How to Order Chinese Takeaway on a Diet

Eating out is calorie-dense as a rule. Across major UK restaurant chains, the average main meal was found to contain about 977 kcal, and only around 9 percent met the 600 kcal public-health guide for a main. Chinese takeaway food is not automatically worse than that, but the format makes it easy to stack several dishes and sides into one meal.

Two techniques do most of the damage. The first is deep-frying: battering chicken, prawns, or tofu and dropping it in oil roughly doubles the calories of the same food cooked another way. The second is sweet sauces. Sweet and sour, honey, hoisin-heavy glazes, and sticky barbecue sauces carry a lot of added sugar, which adds calories without filling you up. The stir-fried vegetables and plain proteins underneath are rarely the issue.

These give you the most food and protein for the calories, so you finish full rather than heavy. Plenty of them are plant based and work as a main in their own right.

• Steamed dishes: steamed fish, steamed dumplings, or steamed chicken and vegetables are light and high in protein.
• Stir-fried protein with vegetables in a light sauce, such as chicken, beef, prawns, or tofu with black bean, ginger and spring onion, or plain garlic sauce.
• Chop suey and vegetable stir-fries, which are mostly vegetables in a light sauce and easy to eat a big satisfying volume of.
• Tofu and mixed vegetable dishes for a plant-based main that is high in protein when tofu is the base, not just a side of greens.
• Plain boiled or steamed rice rather than egg fried rice, or share a portion of fried rice instead of having your own.
• Clear soups like hot and sour or a wonton soup to start, which take the edge off your appetite for very few calories.

You do not have to give these up. The trick is to treat them as a shared extra for the table rather than a main each. That way you get the taste without three portions of deep-fried food landing on your plate at once.

A note on salt: Chinese takeaway food is often very high in sodium from soy, oyster, and black bean sauces. It will not affect your weight, but if you watch your blood pressure it is worth going easy on the extra soy sauce and not drinking the sauce at the bottom of the tub.

A simple template keeps you from over-ordering, which is where most of the trouble starts. Larger portions reliably make people eat more without feeling any fuller, so ordering slightly less than feels right is usually the smart move.

1. Anchor on a lean protein and vegetables. A stir-fried chicken, beef, prawn, or tofu dish with a vegetable side is your main event.
2. Pick one carb, in a sensible portion. Boiled rice or plain noodles, not a full portion of egg fried rice plus a main plus a side of noodles.
3. Have one fried thing, if you want it. One shared portion of spring rolls or sweet and sour, treated as the treat, rather than a fried dish each.
4. Add vegetables freely. Stir-fried greens, chop suey, and mixed vegetables are the part you can genuinely relax about.
5. Order for the people at the table, not one extra. It is easy to add a dish just in case. That spare dish is usually what turns a good meal into too much food.