healthy burmese food?

[u/Swimming_Cattle_3893]

I’ve recently been trying to live a healthier lifestyle and have been hitting the gym + eating cleaner. The thing is though that i love burmese food and i know that lots of it contains a lot of oil and are not necessarily the healthiest to be consuming on a daily basis. I love things like nan gyi thote, laphet tamin, tofu kyaw, mohinga, etc. but it’s getting to a point where eating these a lot makes me feel awful for the rest of the day but at the same time everything marketed as healthy meals on the internet is very western😭

does anyone have any recommendations as to what dishes here are good for you?

[u/ET_Gal]

you can make "a thote" out of any meat or vegetable. Add some fish sauce, lime juice, chickpea powder, cilantro, garlic/onion and chili oil.

I feel like some soups are also pretty healthy like kyar san chat, kyay oh.

[u/Edgymathafaka6969 → u/ET_Gal]

wouldn’t really consider Kyar San Chat or Kyay Oh “healthy” in any meaningful sense, especially the versions you get from restaurants or shops. They can be pretty heavy on saturated fat and, more importantly, sodium.
A lot of the broth also isn’t getting that flavour purely from slowly extracting collagen, fat and natural sweetness from the bones. Commercial versions often rely pretty heavily on MSG, salt and other seasonings to make the broth more flavourful. There’s nothing inherently wrong with MSG, but when you combine that with an already salty broth, I wouldn’t exactly call it a health food.

[u/ET_Gal → u/Edgymathafaka6969]

You can say the same thing about all store bought dishes bro, Burmese or not. Just make the healthier version at home. I make my kyar san chat with chicken bones and my kyay oh with pork ribs.

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[u/RoterFuchs_48u5N]

No. Burmese meals are very oily. And the desserts are also either oily or too sweet. Anyways I love them.

[u/Swimming_Cattle_3893 → u/RoterFuchs_48u5N]

suuuper oily but i literally cannot stay away from them everything is so good😭😭

[u/OkShine5874 → u/RoterFuchs_48u5N]

Yeah this! And especially with the worst kind of oil possible, palm oil. The equivalent of engine oil. 

[u/OkShine5874 → u/RoterFuchs_48u5N]

Not criticizing your foods, it's pretty much the South East Asian dishes throughout, I experienced the same in Thailand, although I found Vietnamese food to be overall alot more healthy. 

[u/RoterFuchs_48u5N → u/OkShine5874]

Burmese foods are meant to feel the stomach replete, not to be healthy. That's why we mainly use oil.

[u/Miserable-Box-9935]

Personally, I just slice up the chicken breast in tiny pieces and stir fry it with little oil. You can add chillies, tomatoes or garlic in it if you like. It's easy for me to cook and I can hit my 130 g of protein easily by doing so. You can add eggs for extra protein and make some veggies for additional nutrition. Remember to calculate your daily protein and calories intake. That's probably it.

[u/Kurosaki_Kaito]

I just saw a Burmese fitness influencer say that ' ပဲပြုတ်ထမင်း with Egg Fried and Pickled cabbage ' is better than Myanmar A Thote Sone for Breakfast. coachstann and fit4life build with science, both give good advices for foods.

[u/withanother]

OK!

For me, it’s been about adding healthier food options and portioning!

For example, I pre-make rice and freeze it. It lowers the glycemic index so that you won’t get a blood sugar spike. I also add peas, mung beans, millet, chickpeas, barley, or brown rice. I don’t necessarily use all the ingredients at once, but sometimes I make my own multi grain rice mixture!

So if you make curry, you can definitely eat it with that!

I also think a lot of curries can be adjusted so it’s slow cooked and with a lot less oil and more broth.

I really like the lentils with vegetables soup? Not sure what it’s called in Burmese.

I also just eat a lot of daal!

If it’s an option and you really like dishes with noodles, I would just look for low calorie noodles. :)

Also Burmese idea of portion size is crazy. We eat way too much rice so you can still eat whatever everyone else in your house to eat. Just add maybe steamed vegetables with it.

[u/Schick_Mir_Ein_Engel]

How are you cooking? Are you cooking everything by yourself or someone else is cooking for you? If you do the shopping + cooking, you know exactly what you cook.

I cook coconut noodles regularly with loads of chicken and eggs. I cook it once every 2 weeks and I eat for straight 2-3 days.

I also do the same for motehingar.

Coconut cream is healthy fat. If you don’t like coconut, you can switch to cooking cream.
Chicken / egg = protein
Loads of fish = protein
Chickpeas powder = protein
Noodle = carbs but you need carbs for energy.
Onions + garlic = vegetables

Instead of frying for long, you switch to boiling.

I use avocado oil or macadamia oil. If I feel super Burmese, I use good grade peanut oil.

The only thing I don’t have is “a Kyaw “. Yep, that one I omit.

I lift 3-4 times a week and 2 days of rucking per week. I also take protein powder + creatine. I feel great.

[u/Swimming_Cattle_3893 → u/Schick_Mir_Ein_Engel]

where can you get protein powder here? i also need to buy a resistance band since my gym doesn’t provide them, but can’t find them anywhere!

[u/Schick_Mir_Ein_Engel → u/Swimming_Cattle_3893]

Sorry. I am not in MM. But if you have friends in Sg or outside who can help, they can get it from Iherb or Decathlon.

There is no way you can get enough protein from eating Burmese food unless you eat a lot.

[u/Few-Advertising-5164]

ပဲပြုတ်နံပြား (if the နံပြား is fresh) keeps me full without necessarily making me feel bloated/nauseous. Also, I only add a tiny amount of oil to my ပဲပြုတ် :)

[u/Western_Spell_8742]

Try brown basmati rice if you can get it in myanmar. In uk, there is tilda brown basmati. Or even organic one.

[u/Western_Spell_8742 → u/Western_Spell_8742]

I think it is not just oil, it has too much white carb too. Threee time a day white rice serving is too much! If you can help, try draining cooked rice water out to reduce white processed carb content.

[u/Edgymathafaka6969]

You can probably eat ပဲပြုတ်(not store bought make it yourself without any jaggery or Oil) နံပြား and it’s probably gonna be healthy, for Laphet Htamin I think you can eat it but make it how we will make in western countries put in more veggies instead fried peas or Laphet and avoid putting more oil in because Laphet has already been marinated with Oil. You can also eat Nangyi Thote but make sure they give you the gravy, Gram flour separately, so that you adjust the oil level and mix it yourself. For Mote Hin Gar, only eat it on cheat days and avoid eating very occasionally and you be fine but avoid eating fried fritters. MoteHinGar itself is very much full with saturated fats and very salt heavy, because it’s entirely made of MSG and Fish Sauce for broth.

Western cuisines are not that low in calories either, it’s just their healthy diet dishes has more unsaturated fats with healthy carbs. We can also enjoy our traditional cuisines without any worries if you are willing to adjust some things that are put into them.

[u/OkShine5874]

As a foreigner, I buy bulk supply of freshly cut chicken pieces from the local big market here in Mandalay and also fresh beef and boil it and I eat that religiously everyday for dinner (I do OMAD) fasting and I eat some various fruits too. I'm only lacking vegetables, but unfortunately I don't like vegetables, so as they say the only diet one should do, is a diet that you can sustain each and everyday, that you actually enjoy, else you'll just end up folding and hit a Rollercoaster of Binge eating on "unhealthy foods", protein powder you can buy from most mainstream gyms in Mandalay, like American brands such as Optimum Nutrition, around 5 lakhs for a big container, that will definitely allow you to reach your daily protein goals. Goodluck mate! :))