"I wanna eat fish balls, sausages, egg puffs, and siu maai!"

"I wanna eat fish balls, sausages, egg puffs, and siu maai!"

A little girl in school uniform started pester her mother once she got on the train.

I cringed at the matter-of-course manner of the request (or demand, depending on how you look at it), but I bet that the little despot routinely gets her wish.

On her wish list are, of course, the famous (or infamous, depending on how you look at it) street food of Hong Kong. Such street food is a very good reflection of the typical Hong Kong lifestyle - quick, convenient and strong-tasting. Never mind that the greasy, highly-processed and heavily-seasoned food is not healthy and the street stalls cooking and selling it are not clean. As long as the food can excite the taste buds and fill the stomach, that is fine.

And who am I to comment on or even criticise other people's food preference? Didn't I, too, use to crave for such street food at the end of a school day? The only difference is that Hong Kong wasn't such an affluent society in my childhood days that a schoolboy could sabotage his mother to buy him such street food every day after school.

Tastes so good, feels so bad

People may find processed food, such as processed meat, refined grains, fried food and sweetened desserts tasty, but apart from the widely known fact that these foods are fattening, a recent UK study also revealed that people eating a diet high in such food is more likely to suffer from depression than those eating a whole food diet.

According to the University College London team who conducted the study, people with a diet high in prcoessed food had a 58% higher risk of depression than those eating very little processed food. By contrast, those eating a diet high in whole food were 26% less likely to suffer from depression than those who ate less whole food.

Unfortunately, in the UK, people are consuming less nutritious, fresh produce and more saturated fats and sugars. My guess is that people in Hong Kong are faring no better.