Eat Clean: Wok Yourself to Health. Ching-He Huang

myself and sharing with others the importance of eating well.

      Today people are suffering from more diseases such as diabetes and heart disease, and from allergies, than ever before. I was always taught that prevention is better than cure, that our diet determines the health of our bodies. With this in mind, I wanted to create a book that would be useful and practical every day, in every season, knowing that the quantities have been measured for salt, sugar, fat and calories. However, food and its health benefits don’t just come down to conventional nutritional analysis. There are many things we don’t know and we shouldn’t discount alternative, unconventional healing efficacies.

      Traditional Chinese dietary advice, for example, follows the age-old principle of yin and yang. Thousands of years of Chinese medical research point to eating and living in harmony with nature. Based on this philosophy, a healthy diet relies on a balance of fresh seasonal ingredients – raw and cooked, hot and cold. Raw foods are deemed ‘cleansing’, cooked foods are considered ‘nourishing’, with some ingredients being more ‘healing’ than others. In traditional Chinese cuisine, few foods were eaten raw because they were deemed too hard for the body to digest. However, having experienced the health benefits of the Western culture of eating raw salads, I have combined the best of Eastern and Western ways of eating. Also vital for good health is knowing how to prepare and cook food to maximise its nutritional benefits, so I have tried to incorporate some of these Eastern principles into my recipes. Combining these with conventional Western nutritional research, I have taken an integrated East–West approach to nutrition, too.

      This book is designed to help you eat clean and fresh every day. The basic tools you need to get started are a carbon-steel wok, an all-purpose chef’s knife or a cleaver, which I prefer, and a chopping board. With spices and Asian storecupboard ingredients that you can build up, eating nutritiously and healthily is at your fingertips.

      By eating a diet made up of 80% plant-based foods and 20% organic meat, fish, dairy and eggs, you will be well on your way to good health. Again, the quality of those ingredients will determine the quality of your health. Clean air and water are perhaps the most important of those, aside from food. We cannot control our water and air quality on a daily basis, but we can control our food choices. Don’t get me wrong: I am no saint, as I succumb to the occasional slice of cake, but consistent efforts make the odd slip-up inconsequential.

      I wish you clean eating and happy, healthy wokking!

       Eat Clean – A Healthy Balance

      The word ‘clean’, as described in the English dictionary, states ‘free from dirt, stain, impurities, pollution or contamination’. How can one possibly eat clean? Why do we need to eat clean?

      When I started on my journey of eating clean, I did not expect to uncover the ‘dirt’… The chances are that if you eat processed foods, drink, smoke, eat a high-sugar and high-fat diet, your body is suffering from toxic overload and is unable to function at its best. You may not be suffering any physical symptoms or illness, but the long-term effects of this accumulation are not good. Daily accumulated damage to your cells and body can lead to serious irreversible damage that could be detrimental to your health. In the present day, there are so many auto-immune diseases and illnesses that doctors do not have the cure for and while there is no direct conclusive proof that diet affects health, you cannot help but see the truths that are right in front of us. Do people who smoke long term suffer lung damage? The answer is yes. Do people who drink excessively suffer liver damage? The answer is yes. Are people who eat a high-sugar diet more likely to suffer from type 2 diabetes? The answer is yes. My mother had type 2 diabetes and she reversed it by adopting healthy, clean eating more than 15 years ago.

      What you put into your body directly affects your health and state of mind. Even a simple cup of coffee gives me a head rush, or a glass of wine makes my face flush. In other words, whatever we put into our bodies, there is an effect as a result of that action. Some effects from food can be more subtle and therefore deceptively harmless, so we often fail to recognise the signs and continue to pollute our bodies until they can’t take any more.

      It isn’t as simple as eating healthy foods, either. It used to be. We have lost control of our food manufacturing and therefore we understand less about the processes than our grandparents did when they used to grow more of their food. Nowadays, 90% of the food found in the supermarket comes from a packet. In the past, most of the food came unpacked – either from a market or local shop or home grown.

      If you truly look at wholefoods – defined as foods found in their natural state – only 10% of the foods found in the supermarkets can really be called ‘whole’ – and that is from the fresh fruit and vegetable counters. And yet within that section, only some products are labelled organic. Shouldn’t all foods be organic, as they once were? What is wrong with the inorganic stuff? What do we not know? Why is there a difference?

      The way our food is produced is no longer simple. Complex food-manufacturing systems dictated to us by fulfilling economic efficiencies means we have lost our primordial ways of living and therefore eating. This balance has to be restored – but because of the complexity of the way our food is produced, we must work harder to seek out the best ingredients – if best means the most nutritious, and ‘nutritious’ being ‘clean’. Knowing where your food comes from and cultivating it as much as you can is difficult in the times we live in, yet, if everyone grew their own food or slaughtered their own animals, we would be a lot ‘cleaner’ and healthier, and we would have much less food wastage.

      Through my own journey, I realised that the food allergies I suffered from were due not to the ingredients themselves, but to the additives the ingredients were combined with. For example, I noticed that when I consumed frozen shellfish, I would sometimes have an allergic reaction. However, on one occasion in Macau, I visited a seafood market where the catch was extremely fresh and the prawns hadn’t had time to be preserved. I didn’t have any allergic reaction at all; I ate six gigantic prawns with no effect, whereas previously any slight contact would have made my face swell in a second. I was in heaven.

      This is when I started to notice a pattern. At first I thought the allergy was just with prawns, but when I consumed pizza dough, nuts or wines, the hives would resurface. My system must have been experiencing a toxic overload whereby any chemicals consumed would give rise to these allergic reactions. It was my body’s way of telling me that I had reached the limit and something drastic had to be done. I didn’t look unhealthy, but internally my body was not happy.

      The body’s natural rhythm and metabolic function is affected by what we consume. If this is disrupted by ingesting high amounts of pollutants and additives, the body will struggle to reach its natural equilibrium. If the metabolism is affected, so is the body’s ability to burn fat. By eating clean, the body will stay clean and, ultimately, it will also be lean.

      Why eat organic?

      I’m a great fan of organic foods and believe that organic produce is healthier, as it is less exposed to artificial chemicals and fertilisers. It has a lower environmental impact and may have a higher nutritional content, too. Organic foods are more expensive to buy, but because of the benefits I really believe they are worth the extra money, so I choose to buy organic fruit and veg, dairy products and fish where possible.

      I also exclusively choose organic meat. This is because I care about animals and their welfare. Organic livestock are given access to the outside, are fed organic food and are not allowed to be given hormones or antibiotics. This is obviously a much more pleasant environment for an animal to be raised in. And even if you are not concerned about animal welfare, eating organic meat makes sense because it means you get tastier cuts of meat that are free from chemicals and artificial drugs.

      The general belief is that animals are not as evolved as humans. They hunt and follow their instincts blindly. However, I believe that as humans we have been blessed with greater consciousness and thus responsibility. Regardless of our instincts, we can consciously choose which actions we take, and by these actions are we defined as