Professor Nicolae Hâncu, co-coordinator of the National Competence Center in Healthy Lifestyle, points out that fasting products can be harmful to health if we cook them in an unhealthy way. He doesn't recommend “nutritional modernisms” like pate or plant-based meat.
Professor Nicolae Hâncu draws attention to vegetable pate. PHOTO: PIxabay/phuonghoangthuy
“Added to the challenges of fasting is an extremely treacherous thing, and I'm not kidding, but I also don't want to be accused of having anything to do with vegetarian or plant-based eating. We have to be very careful about the preparation method. For example, we have the potato, which is a widely used food. It's not just a baked potato, there's a healthy way to cook it, with straw potatoes”explains professor Nicolae Hâncu.
He recommends eating vegetables – grains, vegetables, fruits – daily or several times a day.
“They should be unrefined, they should be as fresh as possible, they should be, as much as possible, from the area close to consumption to avoid long-distance transport”details the nutritionist.
As far as cereals are concerned, avoid refined corn, to which sugar and all kinds of ingredients have been added. Instead, we should turn to unrefined grains like oats and barley.
He also recommends walnuts and hazelnuts, but which should not be roasted and “drowned in salt or sugar.”
Temperance to what is permitted
“What can be included in the fasting diet varies according to religious recommendations. The priests have their own rules and they say that certain foods during fasting are not recommended, and for other foods you have exemption”explains the teacher.
He claims that many foods that are allowed in fasting are not healthy.
“First of all, you need a lot of moderation, because, for example, alcohol is allowed on certain days when there is a holiday. But alcohol is not part of a healthy diet“, he explains.
In addition, sugar is also allowed in fasting, because it is not a product of animal origin.
“Right now, it's one of the most outcast food components we have. And rightly so, because there is very clear evidence that sugar and salt are harmful if not consumed sparingly“, explains the nutritionist.
He does not recommend vegetable pate and vegetable meat
About vegetable pâté, the nutritionist says that “it's a disaster”.
“When a manufacturer appeared here, through Cluj, he sent some samples to the diabetes clinic. I told my colleagues to taste it, it didn't taste bad, but when I asked for the composition… There's no way I'd recommend something like that, I'm a total enemy of these nutritional modernisms like pate or vegetable meat“, Hâncu explained.
With regard to protein intake, during periods of relaxation, the nutritionist recommends the consumption of fish, whether we are talking about salmon, an essential ingredient in the Nordic diet – one of the healthiest in the world, or whether we are talking about Romanian trout, which is more within our reach.
Proteins can also come from leguminous products such as beans, lentils, peas, soy, which Professor Hâncu recommends daily whether we are talking about a fasting period or whether we are talking about healthy omnivorous nutrition.
