How to eat cold noodles to cool off in a ‘healthy’ way?

At one time, 'Naengmyeon' was considered the most favorite summer food among Koreans.

Naengmyeon is considered the best food to cool down from the heat. It is chewy and has a broth with ice cubes floating in it.

If you take a bite of the noodles and the spicy sauce, you will feel the sweat running down your back cool down in an instant.

 

But it turns out that the cold noodles that make us happy are actually the main culprit of the 'sodium' bomb.

So, aside from cold noodles, how can we eat the foods we crave in the summer in a healthy way?

Seoul Metropolitan Government Food Safety Information introduces healthy ways to enjoy summer delicacies.

 

 

'Healthy food' that tries to cool you down but ends up being a 'sodium bomb'

 

When the heat is at its peak, we seek out nutritious food to restore our energy.

When it comes to representative health foods, hot soups like samgyetang, chueotang, and gomtang come to mind.

 

Health food is literally high-protein, high-fat food that helps digestion and absorption and greatly helps to strengthen physical strength.

It may not be good for everyone's body. Since most health foods are soups,

This is because the sodium content dissolved in the broth can be excessive and potentially harmful to your health. The same goes for naengmyeon.

 

Usually, when I eat this kind of food, I even finish the soup, which has a high salt content.

With the addition of kimchi and salted seafood served as side dishes, sodium intake naturally increases.

Most health foods are very high in calories as well as sodium, so after eating one meal,

After that, the remaining calories are likely to be stored as fat.

When eating nutritious food, it is best to eat mostly side dishes and eat less soup.

Since most of them come with the seasoning already adjusted, it is recommended not to add salt separately.

Cold noodles, a summer delicacy, are high in carbohydrates and calories.

 

Naengmyeon, a representative summer delicacy. It is a dish that contains a variety of ingredients in harmony and is used as a seasoning for naengmyeon.

Peppers are rich in vitamins A and C, and the capsaicin that gives them their spicy flavor stimulates gastric juices to stimulate the appetite.

It helps improve digestive function by promoting secretion.

 

However, if you look closely, cold noodles, which whet our appetites, are actually a typical high-carbohydrate food and are high in calories.

It depends on how you make the broth and noodles, but generally

Bibim Naengmyeon has about 623 calories (550g), and Mul Naengmyeon has about 552 calories (800g, Ministry of Food and Drug Safety).

 

Based on 100g of weight, they are 113 calories and 69 calories respectively.

It is higher than or similar to Jjamppong (69 calories per 100g), which is known as a high-calorie food.

 

Even though the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends a daily intake of 2000 mg of sodium,

 

According to data from the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, the sodium content of a bowl of cold noodles is 2618 mg, and that of spicy cold noodles is 1663 mg.

 

For this reason, it is better to leave some of the broth in the cold noodles.

It is good to add lettuce, radish sprouts, and cucumbers, which are rich in potassium and help excrete sodium.

 

Also, when eating bibim naengmyeon, there is already seasoning sauce, so if possible

Avoid vinegar and mustard and try to eat it with other vegetables.

 

 

 

Reporter Jeong Ji-in (heung@kormedi.com)