Category: Nosh

A staple of dorm rooms around the world, ramen noodles remain the go-to food of choice for those living on tight budgets. In fact, ask any college student if they eat prepackaged ramen and they’ll likely skip right to their favorite flavors. Why so popular? You can pick up a week’s worth of meals for a few measly dollars.

On top of their affordability, the noodle bricks are good for those with limited access to kitchens. See, you only need to add one ingredient to ramen: hot water. This makes ramen noodles accessible to those with the most limited of cooking resources.
But as of late, the ramen tide is shifting. Upscale versions of ramen dishes have soared their way into restaurants, ranging from small pop-ups to five-star dining experiences. According to Fast Company, New York and Los Angeles are “saturated with gourmet ramen shops,” and their ramen supplier, Sun Noodle, produces about 90,000 servings of ramen per day.

This uptick in gourmet ramen consumption is due to restaurant owners following a longstanding Japanese marketing strategy, according to the Fast Company piece: Restaurateurs manufactured a food craze by using the media to their advantage and securing coverage on food blogs.
Now, with ramen noodles consumed by anyone from wallet-conscious students to gourmet diners, enthusiasts of this food should familiarize themselves with its (lack of) nutritional value.

Serving up Sodium

This might surprise you, but a package of ramen noodles’ serving size is only half a block. This means you ingest about 830-850 milligrams of sodium per serving—twice that if you eat the entire package.

 
According to the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, you should consume less than 2,300 mg of sodium per day. “To do the math, by consuming one pack of ramen, you are consuming 72-73 percent of your daily sodium allowance,” says Jennifer Kanikula, a registered dietitian and blogger at The SoFull Traveler.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that your body does need sodium to function properly, but too much of it is bad for your health. Sodium can increase blood pressure and boost your risk for stroke and heart disease.
 

Even children are not immune to sodium issues. Almost nine out of 10 children eat more sodium than recommended, and one in nine has elevated blood pressure.

Ramen Research

A study published in the Journal of Nutrition shows that eating instant noodles is linked to heart risk, especially in women. Researchers in South Korea (a country with a high consumption rate of instant noodles) used 10,700 participants (54.5 percent women) ranging in age from 19 to 64.
They assessed the people’s diets using a 63-item food-frequency questionnaire and identified two major dietary patterns: a traditional dietary pattern that was rich in rice, fish, vegetables, fruit, and potatoes, and a meat- and fast-food dietary pattern that had less rice intake but was rich in meat, soda, and fast food, including instant noodles.
 

Researchers found that those who followed the second dietary pattern had a higher prevalence of abdominal obesity. Further, the women who ate instant noodles at least twice a week had higher incidence of metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome includes health risk factors such as obesity, high blood pressure, elevated blood sugar, and high cholesterol—basically anything that can increase your risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes. It did not even matter what type of dietary pattern they followed—sixty eight percent off women who ate ramen twice or more per week had metabolic syndrome.
In a study conducted by Stefani Bardin, a teacher at Parsons School of Design, and Braden Kuo, MD, director of the gastrointestinal motility laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital at Harvard University, it was found that instant ramen is difficult to digest.

In their study, Bardin and Kuo asked two volunteers to eat different meals: One had a meal of processed food, instant ramen being the main course, and the other ate a meal consisting of handmade noodles. After eating, the participants swallowed tiny camera capsules that recorded the inside of their gastrointestinal tracts. Results showed significant differences in the processes; the instant ramen did not break down into the tiny matter necessary for proper digestion, and the other meal did.
Although this is not positive news, ramen noodle lovers do not need to fret. According to an article published in The New York Times, you can still eat instant noodles, just in moderation. Frank Hu, professor of nutrition and epidemiology at Harvard University, said in the article, “Once or twice a month is not a problem. But a few times a week really is.”

Instant comfort?

Under duress, people often turn to eating ramen noodles as a way to make themselves feel better. Stressed college women are likely to experience an increased appetite and propensity to consume unhealthy foods, according to a study in Nutrition Research.
It’s not just women who indulge in comfort eating, either—a study in Physiology & Behavior shows that while women are more likely to increase food consumption while stressed, stressed women and men increase their intakes of unhealthy (particularly fatty) foods.

