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Comment by twoy | Hacker News Reader

I like ramen, but I am careful about frequency of eating ramen. It is known among Japanese that extreme ramen freaks have short life. We Japanese maybe tend to be salt addicted. So careful people eat soup moderately.

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It is about the salt only, or is there something else? I'm curious because ramen sounds like something that should be healthy.

https://www.google.es/search?q=naritake+ramen&tbm=isch

The layer of oil floating over the stock, the corn, the pork and the butter topping doesn't help neither.

If you want healthy noodles, you can try Soba instead.

https://www.google.es/search?q=soba&tbm=isch

2014 study [1], press release [2], and interpretive article [3]:

Instant noodle intake and dietary patterns are associated with distinct cardiometabolic risk factors in Korea

[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24966409

[2] http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140812121642.ht...

[3] http://www.care2.com/causes/did-you-know-instant-ramen-noodl...

Instant ramen is potentially rather different from freshly prepared ramen though, eg in terms of salt content, additives etc.

It may just be people who eat ramen all the time are more typically stressed out, don't care about health, etc.

Tablespoons of liquid chicken fat and pork belly slices are not exactly the life-extending ingredients :)

Sure--but at what point do the mental health benefits of its deliciousness outweigh the health downsides?

Well, Ramen is really tasty, but obviously it is junk food. Really nice as a threat, but no one with common sense would eat Ramen on a daily basis.

Same way, no one with common sense would eat hamburger and french fries every day.

> obviously it is junk food

Doesn't that depends on how you prepare ramen ?

For me ramen are just noodles, the "junkyness" really depends on what you eat them with. Could you make the same argument for spaghettis ?

I ate quite a lot of Ramen. Some of them, quite delicious... but never a Ramen that I would consider healthy. All the Ramen I ever tasted were too salty and too greasy. Also, unlike most Japanese meals, Ramen is served as a main dish only, without any vegetables on the side. So your meal will consist mainly in white flour, salt and fat. Spaghetti are almost entirely carbohydrates. This is not good or bad, you just need to combine with other foods to make a balanced meal.

Ramen isn't just the noodles, it's also the broth which is usually contains a lot of pork fat.

I cook my own ramen, and I can assure you is super healthy, because I control the amount of sodium. I use dashi for the broth, but if you cook your own broth, it's even healthier.

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