Eating healthy in Kaohsiung

Hello everyone!
I arrived in Kaohsiung a few days ago and will stay here for a few months. I’m an exchange student in Wenzao and I eat out everyday since it’s cheap and more convenient. The food is amazing but it’s difficult to find healthy dishes (by that I mean dishes with a lot of vegetables and not too many carbs and fried food). I’m scared to gain a lot of weight if I keep eating the way I’ve been eating. Do you guys know any restaurants or buffets not too far from Wenzao where I can eat healthy dishes?
Thanks!

Welcome to the site and Kaohsiung

A Big Mac has lettuce on it, and also remember,
You don’t make friends with salad.

But if nobody chips in first I will see if I can find you some places tomorrow when I have a little more time

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Make your own food. It’s pretty much the only way to eat healthy in the long run.

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Unfortunately there is no kitchen where I live! :frowning:

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Welcome to Kaohsiung,@melanz95!
Try the many vegetarian cantinas that are usually run by Buddhist owners.

Thank you very much!

Oh great! I’ll try to find if I can find some around the university! Thanks

The buddhist vegetarian places are rarely healthy. Lots of cheap oil and proceased flour type things. But the buffets ypu can have a lot of choices. They are essencially like vegetarian lunch box shops.

Luckily kaohsiung has developed a lot i. Recent years and quite a few options now. Hard to comment though as healthy is broad and normally quite relative. Very little healthy food exists in taiwan from a purists point of view. But lots of oeganic shops popping up. Even with all the fake organic everywhere they should be at least half organic.

Dont drink the water in Kaohsiung :slight_smile:

Costco :+1:

Definitely don’t drink the water, Guinness is vegetarian and St Patricks Day is coming soon, a good excuse to try it.image

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buffet place. you can choose what you want. all the cold sad vegetables you could ever wish for.

There is a lot of stuff you can do with just a rice cooker and a microwave.

I’m in Taipei, but I hope what I say applies to where you are too. Go to buffets (自助餐), tell them you don’t want rice, and pick the vegetable dishes (steamed or blanched vegetables should be among the options). Or in casual restaurants, order blanched vegetables (燙青菜) or vegetables in a clear broth (地瓜葉湯, sweet potato leaf soup, being my personal favorite). Or get a healthy noodle soup, e.g., one with mushrooms and pulled chicken rather than beef (雞絲蘑菇麵 or something like that), or perhaps a small bowl of cold noodles with sesame sauce (涼麵), which contains carbs to be sure, but it doesn’t feel heavy if it’s well made, and perhaps pickled cabbage (泡菜) or cucumber “salad” on the side. I think it’s quite possible to eat both healthy and cheap. It doesn’t have to be entirely oil free to be healthy, after all.

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Try this one: 96清粥小菜 (Its buffet so many vegi choices, price is by how heavy so it’s not all you can buffet) It’s prices are local, cheap. Not by my any means upscale, working class cheap but decent local food. Address: 807高雄市三民區民族一路597號 https://www.facebook.com/pages/96清粥小菜/113743545445109

Go out the front gate of the school, turn left walk 300 meters or so.

Good post. In recent years Kaohsiung had a lot of what taipei has. Not as much but certainly easy.

Just be aware that common trends dont equate to healthy. For example the commin local style vegetarian food here is goodb but as far as quality goes is terrible. Oil is a problem but if we compare to things lime spray residues i would pick oily orga ic over light regular vegetarian.

Taiwan has massive tainted food and contamination priblems, on top of just generally eating “unhealthy” (huge amounts of sodium -kidney failure is commin here-, sugar, oil etc) but these are just common feel bad healthy. When one gets into manufacturing and agriculture it becomes far more scary.

In my opinion, it is insanely expensive to eat healthy (purist) here. Far more than japan, canada, europe etc. Which is shocking to some, but true. So for most people, that have a budget (i spend 20k a month on food for 2 and we dont eat fancy but eat reliably sourced), i would eat carbs to feel full. Eg. Organic rice. Its not actually organic, but it is certified so its slightly better. Then buy nutritious shit to add to it. If i didnt eat fillers and went all quality healthy stuff while being full, it would be an easy 15k a month per person here. And i grow a lot myself.

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Any follow up on what you found?