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Ramen restaurant prevalence is associated with stroke mortality in Japan

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Re: Ramen restaurant prevalence is associated with stroke mortality in Japan

#62
post #2

People are just waking up to dangers of sugar, but too much salt is also not good, increasing blood pressure (see below link). Potassium can offset much of the affects but it’s surprisingly difficult to get even the US recommended amount every day. I’ve started using potassium salt instead of sodium salt in my cooking, and it feels great to kill two birds with one stone. Now I just need soy sauce and others without s…

Why the hell would you want your diet to be salt free? Sodium is essential to proper bodily functions. You're going to hurt yourself by over-limiting sodium and using potassium chloride.

Re: Ramen restaurant prevalence is associated with stroke mortality in Japan

#63
post #35
post #26

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Yes, they are cheap. Usually around 600-1200 yen or $6-12 many of them reduce labor costs by having a vending machine outside where you get a token that indicates your order. https://livejapan.com/en/in-tokyo/in-pref-tokyo/in-asakusa/a... The current ramen fad in America relies on super rich broth, basically liquid bacon. There are many styles of ramen in Japan, ranging from super simple broths to the liquid bacon st…

How do I ask for the simple stuff? The liquid bacon gives me unfortunate digestion symptoms that should not be named.

Vegan ramen.

Re: Ramen restaurant prevalence is associated with stroke mortality in Japan

#64
post #12

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WebMD? Seriously? The science on salt is quite debated, actually: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/heart-failure-and-salt-t...

For those of us who aren't medical practicioners - would you mind pointing explaining a bit further on "WebMD? Seriously?" as I had no idea it wasn't well regarded and am now curious as to why...

Highly commercialized through pharma with no real avenues for accountability to what they claim.

Re: Ramen restaurant prevalence is associated with stroke mortality in Japan

#65

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It's been 15 years since I lived in Japan, but IIRC it was on average among the cheapest foods there (as it is pretty much everywhere in Asia). Low cost ingredients, easy/fast to make, possible to cook bulk "batch" in large pot etc.

It’s not easy to make. The broth is rich and takes a lot of time and skill.

I stand corrected. I probably then saw just the last steps and chef was using previously made broth.

Re: Ramen restaurant prevalence is associated with stroke mortality in Japan

#66
post #60

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It is pretty common to interpret r^2 as the fraction of variance in one variable “explained by” the other. Here, ramen restaurant prevalence and mortality are reported to be correlated at r=0.5 to r=0.6, so r^2=0.25 to 0.36 Obviously, “explained” here doesn’t indicate something conceptual or causal—-it’s more like “accounted for”—-but the phrasing is probably too well established to change now. And that's sort of my…

The authors discuss this in the paper's Discussion. The prevalence of ramen restaurants is suggested as an indicator of general food preferences in the regions studied. Regions that have a higher prevalence of ramen restaurants also tend to have a higher salt intake in general. This can be seen by the increased use of soy sauce and miso compared to other regions in Japan (from personal experience, these regions are f…

I did see that, and maybe Japanese regional cuisine varies a lot more than I'm imagining. However, I'm still not convinced that something higher-level is going on.

For example, I think you could find a similar correlation between (say) soul food restaurants and diabetes prevalence in the US. Soul food tends to be starchy and fatty itself; you could also make a similar argument that the number of soul food restaurants is a proxy for food preferences in each region.

However, soul food is especially popular in African-American communities. There are genetic factors that predispose African-Americans to diabetes. Soul food restaurants are probably more common in poorer areas. Diabetes is also linked to poverty: partly through diet, but also through things like access to preventative healthcare and management of pre-diabetes. Perhaps there still is some residual effect of the restaurants themselves, but it would be much weaker after adjusting for other factors.

Re: Ramen restaurant prevalence is associated with stroke mortality in Japan

#67
Hokkaido seems like it is a major problem for this study: it ranks low on stroke mortality and high on ramen consumption and is well known as a land that loves ramen and other rich foods. Perhaps they eat more seafood and that somehow offsets the risk or have some other advantage but it is interesting the authors don’t even mention it given how glaring it is the largest prefecture and one of the easiest to spot on the map for a foreigner.

Re: Ramen restaurant prevalence is associated with stroke mortality in Japan

#68
post #33
post #21

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It's more likely the salt than the wheat. From the article: | The traditional Japanese diet was thought to increase stroke risk because of the heavy use of seasonings such as miso, salt, and soy sauce.

The science on sodium is far from settled

Amazingly. It's not like it's hard or expensive to study.

Re: Ramen restaurant prevalence is associated with stroke mortality in Japan

#69
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do I ask for the simple stuff? The liquid bacon gives me unfortunate digestion symptoms that should not be named.

/u/op00to: This is challenging because ramen is classified by a mix of base, seasoning and thickness. Roughly bases can be: bones of chicken, pork, fish or in rare instances beef. Often there is blend of these bases Seasoning: sea salt (shio), soy sauce (shoyu) and miso Thickness is a spectrum ending with: kotteri (thick) and assari (light) Now, how to pick a light broth? This will be highly context dependent. Most s…

Note that as you mentioned since most shops in Japan specialize in a specific type of soup (i.e. the only differentiator is the tare and the toppings), it might be more useful to familiarize oneself with the characteristics some of the more common regional styles. For example, "Hakata-style" ramen generally describes a creamy tonkotsu soup, "Kitakata-style" is generally a chintan with shoyu tare and hand kneaded "temomi" noodles, Yokohama "iekei" generally tends to be a paitan with shoyu tare, Sapporo ramen is generally a pork soup with miso tare, etc.

This is not to say that e.g. Sapporo only has Sapporo-style ramen or Fukuoka only has Hakata-style ramen, but the names describe where the style is perceived to have originated from.

The water is slightly muddied (no pun intended...) by techniques like "double soups", i.e. mixing multiple soups in the same bowl. In some cases a chintan might be mixed with a paitan, etc.

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