With characteristics unique to Hong Kong, Chinese style tea restaurants are popular among Hong Kong people. Many people, however, perceive the dishes offered by Chinese style tea restaurants as “three highs” (i.e., high in fat, salt and sugar) in general. In view of the public’s increasing awareness on healthy eating, registered dietitian Anson Wong shared with Chinese style tea restaurants the following tips on taking the first step to change people’s perceptions towards their dishes.

Start Healthy Eating by Serving Less Rice and Making Changes to Help Stablise Blood Glucose Levels

To most Chinese style tea restaurants, the easiest change to make would be to adjust their food portions. “To many, the portion of rice in rice dishes is too large. Chinese style tea restaurants can refer to the portion in the Department of Health (DH)’s ‘Healthy Lunch 321’ to avoid providing too much energy, while reducing food wastage at the same time,” said Anson. He also suggested that Chinese style tea restaurants add red rice, brown rice or vegetables to white rice to boost customers’ dietary fiber intake and help stablise their blood glucose levels.

Change Cooking Methods to Gradually Reduce Oil, Salt and Sugar

To reduce the amount of oil, salt and sugar in dishes, Anson advised Chinese style tea restaurants to substitute ready-made sauces by natural seasonings such as ginger, spring onion and garlic, and serve the sauces on the side. Regarding cooking methods, Chinese style tea restaurants can switch to stir-frying in less oil with non-stick pans and consider cooking in soup, which is relatively quick and requires less oil. Besides, restaurants can replace the ordinary soup base for noodles with a tomato soup base to reduce the salt content. Anson said, “Subtle changes made by Chinese style tea restaurants would easily be accepted by customers. With gradual lowering of customers’ need on oil, salt and sugar, the goal of practising healthy eating can be achieved.”

Be Flexible and Provide Customer-focused Options

Anson recommended Chinese style tea restaurants to make full use of their advantage of being flexible and respond proactively to customers’ special requests on the dishes. He added, “Besides acceding to common requests such as less rice and less sugar, Chinese style tea restaurants can offer healthy options such as less oil, less salt, no monosodium glutamate (MSG), changing from white rice to spaghetti or brown rice and from French fries to baked potatoes.” Offering an add-on dish of vegetables at a discounted price is another win-win recommendation which can increase customers’ vegetable intake as well as their spending in the restaurants.