The two great Chinese philosophies, Confucius and Taoism, not only contributed to philosophy but also to the way the Chinese food is prepared and served. Preparing Chinese food requires a lot of expertise and experience.

The Chinese culture has a special way of serving food that is cut into small bite pieces which is made almost mandatory. It is hard to find knives at the dinner table in Chinese food serving. Chinese food also stresses the importance of the right combination of ingredients like herbs and condiments. The food should also look good in color and texture and a well prepared food deserves to be eaten with harmony.

The Chinese food is cooked with the intention of increasing the health benefits like longevity and having healing powers and medicinal value. A good Chinese food is prepared with poly unsaturated oils and does not use milk based ingredients like cream, butter and cheese.

Although meat is used in Chinese food, it is used in moderation and hence avoids high levels of animal fat and cholesterol. Such a food is called authentic Chinese food which is in fact, an ideal Chinese food, good for the health. In a traditional Chinese food, emphasis is given to rice, noodles and vegetables.

The Chinese food can be chosen, to make a great difference by opting for various dishes with different nutritional value. Chicken or beef dishes and vegetables are a good choice. Fried dishes like sesame chicken can be substituted with cashew chicken or beef and broccoli. Such dishes offer nutritional value that is not contained in traditional plates like lo mein, which are noodles soaked with oil, fats and carbohydrates.

Fried rice contains a large amount of cholesterol and carbohydrates and hence brown rice can be taken instead. Chinese food largely makes use of soy sauce and other additives which are rich in sodium content. A Chinese food is better to be started with sauce but the down side is that it contains a lot of sodium- almost three to four times what is really needed. But the safest bet is vegetables and steamed dishes or stir fried with little or no oil.

To lower fat calories, vegetable based dishes with a variety of sauces and steamed rice complete a healthy Chinese food. To wind up the Chinese meal, fortune cookies which contain only 15 calories would be perfect.

To sum up, a Chinese food that contains more of vegetables, snow peas, low in salt can be considered to be a healthy food. The choice of a restaurant between an inexpensive one and high end restaurant also is influential in differing the health of the Chinese food that is being served. The server or the manager would also be eager to offer assistance on the type of dishes and their nutritional content.

ARTICLE SOURCE: http://www.articlesbase.com/cooking-tips-articles/health-benefits-of-chinese-foods-636301.htmlAUTHOR: Russ Snapper