Like breakfast, your dinner is also an essential meal of the day. It is linked to good sleep, lower inflammation, greater resilience to stress, better digestion, and stable blood sugar levels while your body is in rest mode. However, we sometimes unknowingly make mistakes that can affect our health.
Nutritionist Shweta Shah shared the three mistakes one must avoid during dinners. She shared the three foods which are quite popular as dinner choices, but they must be avoided at all costs. The dietitian also shared why you should stop eating them.
1. Say no to salads
Salads are often a pretty popular dinner choice. But did you know that some ingredients used in a salad may not be a great dinner option? Shweta explained, “Since we are all influenced by Western diets, people try to have more raw salads during their dinner, which include too much cauliflower, broccoli, and cabbage. But they are very difficult to digest. So, people should avoid that.”
2. Avoid eating fruits for dinner
Many people eat fruits for dinner. However, according to the nutritionist, fruits have active enzymes that keep you awake. So, it is best to avoid fruits after 5 o'clock.
“Fruits also give you a glucose spike. So, why do we need to spike glucose at night? Because we are not going to use that energy. It will be converted into fat. You may think that I'm eating fruits and fewer calories, but you are actually depositing fats if you are having fruits at night,” Shweta added.
3. Starchy foods
Starchy foods like pizzas and pasta slow down your digestion. Per the nutritionist, you don't need a heavy dinner. “Dinner has to be something like ‘chhota packet bigger dhamaka (small packet bigger results)’. It has to be something like a khichdi with kadi, millet khichdi with kadi or horse gram broth,” she said. She added that the horse gram broth is a coolant, very energetic, nutritious, and a one-pot meal.