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Ramen restaurant prevalence is associated with stroke mortality in Japan
- xivzgrev 7y agoPeople 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 sodium to make my kitchen (nearly) salt free. https://www.webmd.com/hypertension-high-blood-pressure/news/20110711/high-sodium-low-potassium-diet-linked-to-heart-risk https://www.webmd.com/hypertension-high-blood-pressure/news/...
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- radicaldreamer 7y agoPotassium is hard on your kidneys, probably okay if you’re young but increasingly worse for you as you age...
- JamesBarney 7y agoI'd never heard of this so I tried to find anything that talls about potaassium causing kidney issues and I haven't been able to find any links between potassium consumption and kidney problems. Mind linking
- xenihn 7y agoI can't stand the taste of 100% potassium salt. The Morton's 50/50 mix is just barely tolerable. It actually tastes better than regular salt when used to season avocados, though.
- osamagirl69 7y agoWhy not limit your scope to just sodium and potassium? This guy tries all of the alkali metal salts! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJh9yTIBY48 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJh9yTIBY48
- jolux 7y agoWebMD? Seriously? The science on salt is quite debated, actually: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/heart-failure-and-salt-the-great-debate-2018121815563 https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/heart-failure-and-salt-t...
- lvturner 7y agoFor 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...
- CardenB 7y agoWebMD has a profit driven interest to pick on health anxiety by exaggerating symptoms
- lvturner 7y agoProfiting through advertising, or is there darker connections? Sorry, I'm genuinely not trying to be obtuse, but I'm just not quite sure on how that would work - does exaggerating the symptoms cause people to spend longer on the site? Or is it just to drive up search ranking? Or improve click through?
- ashildr 7y agoDramatized, controverse stories bring more “interaction” and are more readily shared on social media. So they bring more pageviews and ad revenue. This is why news and social media are the shit dispensaries they are today.
- jolux 7y agoHighly commercialized through pharma with no real avenues for accountability to what they claim.
- jjeaff 7y agoI think things are going the opposite direction with salt. That is one study, but studies that are not finding any link between health hazards and salt are starting to pile up. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/its-time-to-end-the-war-on-salt/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/its-time-to-end-t... Lots of doctors are even starting to tell people that they don't really have to worry about salt unless they have a hypertension problem.
- RandomInteger4 7y agoWhy 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.
- sandoooo 7y agoHow do we prove that they didn't just look at mortality in all diseases and for all restaurants, and cherry-picked stroke-vs-ramen because it has the best significance? I am not accusing them of anything - I have no horse in this race. What I am curious about is: how do you prove that you haven't p-hacked, if you are going to do a study like this? Sure, you can pre-register your methods, but presumably you can get the data and do some data crunching on it way before you have to pre-register. How do you prove that your results are legit in the age of reproduction crisis?
- shakna 7y agoYou don't at the level of this study. It's useful to suggest this is something that might be explored in a better, more clinical, setting. The news might pick up and run with this, which is unfortunate, but so long as you don't view this as anything more than a suggestion of a relationship, you should be fine.
- ajross 7y ago> How do you prove that your results are legit in the age of reproduction crisis? You... try to reproduce them. The "reproduction crisis" isn't a failure of the scientific method, it's just pointing out that we've picked all the low hanging fruit (i.e. highly significant results) in science while increasing the amount of science done by huge amounts. So there's a lot of junk. Possibly (hopefully! I love ramen) including this paper. But nothing has changed with how you prove your results are legit: do a similar study in a different location trying to find the same effect.
- wongarsu 7y agoI guess the only reliable way is to have an independent group reproduce it using different data and publish their result. Whenever theres something interesting shown in natural sciences you quickly hear about replication efforts being able or unable to replicate the results. In most other sciences there doesn't seem to be much glory in replication
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- pjbk 7y agoNow whenever I read articles of this type of statistical research, my mind immediately recalls Tyler Vigen's website and book... http://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations http://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
- porknubbins 7y agoI’d be surprised if people are eating ramen so much it affects long term disease rates noticeably just because there are more restaurants. I also think Japanese could eat tonkotsu ramen a few times a week and still get less saturated fat than most Western diet eaters. Maybe salt could cause some acute condition though?
