Why do good girls like bad food?
I don’t know, personally. Because I’m not good. So I can’t help you there. But I can say I like good food – and while I love fruit, soup will always hold a special burner on my heart stove. In fact, back when Brittany Murphy played The Ramen Girl, I wanted to pack my bags, jet to Japan and become a frock donning soup chef. Partially it was because I don’t have an identity of my own and wanted to spend some time pretending to be someone else. But there were a few other motives, too.
Like the whole controlling people’s emotions with my cooking.
Or getting a stereotypical soup guru character who looked like he’d just stepped outta a Hayao Miyazaki film.
Plus I wanted to prove I could do a better job than Brit’s character (by bothering to actually catch a few Japanese phrases Rosetta style on my flight in instead of expecting everyone, everywhere to know English).
But mostly, obviously, it’s because I loved soup.
And before I learned how to make my own, top ramen was my shiz as a kid. Even when I got to college or had sick days in bed, I gravitated toward it again because the taste and warmth felt like coming home and curling up in the flannel sheets of my youth. But when I’d wake up the next day looking like a man who’d just crash landed into the ocean and spent an extended holiday at its bottom bloating into Vio-late Beaurgard before being exhumed, it was clear this wasn’t something to be eating on the regular.
Don’t get me wrong. Warm, comforting soup’s still my joint, but I just take it a little differently now that I realize the source of that ramen-aftermath. It took a little while to understand my throat hole’s not an emotional laundry shoot for sullied pain and anger garments I can just light on fire once they get to the bottom and start building up instead of cleaning. So now what I do consume never fails to make me feel as happy and light as those dudes in the movie who eat Brit’s bowl o’ bliss. s’all about them clean ingredients. So, the question is – can you get that from canned or pre-packaged soups?
How about my retro Ramen meals that kept me company many a lonely dorm eve?
Were these savory trysts just some travesty?
Does all that love just… go away?
Mmmyeah. Sadly, a slew of stats (that probably explain why I’ve spent so much of my life feeling like Stephen Hawking looks with the antithesis of his genius) Baylor shared after some ramen research showed me just how bad this crap has been for me. For one, despite its deliciousness, it has about 70% of my daily recommended salt intake.
(And now, for a highly scientific diagram to demonstrate):
Holy oriental rip off, batman!
But hold on to your ladles, ’cause along with that sodium deluge comes the tendency toward high blood pressure, stroke, heart failure, stomach cancer, and obvi all the hideous bloating like I’d used to get. Then there’s this called cardio metabolic syndrome. I dunno what it is, really because I started to feel too weary about all these side effects being thrown at me to look up more depressing stuff. But what it does is raise my chances of getting diabetes or a stroke (which sucks because then people have to wipe your ass for you and you can’t smile). But here’s the kicker right in the clit – because of our ovarian kind’s hormone proclivities, it’s more likely we women will catch this crap. Just like how we’re more likely to have hormone regulation get effed up cuzza the BPA packaging that apparently can seep in like the oil monster from Fern Gully.
Ironic (#dontchyathink) that we bishes get the shit end of the chopstick because we ate an effing healthy ass apple back in the Jesus prequel. And now we can’t enjoy the delicious bliss of salt-lick stew without getting dead. But I don’t like to complain. Even that fear-porn mongering I just gave into is making me feel all dirty inside. Let’s clean it up with a few solutions shall we?
What changes can we make to avoid slow death by noodle asphyxiation?
Well, among the ones I’ve heard include other nice cheap subs like beans. Sounds boring, but there’s a whole buncha delish stuff out there – lentils, garbanzo, kidney, lima, llama. Just kidding. There’s no llama. Just seeing if you got bored enough with the idea of beans to give up reading. Because I was bored with being open to it back when nada but noodles would do. In fact, it’s funny retrospectively how I truly believed the story I was telling everyone – that I was buying ramen “because it was cheap and easy to make” and not because I was addicted to the taste (though, to be fair, you do hafta be one flavor packet short of broth to do ramen wrong).
But the thing is, one day I saw something cheaper (and probably healthier) sitting next to it, and my brain-tongue did its infamous dance of defiance like a two-year-old who’s just learned “no” is a thing. If that resonates with you, but you still like being filled up the way soup allows, then mayhaps buy fresh fruit or whole melons. They’re filling because of the high water content and you can eat a shiz ton of it without getting bloaty and while staying energized.
Admittedly, while that’s what I do during the day, at night the craving remains.
I still want that soup. By afternoon, the crack-a-noodle junkie from my youth surfaces, slowly. So, instead of holding a hot spoon over a block of dried starch, shaking with clammy anticipation, and drooling while waiting for it to cool down enough to mainline into my taste buds, I channel my B-Murph and ramen up my own concoction of the veg. genre. For “noodles”, I buy a buncha sprouted mung beans or even the soy ones along with some enoki mushrooms (these things are amazing – they’re tendril-ly like noodles and taste so good you might eat them before they make their way into the both).
(Getting a gastro-wetty just looking at them.)
I dump all’a that into a delicious broth made up from either a low-so (that’s my new thing for “low sodium”. Starting now. Or maybe N/A on the Na?) Amy’s broth base or fresh tomato juice. Then, I’ll add in some veggies, leafy greens, some beans…aaand I’m getting hungry all over again even though I just ate. So, I’ll hafta stop the potage pornography now. Just know that it is possible both on a dollar diet or an earthy diet or a lazy diet to still eat healthy, if you stop wasting your money on other bullshit and go to rehab for your sodium habit. Just depends on what you really want outta life, I guess.
And if what you want outta life is still a cycle of drinking salt water and crying it out back into your bowl, there’s always a workaround. Naturally, it’s never long before I learn a good one via the old internet machine. And if you’re the crackhead version of overly manly man, the boss o’ ramen method might be for you:
1. Karate chop noodle block and devour.
2. Guzzle boiling water.
3. Snort salty powder.
4. Eff office bishes.
