Ramen May Lead to Chronic Illness Study Says | Hacker News Reader

Ramen May Lead to Chronic Illness Study Says

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My boss, on my first job, whenever presented with any "study" of this nature would mumble:

"If you feed a rat a boxcar of anything, it'll get cancer".

Too damn right.

I think the cancer bit was just in there for shock value, the main point is that there is zero nutritional value to these foods.

Junk food may be "the cheapest option," but if you insist on eating a meal that actually provide the nutrients that the body needs, you'd have to spend a lot more money eating junk food than just cooking yourself.

Saying you just don't have enough time to cook for yourself is almost never true.

Just one meal example: Pressure cook for 6 minutes (plus ~5 getting up to pressure) a large volume of potatoes, carrots, onions, some ginger and chili pepper for flavor. Drop in some canned tomato and canned fish, and you can easily end up paying less than $1 for a totally balanced delicious meal, and you have produced in one swoop enough food to feed an adult for two full days.

And because food is what makes your body work, you better decide it is worth its money.

Ramen Noodles (when eaten all the time instead of a variety of fruits and vegetables) may lead to chronic illness.

The title is slightly misleading in that regard. It should be common knowledge now that too much of any one thing will kill you.

It should be common knowledge now that too much of any one thing will kill you

Not potatoes. You can live on nothing but potatoes and water and you'll be healthy. You'll likely get very bored of the diet, but you won't be missing anything essential.

This is true of very few foods.

(This is something that I learned when my wife was studying for general physiology.)

You have to eat the skins, though. And it helps if you're doing manual labor (and occasional supplements of buttermilk, kale, oatmeal, etc. will go a long way).

There's a great essay about surviving on potatoes in John Thorne's _Pot on the Fire_, also an excellent cookbook.

Your comment seemed interesting and made me look it up.

According to the straight dope, not quite, but almost:

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2828/could-i-surviv...

Fresh (breast?) milk or eggs would probably also work at least as good?

That anyone would be shocked that packaged crap like Ramen has health risks is sad. This is not food. Of course it's going to kill you.

I always hope that when startups say "eating ramen" that they mean it symbolically, in that they are being frugal. Eating crap like this is just dumb.

  Eating crap like this is just dumb.

Well said. The last time I ate ramen without thinking of the health risks was my freshman year in college when people in my dorm hall would group-buy it by the crate. That was some 5 years ago. Haven't touched that junk since. I'm frugal on things in my apartment, furniture, and all of that, but I don't skimp on what I put in my body.

I always look forward to my Sunday afternoon trips to Trader Joes and/or Whole Foods. The latter is pricey but they have some good cuts of meat.

I'm frugal on things in my apartment, furniture, and all of that, but I don't skimp on what I put in my body.

That's an excellent attitude. Too many people take the opposite approach.

I take the opposite approach. Why should I spend $10/lb on tenderloin beef when I can get tip steak for $3.50/lb? It goes in one end and out the other.

At least a good office chair will last you years and possibly even save you back issues.

I hope so too. pg put a footnote on his essay saying basically, don't eat just ramen with a recipe for beans & rice.

http://www.paulgraham.com/ramenprofitable.html#f1n

The kids in South American countries that subsist only on beans and rice are malnourished.

It's better, but don't forget the vegetables.

A friend of mine has said that he thinks the biggest problem in the US is that food is cheap. It is really that food that is bad for you is cheap and food that is good for you is expensive. Cheap + full usually wins against expensive + hungry with most people.

Mostly true, but it's more complicated than that - beans, garlic, and kale are cheap, for example. So is oatmeal. The cheap-but-nutritious ingredients take a bit of preparation, though, and generally aren't eaten as a single-ingredient convenience food.

Don't get me wrong, though - there's definitely a lot of artificially cheap, nutritionally barren food.

Convenience is another factor. Unless you live adjacent to a grocery store, you are almost always nearer to a source of junk food in the form of a convenience store or fast food restaurant. Neither are likely to be cheaper than what one can make easily from generally healthful ingredients.

(Cheap comes into play e.g. with chain sit-down restaurants, who get around the problem of having mediocre food by serving it in comically huge portions slathered in some unhealthy flavorizing agent like butter or Ranch dressing. They can probably beat anything you can make at home in terms of price per calorie. The meal doesn't actually get cheaper, meanwhile the impact on your health is worse because you're buying a whole lot of calories you don't need.)