- gryson 7y agoThe authors state (the obvious) in the discussion: the correlation is likely not caused by ramen itself. Rather, the prevalence of ramen restaurants is an indicator of general food preferences in a particular region. The regions in question are known to have high salt diets.
- m3nu 7y agoNot surprising. In the China Study they also found a positive correlation between consumption of wheat flour and heart disease. (Some places in China eat mostly rice, others more wheat.) Any new guesses on the mechanism? Related: https://deniseminger.com/2010/09/02/the-china-study-wheat-and-heart-disease-oh-my/ https://deniseminger.com/2010/09/02/the-china-study-wheat-an...
- howlin 7y agoIt'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.
- whiddershins 7y agoWhen I saw ramen shops in Tokyo they seemed to cater to people working long hours, or who were in a hurry, and were interested in eating standing up.
- tus88 7y agoWeird they think ramen is the only food with regional variation. And lots of stressed salarymen in Tokyo eating ramen but Tokyo is down the bottom. It's really this north-western part of Honshu. Total guess, but when I was in Hirosaki once (red area), I went to this little restaurant on advice of an innkeeper, and they gave me this plate of green leaf and other tempura. It was huge and oily and they expected me to eat it by myself. I remember thinking at the time...this can't be good for my health.
- HenriNext 7y agoRamen is cheap, so there are more Ramen restaurants in poor areas, which have lower life expectancy? https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2017/01/31/low-socioeconomic-status-affects-life-expectancy-more-than-obesi_a_21704449/ https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2017/01/31/low-socioeconom...
- motbob 7y agoBut is ramen cheap at ramen restaurants in Japan? I ask because I spent $17 on ramen in a large American city earlier this month.
- iso1337 7y agoYes, 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/article-a0001973/ 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 style.
- op00to 7y agoHow do I ask for the simple stuff? The liquid bacon gives me unfortunate digestion symptoms that should not be named.
- hkmurakami 7y agoSome ramen joints in the states offer non pork broth ramen options. But I'm the states the options are predominantly pork
- L_Rahman 7y ago/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 shops in Tokyo where I'm living right now are specialists so research will show you upfront whether it's tonkotsu (heavy pork), chicken paitan (heavy chicken), hakodate (light fish), tonkotsu-gyokai (blend of pork and fish). If you're in Japan, I recommend the Ramen Beast app which has location based recommendations, high quality reviews and lists for lighter ramen. If you're in NY and looking for a lighter bowl: I can vouch for most of the bowls at Nakamura, the yuzu shoyu at Mr. Taka, and all of the bowls at Yuji Ramen.
- arthurofbabylon 7y agoI’m reluctant to draw conclusions around nutrition based on this correlation, because ramen is so regional. (When I’m in the Japanese mountains, there’s no ramen - just udon and soba.) I understand a huge portion of Japan’s ramen is in Tokyo. There are many human health factors with an outsize presence/lack-of-presence in Tokyo - like alcohol consumption, noise, overwork...
- manfredhe 7y agoIt's very interesting
- manfredhe 7y agoIt's very nice and quite interesting
- jelliclesfarm 7y agoIt’s noodles with meat, high sodium and high fat. It’s bad if it’s had every single day. Just like burgers and fries.
- purplezooey 7y agoWell they do have a ton of saturated fat.
- base698 7y agohttps://www.amazon.com/dp/B0095ZMPTU/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0095ZMPTU/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?... Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease
- nemonemo 7y agoIf you see the results, you can also find negative correlation between stroke and the density of the western restaurants (french/italian or fast foods). What conclusions can you draw out of that? I'd probably just think this is just an interesting study that can't say anything with the results alone.
- ryacko 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_horse_meat_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_horse_meat_scandal Food fraud is potentially related to this correlation.
- mark_l_watson 7y agoSo, the higher carbohydrate and salt content in restaurant style Ramen increases the chance of stroke. I make Ramen at home about twice a week and double the vegetables and halve the noodles in Ramen recipes. After reading this article, I am going to try to reduce sodium also.
- afo3 7y agoHokkaido 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.