Sunny Health

For those who celebrate Chinese New Year, Hot pots, or steamboats, are practically staples for the reunion dinner. And what’s not to like about them? They’re convenient, accommodate a large variety of ingredients and hence cater to different tastes, and are healthy. Well, healthier than the deep fried stuff, right? After all, it comes with a soup base and lots of vegetables.

This is indeed true for the most part, but as with most meals, it depends on the ingredients consumed and how they are prepared. A healthy cooking method is only half the battle won. For a truly healthy hot pot, the following factors count too:

Cut back on sauces.
Sauces like soya sauce and chilli sauce are rich in sodium, so you'd want to refrain from using too much of it. Instead, allow your tastebuds to enjoy the natural flavour of the food derived from the rich broth. 

Choose fresh, not processed.
Ingredients like fish cakes, crabsticks and sausages, while convenient, are processed, and would contain higher amounts of preservatives. Fresh meat like thinly sliced lean pork (also known as shabu shabu), and chicken breast, are much healthier alternatives, and they're easy to cook too.

Watch your prawn intake.
Prawn is a popular seafood ingredient for the hot pot, and if you’re the type of person who wants to have your money’s worth, this is one of the ingredients you’d want to zero in on at the buffet. But if you have heart problem, you’ll have to watch it. This seafood ingredient is high in cholesterol. According to Healthline, a small serving of 100g of prawns supplies about 200 milligrams (mg) of cholesterol. That’s a full day’s allotment for people with high risk of heart disease. People who suffer from high cholesterol, hypertension and diabetes should moderate their seafood intake in general.


Eat your vegetables, and make it quick.
Sure they probably aren’t as value-for-money or delicious as the meat and seafood, but they are important for a balanced diet. Besides, just binging on meat and seafood is very highly to lead to indigestion and heart burn. However, it is also important to not cook your vegetables for too long. In fact, overcooking any sort of food, especially vegetables, leads to significant loss of vitamins and minerals.

It is easy to see when leafy vegetables are overcooked. They lose their vibrant green sheen and turn yellow, and that’s when they’ve lost most of their vitamin B. Generally, green leafy vegetables are done cooking in 3 minutes or less. Hardier vegetables like cabbages, carrots and mushrooms tend to be cooked in ten to fifteen minutes. In fact, mushrooms are good choices for hot pots as not only are they rich in fibre, but according to Business Insider, it’s practically impossible to overcook them. This is because in the cell walls of mushrooms, there is a polymer called chitin, which is very heat stable. 

Don't drink too much soup.
We’re often bestowed the benefits of consuming soup. Soupy dishes are healthier. They contribute to water consumption and so on. However, when you leave your steamboat soup to boil continuously with its huge amount of ingredients, the soup becomes concentrated with nitrates, fats and excess proteins.  This coagulates into the white film you often see floating at the surface of your soup. Scoop it up so you can continue, but there will still be some remnants in the soup below, and eventually, it will have to be time to call it a night.

Go easy on the carbos.
Many hot pot eateries will offer rice or vermicelli to go with your meal. Why not reserve all that space for the ingredients, and cut down on piling on the calories? If you must have a staple to go with the ingredients, then opt for half a bowl or less.

For many travelers these days, a common concern is remaining connected. It has almost become a must for lodgings to provide free Wifi in order to remain competitive. Portable wifi or data sim have become a common travel-related expenditure. Many countries have wifi spots at places of interest to attract tourists.

Indeed, having internet connection on the go is very useful especially for those who travel free and easy. You would be able to rely on online navigation tools like Google maps, look a train timings, check out recommendations for good eating places near your location and so forth. Then there are the travel bloggers who provide daily or even 'live' updates of their adventures.

On the other hand, there are also the people who feel compelled to remain connected for reasons not related to travel. These are the people who have to check their work emails every so often, or who feel the need to see what their friends are doing on social media at the expense of being distracted from their own travels.

With connectivity becoming a need rather than a luxury, "digital anxiety" though not yet an official condition, is becoming a real concern among the technologically advanced countries, or a "first world problem". As the term suggests, a person with digital anxiety feels anxious to be separated from his or her communication devices. Apart from feeling stressed and being unable to focus, they may scratch or fidget, behaviours attributed to anxiety.

It is not as serious as addiction; most people with digital anxiety would agree that they should spend less time on their gadgets, but they find it difficult to execute this without breaking out a sweat over it. Much time and productivity is wasted each day as one succumbs to the urge to check out every notification from the phone or scroll through their social media feed every few minutes and add their own status updates to the feeds. It's as though one's hand and their phone are of opposing poles.