In poor communities I've seen it's sometimes the case that shopping at an actual grocery store can be a two or three hour round trip due to bus schedules while the corner store is a five minute walk.

Both also profit immensely from the wealthier car culture: fast food could not be what it is today without the drive-through window and people's eagerness to consume meals in their cars, and the typical convenience store is a convenient source of food because it also happens to sell gas, which every driver needs. Both allow the consumer to trade away money and health for immediate satiation.

> In poor communities I've seen it's sometimes the case that shopping at an actual grocery store can be a two or three hour round trip due to bus schedules while the corner store is a five minute walk.

These are usually called "food deserts".

Some of us put vegetables and eggs in our ramen.

Ramen in its true form is not just the noodles.

Right, but frying the noodles into a brick with palm kernel oil doesn't help.

On the other hand, udon noodles are quite good. You need to refrigerate them, though - there's actually something left to spoil. Try them with egg, miso, green onion, and shredded carrots.

Spoilage has nothing to do with what's "left to spoil." Cooked ramen noodles will spoil just as readily as udon.

Bacteria need moisture to grow. Udon is sometimes sold fresh (wet), and that will spoil. Dry udon does not spoil.

As for palm oil... udon is also made with it.

Agreed. If you've ever had ramen at a good Japanese restaurant (or better yet, in Japan), you know that what most Americans consider ramen does not compare. Udon and soba noodles are good too. The difference is mainly what accompanies the noodles (vegetables and broth).

"Ramen profitable" should be "oatmeal profitable." Whole grains ftw.

pg actually mentioned that "Ramen profitable" is not to be mentioned literally. I don't have the link of the top of my head, but he even included a beans & rice recipe.

http://paulgraham.com/ramenprofitable.html#f1n

Buckwheat and quinoa are my favorite. They both have a very good balance of amino-acids and proteins.

I eat a lot of oat groats and korean barley. You can order oat groats in bulk, 50 pound bags, with a shipping cost of around $5. Woohoo.

We should not call these rubbish instant noodles ramen.

What the Japanese call ramen is something very different. Fresh noodles, rich soup filled with vegetables, pork, bamboo shoots, ginger... Still, you wouldn't want to live on just one thing, that would be dumb.

Is this ramen that is usually served in Japanese restaurant, or instant noodle? I think they are very different.

I assume they mean packaged ramen, which is extra-confusing because the described study was done in Australia, where nobody calls those "ramen" at all. They're called "two-minute noodles".

I've never posted any comments here before but I feel compelled to do so for this link. It is lamenting the fact that people who eat ramen frequently aren't buying fruits and vegetables instead. I've basically lived on ramen for the better part of a year and the truth is that if I could eat healthier I would without a moments hesitation. But a ramen packet costs 15¢ each. So I can be reasonably full for around 30¢ a day. What kind of fruit can I buy for 30¢? A single apple? One banana? The author of this article needs to get off his high horse and try to live off the diet he's saying is such a bad choice.

The true cost of eating nothing but packaged "ramen", at 30¢ a day, is seriously the value of your own life. This crap will kill you. It is not food.

Garbage in, garbage out. You may not feel it yet, but it is costing you your life.

While I can't know what your financial situation is, you are posting to an internet forum, so it appears as though you're not working two double-shifts to survive until tomorrow. Quality food is an investment into your life. To put your budget in perspective, your suggesting to spend $110 per YEAR feeding yourself. Is that all your health is worth?

Agreed. The best health insurance policy is a good diet.

In times of famine people ate bark and shoe leather. So these are appropriate dietary choices if there are no alternatives. Same with Ramen. Ramen is appropriate as a staple food only if there is no other alternative.

The article's title is misleading. The study doesn't actually pinpoint ramen noodles as a cause of chronic illness, but rather nutritional deficits, which of course could result from eating nothing but ramen.

"Those who relied on instant noodles and other cheap food with little nutritional content were at greater risk of chronic diseases including cancer, diabetes and heart disease, the researchers found."

The article title could just as easily have been Spaghetti May Lead... or McDonalds May Lead... Of course, it should be Poor Nutrition May Lead..., but then no one would care.

[Eating practically nothing but] Ramen May Lead to Chronic Illness Study Says

Correlation != causation. Despite the title submitted here, what the article actually says is that people are trying to subsist almost entirely on ramen, foregoing other nutrition that they need like fruits and veggies.