In terms of ramen, it seems men may be more likely to eat it when stressed: Men more often report seeking out “hearty, meal-related comfort foods,” whereas women often prefer “snack-related” comfort foods like chocolate and ice cream.
But research indicates stress eating is a short-lived, and short-sighted, stress solution. While “comfort eaters may experience reduced perceived stress compared to those who do not engage in this behavior,” per research in the journal Appetite, another study shows that combining food with stress “promotes the compulsive nature of overeating.” The mood-improving effects of tasty (as opposed to “unpalatable”) chocolate only last for three minutes, a third study finds.
In a sense, people use food they enjoy as a form of self-medication when they experience bad days. Ramen noodles, for some, is that medication. And when you pair those noodles with healthy trimmings, it can become a wiser choice than a piece of chocolate cake.

How to Make It Healthier

If you limit the amount of noodles to keep the sodium down but beef up the dish with healthy options, you can create a hearty, tasty meal fit for one—or your entire family.

Here are a few options:

Add in protein.

“The best way to up the health factor of ramen dishes is to choose lean protein sources to go with it,” says Emily Braaten, a registered dietitian. She notes that numerous restaurant entrees feature fatty meats. “These kinds of protein make the dishes richer, but also are high in saturated fat.” She says instead, when cooking at home, you can add shredded chicken (or other lean meats) and a soft- or hard-boiled egg.

Ditch the flavor pack and augment the dish with your own savory seasonings.

“Add more flavor with herbs and less sodium,” says registered dietitian nutritionist Rebecca Scritchfield. “Try steeping fresh mint and cilantro in the hot broth and use your own salt plus red pepper flakes for spice instead of [using] the instant sodium packets.”

Mix in your favorite vegetables.

Any veggies you have in your refrigerator or freezer will work, says Scritchfield. “Or leftover roasted veggies can be added to ramen to make it more colorful and more balanced.”

Women should consume 130 grams of carbohydrates per day. Carbohydrate equivalents: One cup of fresh cooked, no-salt-added broccoli and spinach = 11 grams. One cup of frozen spinach = 8 grams. One cup of yellow and white canned corn = 30 grams.

Give soba a try.

Rather than cook with high-sodium ramen noodles, try switching to soba noodles, a healthier alternative.
“Soba is actually made of buckwheat, which contains no wheat or gluten,” says Monica Auslander Moreno, a registered dietitian. “Buckwheat has much more protein, fiber, vitamins and minerals than wheat noodles—13 grams of protein per 100 grams, 10 grams of fiber per 100 grams, and 57 percent of the daily value of magnesium.”

Bonus: soba noodles have a “nuttier taste and are not as bland as the regular wheat noodles.” She does note that you will still consume a lot of starch, but, she emphasizes, it is healthier starch.

Cook Like a Ramen Master

So, you’ve decided you can’t give up your ramen noodles. That is no problem—up your ramen prowess and cook healthier versions of the dish by simply following the sage cooking advice of celebrated chef Tracy Chang, a ramen noodles master. Her award-winning Guchi’s Midnight Ramen dish, available at her restaurant PAGU, won Best Ramen by Boston Magazine.

Here are Chang’s ramen cooking tips:

• You can amplify the flavor of the dish by adding in dried shiitake mushrooms. This vegetable has vitamins D, B, and C. It also contains essential minerals like zinc, iron, and potassium.
• For protein, dried seafood contains calcium, iron, and omega 3s for skin and hair.
• When making your own stock, you should cook the bones at a boil, and then at a simmer. You can choose either a pork or chicken bone, depending on your taste preference. Doing this releases essential minerals from the marrow and bone.
• Adding gelatin helps boost the immune system. “Gelatin comes from the skin and fat (for example, chicken backs, chicken feet and pork belly),” she says.

