I arrived in the UK last weekend to learn English. So far I have already made a few friends and had some traditional English food here. But after having three days of hamburgers, sandwiches and potatoes, I thought none could be more delicious than Chinese food, especially my favorite-huoguo. You can’t know how excited I was when I got to know that there was going to be a free meal of hotpot to welcome the new students. On the way to the canteen. I seemed to smell huoguo in the air.

To my surprise, when I went into the room, I didn’t see any sign of huoguo. Where was it?

With many questions in my head, I sat down to have the free meal. After talking with an English girl, I got to know that Chinese huoguo is completely different from hotpot. Chinese huoguo is written in two words-hot pot; and hotpot, one word, is a traditional English dish.

Hotpot is made from mutton (羊肉) and onion (洋葱). On the top are pieces of potatoes. People put in the oven (烤箱) all day in a heavy pot on a low heat. You can often see it at parties in the UK because it’s easy to prepare for a large number of people and is not expensive.

Hotpot doesn’t taste bad. However, I still miss huoguo-hot pot, two words!

Everyone who eat instant noodles (方便面) before knows how it looks like. It is very easy to cook it by putting the noodles into the boiling water and add in those MSG (味精) packets, together with your other ingredients like eggs or vegetables. However, have you ever wondered whether this is the correct way of cooking it? When you first took out the noodles from the packaging, you will notice that the noodles are joined together nicely as a piece. In order to make the noodles joined together nicely side by side, some forms of wax coating (石蜡) are needed. It makes the noodles attractive in front of us. However, research has shown that the layer of wax coating (石蜡涂层) on the noodles is quite harmful to our body and we should not eat it too frequently. It is advisable to have a break of 2-3 days before we start to eat another packet of instant noodles as our body need about 3 days to clear that layer of wax coating away from our body system. Do you know the danger of having too much wax coating stored in our stomach? It will lead to CANCER if it is stored in our body system for a long period of time.

Two Keys Points to Take Note While Preparing Instant Noodles 　

1) Wash the instant noodles with warm water first, stir (搅拌) it and pour away the water containing the wax coating.   

2) Repeat Step 1 and try to stir the noodles again to wash away the wax coating on the noodles before cooking it in a new pot of water.

I hope this article will let more people have self-awareness (自我意识) of the hidden danger of instant noodles and thus eat safely and stay healthy.

①Sugar-free cookies, reduced-sugar cereal, sugar-free candy, diet soda. Do these seem like healthier alternatives (替代物)? After sugar became something forbidden in the nutrition and fitness world, sugar-free products acted as alternatives for once beloved sweet drinks and snacks. Claiming to be ZERO sugar, they were believed as healthier choices, especially for those people who manage diabetics (糖尿病), or aim to slim down. But the truth is they aren’t equal to better.

②When a product is labeled sugar-free, it means artificial sweeteners are used instead of real sugar. Artificial sweeteners don’t come from natural sources but they are chemical substances that are added to food and drinks to make them sweeter. Actually, most artificial sweeteners are a lot sweeter than sugar, even 200—600 times sweeter, so only a tiny amount is needed.

③Let’s find out how artificial sweeteners work. They work similarly to regular sugar by exciting your taste buds. The taste buds send signals to the brain that they have tasted something sweet and you feel a similar sense as you would with sugar.

④In recent studies, scientists have revealed artificial sweeteners are more harmful to our body than real sugar. Many businesses market sugar-free alternatives as “low-calorie” or “no-calorie”. It misleads people to believe sugar-free products can make them slim and healthy. But it’s reported that you get no nutritional value from consuming them.

⑤What’s worse, when you eat this kind of sweet food, your body continues to desire it even though your body can’t metabolize (新陈代谢) these sugar-free alternatives. Your brain does not know the difference, either. In turn, sugar-free alternatives connect to weight gain and Type 2 diabetes.

⑥Similarly, artificial sweeteners also damage your gut’s ability to break down sugar which affects everything you eat. In other words, your body doesn’t know how to deal with artificial sweeteners because they have nothing real to process.

⑦Here’s a golden rule: stay away from artificial sweeteners and look for non-sugar, natural sweeteners like Stevia or date sugar. In the war against artificial sweeteners and real sugar, both lose. Satisfy your sweet tooth with natural sugars that come from fruits and stay away from products claiming to be sugar-free or diet!

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