Healthy Travels in Shanghai

I started writing this post, sitting on the balcony looking down at all of Shanghai below. Unfortunately, life got in the way and I’m finishing it a week later, wondering where my holiday went! Anyway we had a fabulous time and found plenty of healthy food places in Shanghai! Here’s some of my favourite snaps of our trip so far…

We actually brought our beautiful dogs (Bella who is on the bottom and little blind Stevie who is on the top of this husband-puppy sandwich!) this time as we needed to get them microchipped for when we bring them home to England. This meant we stayed in an apartment which was really nice (and meant I could  still have my overnight oats each morning which was really important to ensure I could still eat clean in Shanghai!)

We  walked all around the French Concession- a very leafy, beautiful and just very unchina-ery part of Shanghai! My favourite part was stumbling across this amazing piece of outfit coordination. Oh China!

There’s such a growing healthfood movement with a ton of healthy food restaurants in Shanghai. I absolutely loved spending plenty of time checking out new places!

My favorite of all the healthy food places in Shanghai was Pure and Whole- an amazing vegan restaurant in Shanghai with mouthwatering raw deserts (like these apple, oats and coconut balls!) I found several people handing out info about vegan markets and vegan products that simply did not exist two years ago! I also stumbled across Sproutwork- a healthfood store selling all sorts of goodies which means I finally managed to find nutritional yeast and medjoul dates.

On a final note, it really got me thinking about China and diet! I am really fascinated by its relationship with food. After reading the China study, I learnt a lot about how China’s diet (and rate of various illnesses!) was vastly different from the rest of the world. However, now it seems at times they’ve done a complete u-turn when I arrive to a classroom full of McDonalds wrappers, KFC takeout and junk food. Students feel that food is something just to grab between meals and little thought is giving to its nutritional value. In China, western countries are their inspiration so the supermarket are full of ‘added milk’ project and KFCs are on every corner. I’d love for somebody to return to China and just see what impact this has had on their diet! Obesity is increasing every minute and during my research on crohn’s, I discovered the number of cases in China have increased over 300% in the last 10 years. Anyway, perhaps this is for another blog post altogether!

Jenna xx

P.S: If you enjoyed this post (who wouldn’t!) don’t forget to check out my guide to healthy eating places in Hong Kong, healthy eating in Thailand and more healthy food places around Shanghai There’s no reason at all not to stay healthy while traveling!