The Final Slurp

Ramen noodles do contain excessive amounts of sodium, and too much of it can lead to significant health issues in the future. However, if you simply limit the noodles and amplify your dish with tasty vegetables, lean proteins, and bone broth, you can satisfy your noodle love while still getting the necessary nutrients to keep you focused and strong.

“I always had an extreme sweet tooth,” confesses Kari Hamilton, a mom of four who has transformed her eating habits from the inside out. “I would bake a ridiculous amount of cookies and eat a dozen.”
Difficult pregnancies due to hyperemesis gravidarum spurred Hamilton to restructure her diet with the help of a wise nutritionist, and she eliminated inflammatory foods altogether. Since turning her diet around, Hamilton happily says, “I feel sustained and energized because my body is getting the fuel it needs to take care of my husband and four kids.” What a concept—trading treats for energy!
It’s easy to invite popular snack foods and treats into our daily food selection, and it takes a daunting amount of commitment to seek out healthier, more natural options. These snack foods are undeniably enticing—they’re delicious! But it isn’t just the taste that keeps us coming back for more. In fact, there is quite the scheme propelling popular snack foods into—and keeping them in—our daily lives.

Most popular snack foods come from large brands with giant advertising budgets. Their goal is to get their product into the hands and hearts of consumers. Teams of marketing experts lead this cause and, with their ample funds, have catapulted many not-so-healthy foods into society’s diet. Their task has science on its side—these snacks draw us in from first bite, addicting us with sugar and carbs that provide short-term highs.
Jeanette Kimszal, a registered dietitian nutritionist shares exactly how this happens: “[Popular snacks] are engineered with just the right sweet and salty tastes to trigger pleasure areas in the brain. Liking these sensations, the brain wants to experience them over and over, so you become hooked on these foods.”

Although addicting might sound like a strong word, it’s definitely accurate. The New York Times described the situation in a 2014 article: “In animal studies, animals experience sugar like a drug and can become sugar-addicted. One study has shown that if given the choice, rats will choose sugar over [coke] in lab settings because the reward is greater; the ‘high’ is more pleasurable.” So there you have it, the proof is in, dare I say, the sugar-filled pudding.
Has your brain been taught to reach for these addictive foods? Is one in particular coming to mind?

Below you’ll find a line up of popular snack foods that are hiding terrible secrets, whether that’s sugar content, chemical-coated bags, or “vanishing caloric density.” Brace yourself—you might be a bit alarmed by what we’ve uncovered. But the good news is, if you’re willing to break your addiction, we’ve rounded up some amazing and healthy alternatives that your body will learn to love.

Plain is best.

Greek yogurt is all the rage. And rightly so: It’s so tasty, it’s practically dessert! But this “health food,” depending on the type, is full of sugar. “Flavored Greek yogurts have 12–15 grams of sugar per small portion,” says Paul Salter, a registered dietitian and former nutrition editor of bodybuilding.com.

Salter proposes a much better alternative than the pre-sweetened yogurts filling grocery store shelves: “Plain, low-fat Greek yogurt plus properly portioned additives of your choosing to enhance the taste, such as dark cocoa powder, oats, honey, fresh fruit, cinnamon.”
Honestly, a “yogurt bar” of sorts with all those natural additions sounds like a smorgasbord I can get on board with.

Don’t drench your veggies with this.

Choosing veggies as a snack or side dish is fabulous, but there is one way to spoil those good intentions: salad dressing, especially low-fat, low-calorie ones. According to Salter, they’re “loaded with sugars and trans fats to compensate for the reduction in fat.”

“Embrace the healthy fats found in oil-based dressings!” says Salter. “These fats support a healthy heart, possess anti-inflammatory properties, and may support optimal cognitive functioning; you may also look into lower-calorie Greek yogurt-based dressings.”
Again with that Greek yogurt. Best get that on my shopping list!

Get your crunch on!

Nacho Cheese, Cool Ranch, Spicy Sweet Chili: Do those varieties ring a bell? I’m sure they do, because Doritos have become a cultural icon and a snack that many of us love.
Kimszal has some sad news about these chips though. Not only does the Nacho Cheese flavor boast 140 calories per ounce (that’s just 11 chips!), they also list maltodextrin as the third ingredient. What’s maltodextrin, you ask?

