A study published in the Journal of Nutrition found
that ramen, along with other instant noodle products, may increase a person’s
risk for cardiometabolic syndrome — a risk factor for severe cardiovascular
disease and stroke — especially in women.
“This research is significant since many people are consuming instant
noodles without knowing possible health risks,” said lead researcher Hyun Joon
Shin, MD, who is a clinical cardiology fellow at Baylor University Medical
Center and a nutrition epidemiology doctoral student at the Harvard School of
Public Health.
The study looked at the data of 10,711 adults between the ages of 19 and
64, collected via the nationally representative Korean National Health and
Nutrition Examination Survey of 2007-2009. They found that eating instant
noodles twice or more a week was associated with cardiometabolic syndrome,
a collection of abnormalities affecting the body’s cardiovascular, renal, and
metabolic systems.
Although the specific cause of the problem was not immediately clear,
Shin noted that it might stem from the fact that most instant noodle meals come
packaged in Styrofoam, which contains bisphenol A (BPA), a known hormone
disruptor — which is also why women could have been more affected in this
study. The food product contains plenty of unhealthy ingredients, including MSG
and the chemical preservative tertiary-butylhydroquinone (TBHQ) and is also
high in saturated fat.
In 2012, a viral video taken from
inside the digestive tract showed just what happened after instant ramen was
ingested. We could see the stomach worked overtime, struggling for hours to
grind up the strands; TBHQ, a petroleum byproduct, was named as a possible
culprit. Years earlier, Malaysian health officials issued a warning against eating instant noodles
because of ingredients such as thickeners, stabilizers, sodium, and
preservatives that have been linked to heart disease, stroke and kidney damage.
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