To Ramen or Not to Ramen? That is the Question

[HFWR]

Fooled by something you read on the internet? Get in this looooong line, right behind me.

I've read that regular consumption of ramen noodles increases the towing capacity of your vehicle...

I rarely consume prepackaged foods, not so much for health reasons, but because they taste like salty cardboard. In the bad old days, I consumed more than my share of "4 for a dollar" mac n cheese, white bread, tv dinners, and/or pot pies, washed down with powdered milk...

 

[Bamaman]

Go to an oriental food market and purchase the noodles.

Then make your own broth to put it in. That way, you've bypassed all the bad chemicals that you find in those powder packets in ramen noodles.

 

[tmm99]

Ok, I'm not a ramen expert. They seem to be just another pasta made from the same basic ingredients of flour, salt, water, and sometimes eggs. So what is the problem except for eating too much? Japan, Northern China, Italy, US, etc. all eat large quantities of this whether called ramen or spagetti. What makes it so bad when it is called ramen? Am I missing something here?

Cheers!

The ramen in question (the kind the OP is talking about) is the dry, instant kind like Top Ramen, Maruchan Ramen, and Cup o' Noodles that you can get at just about any supermarket. If you pick up a box of pasta and look at the ingredients, you will probably only see a few ingredients to the list, whereas you will probably see a much longer list on the instant ramen noodles, in addition to the long list for the seasoning packet. And these instant noodles are fried. You will be able to get instant noodles with a seasoning packet in Japanese markets that contain non-fried noodles with fewer ingredients (which taste a lot like the ramen you eat at a ramen shop), but that's not what people are discussing here. I think the cheap, instant ramen has its own appeal that cannot be replaced by the more wholesome kind.