Video Vault: Think Of This Next Time You Plan To Eat Top Ramen
The most disgusting and intriguing way to prove a point about processed food is in this video. ...
by Erika Nicole Kendall
Apparently, this really happened:
Avoiding processed foods can be difficult, especially when living on a tight budget. This noodle-eye-view of Top Ramen and Gatorade traveling into your stomach might make you go the extra mile. The video is just a preview of a project called M2A: The Fantastic Voyage by media artist Stefani Bardin. M2A refers to an ingestible capsule literally dubbed Mouth-to-Anus, which contains a camera and LED capable of recording the whole messy journey. The captured video is combined with data from a separate capsule that senses pH and pressure in the gastrointestinal tract.
One subject was fed a meal of Top Ramen, Gatorade, and Gummi Bears, while the other was fed hand-made noodles, pomegranate/cherry juice gummy bears, and hibiscus “Gatorade” (presumably home-made). The result is an intimate portrait of how our bodies break down processed vs whole foods.
So…I’m just sayin’. Actually… I’m hurlin’. This takes me back to a finals week in college where I survived on nothing but top ramen, microwaveable popcorn bags and cheap chocolate kisses. I came out of that week twitching and scratching. Good grief.
I will say this, though: “Top ramen noodles are made to survive armageddon.” had me dying. I’m still laughing. Pardon me while I go stock my panic room with twinkies and top ramen. Shrimp flavor.
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12 Responses to “Video Vault: Think Of This Next Time You Plan To Eat Top Ramen”
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I was going to grab some take out after work ummm i am going home and COOK something home-made after seeing that….ewwwww
I hope you will also be stocking some Pepto, laxatives, and whatever else may be necessary to break that stuff down in your panic room.
Learning about processed foods has explained my more troubled IBS years so well.
LOL @ “Top ramen noodles are made to survive armageddon.”
Erika I remember eating those ramen noodles in college too..those things had way too much sodium.
Excerpted from Video Vault: Think Of This Next Time You Plan To Eat Top Ramen | A Black Girl’s Guide To Weight Loss
Cool video. Its just extra encourgement to continue to eat right. Gross. So Gross.
Must this be posted the day after I ate ramen?? lol! But thank God it was home made Korean ramen, fresh with kimchi and peppers. Washed it down with a homemade almond milk and do-match green tea powder shake. I will admit, about once every other month around “that time” I get a hankering for packaged .13c ramen. Conditioning I guess. I resisted and got the fresh stuff. Taste is remarkably different.
One of the main changes I’m making with my own weight loss program (and it’s working – 10 pounds down in a month WOOOHOOO!) is to make foods from scratch, cook properly, and eat mostly fruit, veggies, and our own meats from our own animals (we live on a farm).
This has absolutely convinced me we’re doing the right thing. Apart from the fact that you have NOT tasted chicken or lamb until you’ve tasted our organically-raised, free-range animals (the difference between supermarket meat and our happy and well-treated animals is unbelievable), it’s so much healthier.
But the real difference that has surprised me has been how quickly I’m making meals for the four of us, and how much more cheaply. I’ve bought a couple of cookbooks titled “5 pm panic” and similar, published by the Healthy Food Guide, and the recipes take 20 minutes or thereabouts to cook. You can’t even cook a frozen pizza in that amount of time!
We used to buy a lot of 2 minute noodles and such for our kids, and they loved them. Since changing our ways, we just stopped buying them, and the kids actually prefer eating healthy now. I had to stop taking the kids food shopping with me, but that was just a quick shuffle in my schedule, and has also saved me $$ because I don’t have to buy all the treats they grovelled for and I would end up buying them.
Thanks again. Your blog continued to be one of the best on the net – and not just for black girls (says this white New Zealander!)
!!!!!!!!!!
this is just…striking. wow.
Wow. I’m glad I saw this video. Throwing out all processed food from my cabinet as we speak.
Wow!. That was an interesting video. I’ll think twice before buying processed food again.
I applaud the intentions of this video, but to be fair, both meals fall under the category of processed regardless of the ingredients used to make them–there’s no way for noodles to be considered whole, since you have to mix ingredients to create them. Just about everything we eat is “processed” one way or another, even if it’s just spraying organic carrots with vegetable cleanser before transporting them to the farmer’s market.
I think it’s great for everyone to be conscious of the food we eat, but we shouldn’t be so easily swayed by titles/labels. Not all processed foods are bad for you (i.e. the home-made noodles in the video), and even meals made with whole foods as ingredients can be made to be unhealthy depending on how you prepare the meal (i.e. how much salt was added to the home-made noodles). The video could be a great tool to stress the importance of reading the ingredients in the food we eat. It’s all about *managing* our eating habits.
I think it’s obvious that both meals fall under the category of processed foods. If we want to split hairs down to infinite levels, cooking an item is putting it through a process.
The issue is the ingredients, and always has been. I think the video makes that clear.