I eat ramen every once in a while, when I'm too busy or too tired to fix any better kind of meal for myself, but that doesn't put me at any kind of risk because I don't do it every day for every meal. If you live entirely on ANY one kind of food (ramen, hot pockets, tuna sandwiches, etc), you're going to have health problems because you're simply not getting the different kinds of nutrition your body needs.

white flour, poor quality fat, sodium, and a massive wallop of MSG. practically no protein.

my partner was busy last night, so I fed the family. I cooked whole-wheat cous-cous, mixed it with fried peppers and onions, and steamed a package of frozen "Italian Vegetables" (cauliflower, broccoli, carrots and more.) I put this into bowls, half of each of the kind of stuff, and flavored with a dash of salt, pepper and earth balance natural margarine.

i didn't want a lot of protein in that meal because we cooked a chicken last night and i've been eating mass quantities of whey protein powder.

Why choose protein powder instead of natural protein?

Probably because he wants more than the natural amount of muscle.

I think of myself as Rocky Bilboa making a comeback.

I've got to go up against you punks and win, so I train hard and watch my diet.

And who's to say what's natural? The withering muscles of a pencil-necked geek who sits in front of a computer all day and into the night? Or the massive frame of my brother-in-law who works on a road crew?

That's great. Just for context, I'm taking the same stuff: whey protein (with dextrose and creatine), vanilla flavor.

It's easier to eat in large quantities. (For some people. Personally I can't stand it.)

Try a different brand/type. I personally love the stuff and how I feel when I'm incorporating it into my diet in place of some of my poorer choices.

I had to try several ones before I found one I could drink on a regular basis and not get vomity.

It's super convenient to have a whey shake once a day or more - especially if you're trying to have 5 or 6 small meals a day instead of 2-3 big ones.

Wow, thanks for taking me back to my youth:

> Bentley. Everett. Miss Logan's going to have dinner with us.

> Whip up a liver and whey shake.

--Warren Beatty in "Heaven Can Wait"

[ best dietary advice this vegetarian ever got about how to prepare for the Super Bowl ]

"healthy but less-filling fruits and vegetables"

This is not true. Fruits and vegetables have more fiber which makes you feel full. Ramen noodles and other fast food products can be hunger-promoting.

Completely anecdotal (not data) point: guy I know from one forum, young guy in his 20s, lived on ramen noodles for 18 months to 2 years. Got colon cancer, which usually hits people who are older.

(I am trying to learn enough good recipes to eat well at home instead of eating out, have bought a few decent cookbooks and surprisingly, have found it enjoyable though time consuming to cook from scratch.)

One more data point: My brother eats Ramen pretty much every day and has for the last 2-3 years (he's in college now). He hasn't been to the doctor in at least 5 years even for a physical. However, he eats the Ramen without cooking it and just putting the spices or flavoring on it and then crunching through it. To be honest, it makes me sick watching it, so maybe that counts?

That's really disgusting. Does he at least eat some veggies?

Does the teaspoon of dried ones in the cup count?

But really, there are many ways a diet like his may be harmful. Too much sodium (still high even w/out the spice package), lack of vitamins, protein, fiber, and the list goes on.

You won't feel the pain when you are young, but when you DO feel it (or your brother), the damage will be already done

People don't realize how much fat are in the noodles, either. They're in that awesome shape because they're deep fried!

I don't understand why this makes you sick. This post finally made me look up ramen on wikipedia to see what it actually is (Instant noodles.. here in Canada the major vendor of this is Mr. Noodles, so "ramen" was a bit unfamiliar to me).

Your brothers way of eating ramen is exactly how I, and many of my friends, ate it when we were in elementary school. Crunch the everloving shit out of it, open the packet, sprinkle the flavour packet into the ramen, close it up and shake.

It was good. I haven't done that in years, but I remember liking it. In fact, I've got some Mr. Noodles in the cupboard right now.. I'm slightly motivated to try it again.

Taiwanese school children do that all the time. What's wrong with crunching it and shaking up the bag to spread the seasonings around? It's basically just over-processed grain + salt.

How is it so different from or more disgusting than western snacks like potato chips?

<prepackaged food> may lead to chronic illness. Seems sane. The problem is that ramen isn't JUST crappy salty over-processed 100% artificially flavored desiccated food. In Japan, ramen is a real food.

Yeah, but it's cheap. It's also not bad with some crackers. :)

I have a friend who uses the noodles and chucks the flavoring packet. He then adds veggies, some protein and a soy sauce based stock. It's pretty delicious and I imagine still decently cheap.

When you say he adds protein, do you mean he adds meat of some kind? Or something dairy?

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