51–60 of 63 posts
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.
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.
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, oni…
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.
Some of us put vegetables and eggs in our ramen. Ramen in its true form is not just the noodles.
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?
How is it so different from or more disgusting than western snacks like potato chips?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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…
These are usually called "food deserts".
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 =/
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?