“Maltodextrin is corn sugar,” Kimszal says. “As we know, sugar is very addicting, so you cannot just eat one chip. This is also true of any other chips with sugar.” So learn those hidden sugar words and watch out! For reference, Kimszal notes that sugar “is known as everything from maltodextrin to dextrose, corn syrup, and fruit juice concentrate.”
“The consumers are defenseless and have no idea there could be three types of sugar in one product. For example, [some kinds of] Ritz crackers have three types of sugar—sugar, maltodextrin, and high fructose corn syrup—but to the untrained eye, it only looks like one.”

Are there any healthier choices for the chip lover to embrace? First, Kimszal encourages us to wean ourselves off sugar slowly. Then, find better options to fill both the crunch and the sugar rush. For crunch, try nuts, seeds, and higher fiber crackers (three or four grams per serving) with no additives.
“If you are craving sugar,” she continues, “have a piece of fruit instead so you are getting fiber. Berries, pomegranates, apples, and oranges can be a good alternative to get natural sugar.”

For granola, it’s best to DIY.

Who doesn’t love granola? I, for one, am quite the fan of a bowl for breakfast and in bar form as a snack on the go, but Salter warns that some granola is “heavily processed and loaded with sugar.”

Although convenient, it’s best to do it yourself when it comes to granola. Buy your own ingredients and mix your heart out! Salter encourages making your own granola with a “focus on oats and portion control.” Here, we provide a recipe for low(er) sugar granola bars.

Pop away from this kind of popcorn.

Popcorn itself isn’t bad, but the microwave kind is holding on to a terrible secret. Well, maybe not so much of a secret, now that the FDA has exposed that perfluorinated grease-proofing agent, which often coat the bags, can have toxic effects on humans.

Luckily, there is an easy alternative to microwaving popcorn—the homemade, plain variety! This recipe from Baked Bree shows how quick and easy it is to make popcorn on your stovetop; or you can always purchase an air popper. Kimszal makes plain popcorn a real treat by tossing it with natural additives like “garlic or onion powder, cinnamon, or your own raw honey for a little sweetness and flavor.”

Orange and Addicting

Have you heard of the Cheeto effect? Food scientist Steven Witherly, PhD, believes these cheese puffs are one of the most addicting junk food options out there due to their “vanishing caloric density.”
He went into this in detail in a New York Times interview, saying, “If something melts down quickly, your brain thinks that there’s no calories in it … You can just keep eating it forever.”

Avoid mindless, empty calories by intentionally choosing the foods you want to enjoy. Portion them out, and be satisfied with a realistic snack.

The deception is in the name.

When you think fruit snacks, you think fruit, of course! And while fruit is healthy, fruit snacks are most definitely not. Many varieties have a touch of fruit, but Salter says they often have an “overstated vitamin/mineral content [and are] high in sugar.”

Don’t be fooled: Gummy fruit snacks are a dessert, and a sugary one at that. Rather than making them a favorite, turn to the real deal. Real fruit has true vitamins, minerals, and natural sugar your body can grow to love—and even crave!

Beware of these breakfast options.

“Most breakfast cereals,” Kimszal says, “even the ‘healthy’ ones, have a lot of chemical preservatives and are enriched with synthetic vitamins. They are not truly whole grains.”

Rather, she encourages steel cut oats or a chia bowl. She shares a quick, easy recipe for chia bowls: “Take one cup chia seeds and add one cup water, a fourth cup pumpkin seeds, and a little bit of unprocessed cacao and coconut flakes. Mix well and serve.”

Should you completely cut these popular snack foods from your diet?

Probably. But any step in the right direction is a good idea. Aiming for balance in your diet is a realistic goal. In a 2016 HealthyWay article, fitness instructor Shaun T recommended that you treat, not cheat. He did this by following the “85/15 rule.”

