Eating porridge for the elderly for a long time is bad for health

There is a saying in our country, "If an old man drinks porridge, he will be blessed and live longer." From ancient times to the present, many elderly people regard this sentence as a health saying. As people get older, their digestive system declines. Drinking porridge appropriately is indeed beneficial to digestion, but if you do it every day, it will be detrimental to your health.

Professor Miao Yide, executive director of the Chinese Geriatrics Society and member of the Standing Committee of the Osteoporosis Committee of the Chinese Geriatrics Society, said that based on research on the digestion and absorption of porridge, rice, steamed buns and other foods, the sugar absorption rate of porridge is 96.5%, rice is 99.5%, and steamed buns are 99.9%; the protein absorption rate of porridge is 56.1%, rice is 99.5%, and steamed buns are 99.9%.

Miao Yide said that long-term consumption of porridge has the following disadvantages:

Because you don’t need to chew the porridge carefully, lack of chewing will accelerate the degeneration of the chewing organs in the elderly;

The fiber content in porridge is low, which is not conducive to detoxification in the elderly. You must chew when eating. Chewing not only requires chewing the rice grains with your teeth, but also promotes saliva secretion. The enzymes contained in saliva also have a preliminary digestion effect on starch.

After grains are mixed with water and boiled for a long time, chyme is formed, which is digested by the gastrointestinal tract with little need for chewing of teeth and help of saliva. Without chewing, the amylase in saliva cannot fully decompose the starch in the porridge into maltose, thus affecting digestion. Saliva also has the function of neutralizing gastric acid and repairing the gastric mucosa. There is almost no need to secrete saliva in the mouth when drinking porridge, which is naturally not conducive to protecting the gastric mucosa. Therefore, if you want to drink porridge, it is best to add some accessories.