after I read the ramen report yesterday I remember seeing one of the eating healthy websites saying ramen had no nutritional value what so ever and the only positive thing was it was better than starving …
were they right ?
No. It’s mostly carbs, with a little fat and protein. It’s not the most nutritious food, but it has nutrients.
And sodium. Lots of sodium.
But those are the instant Ramen that most people think of when they think of ramen. Actual good ramen noodles are much better tasting and somewhat better nutritionally.
If Ramen had no nutritional value, then eating it would lead to starvation, wouldn’t it?
How much of the sodium is in the broth vs. the noodle? I generally will add the flavoring pack while cooking, then drain the excess broth before eating. i am assuming that while will probably a lot of sodium, it should still be less than the label indicates (which I assume include all the broth packet).
Of course the palm oil is still a problem…
Different question. Is Ramen really the Japanese pronunciation of Lo Mein? That sounds like a joke. Do the Chinese make fun of the Japanese inability to say an L, substituting R? It’s like one of the Cool Facts in the newspaper that are never facts. Our local paper even recently printed the …and nobody knows why… fact. :smack: But, Ramen, really?
Yes, the Japanese word “ramen” comes from Chinese. No, it’s not a joke. It’s just that Japanese, like all languages, lacks some of the sounds of other languages. So, when they take a word with the L sound in it from another language, they substitute their letter R. So it’s not a joke: it’s just the best that they can do with the sounds of the Japanese language.
(And we English speakers do the same when we borrow “ramen” from Japanese, because the English R sound is different from the Japanese R sound: we too substitute the closest sound in our language.)
As I recall, the Japanese aren’t unable to say an L, rather, the English sounds R and L sound the same to Japanese: they aren’t independent phonemes.
The idea that “Ramen” is the Japanese pronunciation of Chinese characters is, of course, slightly misleading: those Chinese characters don’t have a strictly defined pronunciation. Rather, “Ramen” is the English spelling of the Japanese pronunciation of the Cantonese words represented by the Chinese characters.
My father told me that, when he was with the OSS in China, they would test people claiming to be displaced Chinese by asking them to say “faultless fortress”.
Actual Ramen is great and tends to have a lot of vegetables and a variety of really complex broths that I’m sure have varying amounts of nutritional value. It’s not what I’d characterize as particularly healthy, however (maybe in comparison to a hamburger).
The Japanese “r” is the alveolar tap/flap, like the “t” it “Katie” (in most American dialects at least). Most languages don’t have our “r” sound, even fewer have an “r” or “l” distinction, and phonetically those are practically identical (alveolar approximant vs lateral alveolar approximant). Lithuanian is even worse because it has a “light” and “dark” l which are phonemically distinct.
Japanese, in fact, has neither our “r” nor “l”, they both get lumped into the closest approximation of both sounds which is the alveolar tap/flap (which isn’t phonemically distinct in our language), which in turn we romanize as “r”.
Jragon, your post reminds me that I freaking loved my Linguistics classes in college.
I was just thinking of this passage from the staff report:
Usually you would say sukebe, although it’s my understanding that there are stronger, more unpleasant words for it just like there are in English - and I don’t think “Zotti” is one of them.
You’re on the right track. You eliminate a lot of the sodium by avoiding the seasoning packed and draining the broth. You’ll still get something like 200mg of sodium, but that’s not too bad. As you said, however, it will still have all the fat due to the fact that the noodles are cooked in oil.
I thought that was supposed to be good for you now. Or was that last week?
I feel lettuce has no nutritional value. There’s a little chlorophyll, a little water, and lots of indigestible cellulose. Any normal leaf has all three anyway.
Depends on why you oiled your palm.
Indeed. The Japanese take their ramen quite seriously. There is a movie, Tampopo about this fixation. “One fine day… I went out with an old man. He’s studied noodles for 40 years. He was showing me the right way to eat them.”
The main thread is about a young widow who had inherited the family-run ramen shop and is struggling. A passing truck driver takes her under his wing and together they develop the perfect broth recipe (after sampling many of the rival shops in the area) and perfect her skills in preparation and presentation. Along the way there are plenty of vignettes about love and food, like the mother who rouses herself from her death bed to prepare her family one last meal. As the sobbing family eats (Eat! Eat! It’s your mother’s final gift to us!) she sinks back onto the bed to expire with a beatific smile on her face.
Hentai is the Japanese word for adult cartoons it’s also the word for pervert. Or at least that’s what I’ve heard. Although Naruto calls Jirarya Ero-Sennin (Pervy Sage).
there changing them !