“I eat 85 percent foods that are healthy and 15 percent foods that are fun,” the fitness instructor of Insanity and Hip Hop Abs fame wrote. “Start by getting out a piece of paper and drawing a line straight down the middle. On the left hand side write down all the healthy foods that you like. On the right hand side write down some of the fun foods that you love. Make sure you are eating more from the left than you are the right, and don’t beat yourself up when you choose food from the fun category.”
Hallelujah and happy day. You don’t have to give up your precious chips or favorite sweet treat! Instead, you just need to temper their role in your life—an occasional snack versus a daily essential.

If you ever find yourself in my kitchen in the middle of the week, there are a few things you are almost always guaranteed to find. There’d be Tupperware scattered across the floor, the work of my busy toddler. Toast crumbs would be littered embarrassingly from one end of the kitchen to the next, a product of a full life with three young kids. My refrigerator would be full, with a pretty even toss-up of uncooked foods for the rest of the week and forgotten leftovers, packed up in guilt after a weeknight dinner but never touched again.
Leftovers are funny. Some foods I look forward to reheating and eating again since they only seem to get better with time. Others get shoved in the back of the fridge, where I can hardly look at them in their sad state of mush and mediocre flavors. I’m not typically a picky eater, so I feel guilty that so much gets ignored until it’s time to toss.

Still, there seems to be a definite pattern to leftovers as to what tastes good and what is unbearable on day two. As it turns out, this isn’t just my personal preference. The real reason some leftovers taste so good, and why some taste just plain bad, is all about the chemistry of the flavors.

The Real Reason Some Leftovers Taste So Good

Everyone has their preferences, but there is actually a science to which foods taste better with time. Asking around, I hear a lot of the same opinions. Soups usually taste great on day two, red sauce only gets better with time, and chilis and stews are favorite foods to pack up to be reheated at work the next day.

“Soups and chilis work the best the second day,” says Dustin Green, senior executive chef from the Weber Grill Restaurant in Chicago. “The flavors tend to blend. Once they relax and they have time to cool down, the flavors tend to mesh a little bit better.”
And when it comes to soups, chilis, and similar foods, it isn’t just the flavors that change—the consistency transforms as well. Taking these foods from hot to cool and then allowing them to sit in the fridge overnight thickens these foods, according to Green.

The science of the flavor changes has a lot to do with the fats that are in foods, which are called lipids, says Devin Peterson, PhD, professor and director of the Flavor Research and Education Center at Ohio State University. The lipid molecules in the food are always changing. Typically, time gives foods a less desirable flavor, but in some cases, the effect is much different.
[pullquote align=”center”]… the lipids continue to break down the molecules we perceive, and that’s part of the new flavor we experience the next day.[/pullquote]
“When you heat them, those lipids form things you smell, and that’s a large part of where the flavors are coming from,” he explains. “That reaction is faster when you do it at cooking temperatures, say in a stew, but it still happens at room temperature and even in the fridge.”

The constant changing influences the flavor. In some foods, it isn’t a great result, while it creates a more enjoyable flavor profile in others, according to Peterson. Another factor to consider is that iron causes lipid oxidation in foods. Lipid oxidation is a chemical reaction, and it changes various characteristics of foods. When a food product is high in iron, like turkey, lipid oxidation speeds up and this can influence the flavor, according to Peterson.
“By heating it, you kind of allow things to mix more effectively,” he says. “That’s a big reason why, even when you cook a turkey and you eat out of the oven, when you put it in the fridge and eat it the next day, the lipids continue to break down the molecules we perceive, and that’s part of the new flavor we experience the next day.”

Lastly, there is another chemical reaction that happens in foods, according to Berkeley Wellness. In some cases, the protein in the food breaks down further, releasing amino acids. Some amino acids enhance the savory taste in foods, while others create new flavors through their interactions with sugar in the foods.

The Reason Some Leftovers Taste So Bad

Some leftovers are better thrown in the trash than reheated the next. Asking various friends and family, there are a lot of different opinions, but I also hear a lot of the same answers. Anything with pasta in it is better consumed right away, rice takes a lot of tender, loving care to bring it back to life on day two, and fried chicken is just awful after a night in the fridge.