Staying connected is certainly not a bad thing. It is a convenient way to keep up to date with what all your friends and family are up to, even the ones you don't get time to hang out with often. Many people use social media to extend invites for outings and gatherings. Certain jobs and identities require a well-curated and active social media account. Moreover, social media is also a platform for entertainment and knowledge.

However, if you feel that you are no longer deriving fun and relaxation, or reading things that are worth reading (it seems that now every article shared on social media must be questioned for authenticity due to the proliferation of falsehoods), or worst, you're wasting your time arguing with people online or justifying your stand, then it's definitely time to cut back.

Being able to cease social media usage altogether, commonly termed a 'digital detox' would be the best-case scenario if you do not actually use it for anything concrete. You do not have to stop using it completely, but short periods of detox every now and then, for example, during a weekend or while you're on vacation, can help you be more in control of your impulses and appreciate life without social media. You can do this by uninstalling the relevant apps or even turning off your internet connection.

Another practical solution is to get to the root and analyse your motives for using social media, and then think about whether you are in fact achieving your goals through social media. Apart from entertainment and knowledge, many people use it because it helps combat loneliness. The thing about social media is that it gives one a sense of belonging without requiring that individual in-person interaction. Social media enables you to connect with like-minded people over topics you care about, and when you share your status updates, photos etc with people who "like" them, that gives the feeling of validation. While some people discover life-long friendships this way, few people would concur that they consider every follower on their social media account as "friends". Interactions online are also often artificial. People "like" your post in hopes for receiving a "like" back, rather than because they really appreciate it. Why should you waste time impressing people whom you don't consider to be your friends?

Just like getting rid of an addiction, achieving control over social media usage is challenging. Don't be too hard on yourself if you find yourself constantly grabbing your phone. Old habits die hard, but keep trying and you will eventually succeed, and the feelings more empowering than garnering a bunch of "likes" from people who don't really matter.

Many of us would have considered caffeine a life-saver at least a few times in a life time. From coffee to chocolate to energy drinks to painkillers, caffeine is found in many substances that have the ability to give us a surge in energy to complete that seemingly unthinkable task at hand, or simply to make us feel lifted ala chocolate.


Caffeine makes us feel "high" because it is a stimulant, and stimulants have a large impact on our body. In high doses over a short amount of time, it can cause the heart to beat faster than usual and erratically, which can eventually be fatal.

This was what happened to a healthy teenager from South Carolina in April this year. He collapsed after drinking a latte from McDonald's, a large Mountain Dew soft drink and then an energy drink in a container the size of a large soft drink, in just under two hours. He died from a caffeine-induced cardiac event causing a probable arrhythmia (a condition whereby the heart beat is too fast or irregular)

According to caffeineinformer.com, a McDonald's latte has 142mg of caffeine, a 570ml (20oz) Mountain Dew has 90mg, and a 450ml energy drink can have as much as 240mg. This means that he would have consumed around 470 mg of caffeine within 2 hours.

Mayoclinic states that for most healthy adults, up to 400mg of caffeine a day is a safe amount to consume. Meanwhile, adolescents should limit their caffeine intake to under 100mg. So if you're someone who consumes energy drinks and/or several cups of coffee a day, especially black coffee, be sure to read the labels to make sure you stay within the safe range.

Caffeine overdose may produce the following symptoms, according to Healthline and Inc.com:

• dizziness
• diarrhea
• increased thirst 
• diuresis (increased urination)
• difficulty in falling asleep
• headache
• fever
• irritability / jitters / restlessness
• Heartburn / reflux

The above are not so severe and should go away when you limit your caffeine intake and drink more water.

• trouble breathing
• vomiting
• hallucinations
• confusion
• chest pain
• irregular or fast heartbeat
• uncontrollable muscle movements
• convulsions

The above are serious and immediate medical help must be sought.

Babies can suffer from caffeine overdose too if their breast milk contains excessive caffeine. Hence, it is important for pregnant and breast-feeding Mums to limit their caffeine intake.

Ultimately, if you find yourself having to rely on energy drinks or coffee to stay energised, a much healthier and more effective way in the long term is to get sufficient sleep. Check out previous articles here and here on how to fall asleep more easily and getting better-quality sleep. If all else fails, seek professional help as long-term insomnia has very harmful effects on the body.