An experiment performed by a doctor in Massachusetts has people questioning whether they will ever eat this food again. Millions of Americans have eaten this food, many while on the go, because it’s so easy to prepare. College students especially chow down with a bowl of it and never look at the ingredients.
The food in question? Instant noodles.
Dr. Braden Kuo of Massachusetts General Hospital used a camera the size of a pill to find out what happens while the body digests pre-cooked noodles. The video showed that the noodles were still largely intact after two hours, according to USA Today.
If you’re in the habit of reading food labels, you’ll often come across ingredients you can’t pronounce. Tertiary butylhydroquinone, or TBHQ, might be one of them.
As long as the noodles remain in the stomach, so do all the noodles’ additives, including toxic preservatives like TBHQ.
TBHQ is an additive to preserve processed foods. It acts as an antioxidant, but unlike the healthy antioxidants you find in fruits and vegetables, this antioxidant has a controversial reputation.
TBHQ prevents oxidation of fats and oils and is a common ingredient in processed food. McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Wheat Thins and Teddy Grahams all contain TBHQ.
So, what are the potential dangers of this common food additive? Research has linked TBHQ to numerous possible health problems.
According to the Centers for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a well-designed government study found that this additive increased the incidence of tumors in rats. And according to the National Library of Medicine (NLM), cases of vision disturbances have been reported when humans consume TBHQ. They also cite studies that have found TBHQ to cause liver enlargement, neurotoxic effects, convulsions, and paralysis in laboratory animals, nausea, vomiting, ringing in the ears, delirium and a sense of suffocation. Exposure over a long period of time can cause changes that affect the liver.
Some believe TBHQ also affect human behavior. It’s this belief that has landed the ingredients on the black list of the Feingold diet, a dietary approach to managing attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Advocates of this diet say that those who struggle with their behavior should avoid TBHQ.
A 2014 study in medical periodical The Journal of Nutrition concluded that women in South Korea who ate more instant noodles were more likely to suffer from metabolic syndrome, the symptoms of which include obesity, high blood pressure, high blood sugar and low levels of HDL cholesterol, which is considered the “good” cholesterol.
“Although instant noodle is a convenient and delicious food, there could be an increased risk for metabolic syndrome given [the food’s] high sodium, unhealthy saturated fat and glycemic loads,” said Harvard doctoral candidate Hyun Shin, according to PreventDisease.com.
Metabolic syndrome sufferers are at an increased risk of developing diabetes and heart disease.
Instant noodles also contain high levels of monosodium glutamate, an excitotoxin that can cause damage or death to nerve cells by over-stimulating them. Damaged nerve cells are a factor in the development of debilitating neurological conditions like Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and ALS.
In short, if you eat instant noodles, or anything with TBHQ, find another snack. You’ve been warned.