Instant noodles is pretty popular in spite of its known status as a junk food with no nutrition whatsoever. Cup of noodles and its variants are spiffy attractive choices that fill you up nicely and leave you feeling quite proud of how quickly and efficiently you managed to take care of your hunger pangs. The fact that you have just filled yourself with empty calories that make no worthwhile contribution to your body does not appear to be of immediate urgency. Be that as it may, what’s worse is probably its packaging which manages to pack in quite a bit of toxic material, most of which is absorbed right away and enters your body.

So if you thought the food was junk, wait till you learn about the containers. It is usually made of Styrofoam or plastic. When Styrofoam comes into contact with extreme heat in the form of boiling water, it releases toxic gases that have been proven to be carcinogenic.

If that is not bad enough, the cup that the instant noodle comes in is coated with dioxin containing compounds, probably to make it water proof or look glossy and pretty. This glossy wax coating is toxic and leaches into the food, even more so when you add boiling water and wait for the stipulated two minutes to pass.

At the end of the two minutes, your cup of noodles is ready to be eaten, along with the dioxin and packaging glue that is now in your food. This wax that coats the inside of the cup and the noodles takes about 4 days to pass out of your system. Which means, a person who eats this stuff daily or sometimes even twice daily would have enough wax coating their digestive system to be worthy of their own platform at Madam Tussauds.

Now we know that processed foods are unhealthy foods and the instant noodle can therefore by no means pass for nutritious food. The noodle itself is just refined flour fried in hydrogenated fat containing carb and no nutrients, fibre, or vitamins. The tiny sachet of flavouring is a lethal mix of MSG and artificial colours and preservatives. Now that the problem with instant noodles has entered public debate, manufacturers have come up with the so-called healthier versions. Some manufacturers add a smattering of dehydrated vegetables and meats but they are seriously kidding themselves that these actually make the whole instant noodle package highly nutritious and magically wipe away all the toxins.

Some advice boiling the instant noodle, throwing away the water which now has the wax, boiling another pan of water, adding the cooked noodles to it, and finally adding the contents of the flavour sachet to this pan. If you can go to this much trouble, wouldn’t it make more sense to cook some healthy pasta or rice instead of dioxin laden instant noodles?

Photograph Courtesy morguefile.com

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