We all know how delicious Chinese food is. However, not all delightful food is healthy for us. Most of us learn that the hard way.
If you eat foods like chicken fried rice without knowing the outcome that it may have on you, you are in the wrong as it might be dangerous for you and your health.
Is chicken fried rice healthy? Is chicken fried rice bad for you? Usually, chicken fried rice can be bad for your health. But, it does not mean all restaurants produce unhealthy chicken fried rice.
So, what is the answer? Is chicken fried rice good for you? Read the rest of the article to learn the answer and more about chicken fried rice.
What Is Chicken Fried Rice?
Before you learn about whether chicken fried rice is healthy for you, you have to know if fried rice is healthy for you or not because chicken fried rice is basically fried rice with chicken in it.
And before you learn about that, you need to know what fried rice even is.
What Is Fried Rice?
Is fried rice healthy? To learn if it is or not, you need to know what ingredients you can use in making fried rice and what fried rice is.
Firstly, you cook rice in this dish with different healthy ingredients such as vegetables, seafood, red meat, chicken, or eggs. You can even go ahead and add all of these to the mixture and call it fried rice.
Is chicken fried rice Chinese? Yes and no.
In China, they cook traditional fried rice in a wok. They use oil to expand the surface area and give the fried rice a bonus of maximum crispiness.
Plenty of other countries make fried rice apart from China, specifically in Asia. All these countries have their way of making it with their different rice grains.
Is Restaurant Chicken Fried Rice Good For You?
Oily food is never really good for your health. If you make fried rice with chicken, it can be healthy and healthy. It depends on the ingredients you are using to make it.
Here are the ingredients in a restaurant chicken fried rice that makes the chicken fried rice unhealthy for you.
White Rice
We can learn from WebMD that the white rice like basmati rice or jasmine rice that most restaurants use to make chicken fried rice is not rich in fiber content. You will not even feel full after eating it. So you can eat a lot of it at once without thinking twice, which can be bad for your health.
Soy Sauce
Restaurants often use a lot of soy sauce. Regular soy sauce causes your rice to have a lot of sodium, and too much sodium is bad for your health.
Oils
And then, there is the extra oil factor to consider. Restaurants add a lot of vegetable oil to cook, making the rice unhealthy for you.
They use too much vegetable oil than what is best for you and your health to make it easier for them to cook a lot of rice at the same time in the same pan.
This undoubtedly makes the rice greasy and bad for your health.
Is chicken fried rice fattening? Yes, it can be because of too much of the vegetable oil used to make it, like in most restaurants.
Is Homemade Fried Rice Healthy?
Usually, fried rice is not very healthy. However, there are ways to make it much healthier than most restaurant-made chicken fried rice.
Depending on the ingredients, you can quite the delicious chicken fried rice that may even be healthy for you. But, to do so, you need to pick your ingredients wisely. There is a lot of healthy chicken fried rice recipe out there. Cook fired rice using those recipes.
Healthy chicken fried rice calories can be under 300 calories if you make it right. Homemade chicken fried rice calories can be of 200 calories as well.
Let us look at what ingredients you should find in a homemade chicken fried rice to make for a healthy and delicious chicken fried rice.
Brown Rice
Instead of using white rice like most restaurants, try using brown rice to make your homemade chicken fried rice. You can even use some leftover rice as well.
Brown rice is good for your health. It has a lot of fiber content in it, and it even provides protection against type 2 diabetes.
You can use precooked rice or cold rice to make yourself a healthy dish.
Cauliflower Rice
You can also use cauliflower rice instead of your brown cooked rice. Cauliflower rice is very healthy. So, using cauliflower rice can be a good way to make gluten free healthy fried rice.
Healthy Fats
Instead of cooking your rice with unhealthy vegetable oil fats, you can introduce your healthy fried rice to more beneficial fats such as fish or meat fats.
Soy Sauce
If you cannot avoid using soy sauce at all, try using as little low sodium soy sauce as you can to make your healthy chicken fried rice much healthier than most restaurant-made chicken fried rice. You can even use a little oyster sauce for your dish.
Vegetable
Add as many fresh and diced vegetables as you may like, such as carrots, capsicum, green onions, chili, green beans, cabbage, cauliflower, frozen peas, etc.
The more vegetables you add to your chicken fried rice, the better it is going to taste. And, it is going to be quite a healthy dish for you.
Protein
Any kind of protein, from eggs to meat like chicken breast or seafood, is really healthy for you. So, instead of just chicken and the traditional eggs in your chicken fried rice, try mixing it up with other kinds of protein as well. You can make stir fried rice with chicken breasts.
If you are eating a lot of protein, you will feel fuller and eat less rice.
So, is chicken fried rice good for bodybuilding? It is if you are eating a lot of protein for gaining those muscles.
Disadvantages of Eating Unhealthy Chicken Fried Rice
There are a few disadvantages of eating fried rice that is mostly unhealthy for you.
Let’s explore what damages you might suffer in the king run from eating too much unhealthy chicken fried rice.
Weight Gain
Eating a lot of rice of any kind can help you gain weight, which can be bad if you are already overweight or obese.
This is why you should avoid eating too much of any kind of fried rice.
Hypertension
You could get hypertension from eating a lot of rice as it has a lot of soy sauce, which contains a lot of sodium.
Heart Disease
As you know, eating a lot of trans fat and sodium can lead to heart diseases of all kinds as it increases the bad cholesterol in your body.
So, eating a lot of fried rice will definitely make you end up with one of many kinds of heart diseases.
Stroke
Chances of stroke spike because of trans fat and high cholesterol. As eating a lot of oily fried rice can make you have high cholesterol, it can cause you to stroke as well.
