amy Nip

Traditional beliefs on how to maintain a healthy diet while celebrating the Lunar New Year could be misleading, according to the Hospital Authority.
Drinking tea after eating a lot of festive food could make  people feel better but will not  stop  them  putting on weight, warned a nutritionist.
'It makes you less full and reduces discomforts in your digestive  tract. But it doesn't mean you are not absorbing fat [in food],' said Leslie Chan Kwok-pan,  a registered dietician and consultant with the Hospital Authority's Health InfoWorld.
Chemicals in tea emulsify fat, breaking it into tiny droplets which makes it easier to digest, he explained.
Another common practice, frying rice cakes after dipping them in stirred eggs, makes the cakes oilier.
'The eggs make the cakes absorb more oil,' Mr Chan said. To reduce the amount of oil used when frying the food, use a brush to coat the pan with oil, he said.
For women concerned about their weight, salty carrot cakes - even those containing meat - are a better  choice than sweet rice cakes. Five to six slices of carrot cake contain 100 calories, which is equivalent to a small sponge cake. The same amount of rice cake contains 250 calories, similar to a slice of cheesecake.
Alcohol or soft drinks together with festive cakes are the worst combination and should be avoided by people with stomach problems, he advised.
For people who feel unusually full or are suffering from constipation after days of feasting, Mr Chan recommended a diet of multi-grain congee. The grains contain more dietary fibre than rice.
Meanwhile, a study due to be published in the Hong Kong Medical Journal found that Hong Kong children are more likely to breathe in bits of food  - usually watermelon seeds or peanuts - during the Lunar New Year than on other days of the year. The research team studied cases of such foreign matter breathed in by children admitted to Queen Elizabeth Hospital from 1993 to 2006, and found that 63 per cent of them occurred during or around the Lunar New Year.



Hospital chiefs cast doubt on traditional beliefs about diet