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Instant noodles tied to heart risk, but S Koreans defend diet

SEOUL — Instant noodles carry a broke college student aura in America, but they are an essential, even passionate, part of life for many in South Korea and across Asia. Hence the emotional heartburn caused by the Baylor Heart and Vascular Hospital study in the United States that linked instant noodles consumption by South Koreans to some risks of heart disease.

SEOUL — Instant noodles carry a broke college student aura in America, but they are an essential, even passionate, part of life for many in South Korea and across Asia. Hence the emotional heartburn caused by the Baylor Heart and Vascular Hospital study in the United States that linked instant noodles consumption by South Koreans to some risks of heart disease.

The study has provoked feelings of wounded pride, mild guilt, stubborn resistance and even nationalism among South Koreans, who eat more instant noodles per capita than anyone in the world.

“There’s no way any study is going to stop me from eating this,” said Mr Kim Min-koo, his red face beaded with sweat as he added hot water to his noodles in a Seoul convenience store. “The taste, the smell, the chewiness — it’s just perfect,” Mr Kim, a freelance film editor who indulges about five times a week, said between gulps.

Other noodle lovers offered up techniques they swore kept them healthy: Taking Omega-3, adding vegetables, using less seasoning, avoiding the soup. Some dismissed the study because the hospital involved is based in cheeseburger-gobbling America.

The US study was based on South Korean surveys from 2007 to 2009 of more than 10,700 adults aged 19 to 64, about half of them women. It found that people who ate a diet rich in meat, soda and fried and fast foods, including instant noodles, were associated with an increase in abdominal obesity and LDL, or “bad” cholesterol. Eating instant noodles more than twice a week was associated with a higher prevalence of metabolic syndrome, another heart risk factor, in women but not in men.

The heated reaction is partly explained by the omnipresence in Seoul of instant noodles which, for South Koreans, usually mean the spicy, salty “ramyeon” that costs less than a dollar a package. Individually-wrapped disposable bowls and cups are everywhere: Internet cafes, libraries, trains, ice-skating rinks. Even at the halfway point of a trail snaking up South Korea’s highest mountain, hikers can refresh themselves with cup noodles.

Elderly South Koreans often feel deep nostalgia for instant noodles, which entered the local market in the 1960s as the country began clawing its way out of the poverty and destruction of the Korean War into what is now Asia’s fourth-biggest economy.

Some would not even leave the country without them, worried they would have to eat inferior noodles abroad. Mr Ko Dong-ryun, 36, an engineer from Seoul, fills half his luggage with instant noodles for his international business travels.

“Ramyeon is like kimchi to Koreans,” he said, referring to the spicy, fermented vegetable dish that graces most Korean meals. “The smell and taste create an instant sense of home.”

While the study raises important questions, it cannot prove that instant noodles are to blame rather than the overall diets of people who eat lots of them, cautioned Ms Alice Lichtenstein, director of the cardiovascular nutrition lab at Tufts University in Boston.

“What’s jumping out is the sodium (intake) is higher in those who are consuming ramen noodles,” she said. “What we don’t know is whether it’s coming from the ramen noodles or what they are consuming with the ramen noodles.”

A serving of the top-selling instant ramyeon provides more than 90 per cent of South Korea’s recommended daily sodium intake.

Although China is the world’s largest instant noodle market, said the World Instant Noodles Association, its per capita consumption pales next to South Korea’s.

By value, instant noodles were the top-selling manufactured food in South Korea in 2012, the most recent year figures are available, with about 1.85 trillion won (S$2.2 billion) worth sold, said South Korea’s Ministry of Food and Drug Safety. AP

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