Negative changes to food take place for a variety of reasons, including the result of the processes mentioned above, which simply have a difference result in different foods.
Additionally, there is the issue of temperature and moisture, according to Thomas Bowman, director of product development at Hampton Creek, who offered fried chicken as an example of food that tastes amazing on day one but awful after sitting in the fridge overnight.
“What has happened here? This is something that happens to all leftovers, but some foods deal with it a little better than others,” he explains. “It’s called equilibrium relative humidity, or ERH, for short. This is where moisture equals out to be more level with the environment around it.”

This is what causes the once-crispy outside of chicken to go soggy overnight, and the juicy meat inside to get tough, according to Bowman. An added component is how fat and collagen change with temperature changes.
“Animal fats in general take on a waxy texture when cold, and collagen congeals into a savory, rubbery jello,” he says.

Why Foods Taste Better—or Worse—Cold

Most foods that are meant to be eaten warm only taste good that way. There’s a reason for this, and it isn’t about personal preference. Temperature and flavor go hand in hand, according to Peterson.

“The temperature of your food will affect how much flavor reaches your receptors,” he explains. “When it’s colder, you could look at it as the molecules being less active and going to be less received in your mouth.”
When you heat that same food up, the flavor changes. Specifically, when you heat food up, more of the flavor ends up in the air around the food, and when you eat it, you receive the flavor to a higher degree. In some cases, like eating cold pizza, this is an enjoyable change, but the majority of leftovers will taste better after a couple minutes in the microwave.

Getting the Most From Your Leftovers

In our family, there are differing opinions on when leftovers should be eaten. My husband, who generally isn’t that into to reheated foods, prefers to toss leftovers after a day or two. If it’s food that keeps well, I tend to keep reheating and eating until they’re a week old. As it turns out, the time to throw out leftovers tends to fall somewhere between the two. Green suggests no more than four days. Bowman, however, is willing to give certain foods until day seven but says it really is dependent on the food.

“The length of time you keep your leftovers around also depends a lot on equilibrium relative humidity,” he says, admitting that calculating the spoilage rates of specific foods is a lot of work, suggesting that home chefs simply pay close attention to how their food changes over time. And all foods should be pitched once they hit day seven.
“It’s not a perfect science. There are some things that will last longer than and other shorter depending on moisture, preservative acids, and the temperature inside the fridge. Use your best judgement and repurpose those leftovers!”

How you store leftovers matters, too. Specifically, the quicker you can cool down your food, the better. Foods need to spend as little time between 125 and 70 degrees, which is a window where growth of microorganisms happens most quickly, according to the Food Safety Extension of The University of Minnesota. Within four hours, hot food needs to drop below 41 degrees, and Green offers a tip for making that happen.

“If I was doing it at home, the best way is an ice wand, so I could put that into the batch of what I’m making and put that in the refrigerator,” he says. “Depending on how thick something is, if I need to cool it down, I may need to separate it into smaller batches.”

It’s not all about science.

It’s fascinating to learn that there is a scientific explanation for why some foods taste so good on day two or three, but it isn’t all about science. It may seem obvious, but preference still plays a huge role in taste. It’s the reason I can’t help but indulge in off-brand iced oatmeal cookies, which are objectively not that great but remind me of the endless childhood afternoons I spent snacking at the kitchen table with my three siblings. When it comes to what type of food people prefer and how they prefer it cooked, it is heavily influenced by their past experiences.

“I think in the end, preference is largely related to a context,” says Peterson. “So if I’ve grown up a certain way and I’m used to preparing my foods a certain way, that’s usually a part of my preference views. And so a lot of what we like is based on our prior exposure.”

When your work is featured in a major documentary, you’d figure you’d at least get a phone call.

Dr. Clett Erridge was somewhat surprised to learn that his research was featured in What The Health, Netflix’s ultra-popular documentary on the dangers of eating meat. We know Erridge was surprised because, well, we were the ones who told him—nobody from the film had ever reached out.
In 2011, Erridge, an honorary research fellow in cardiovascular diseases at the University of Leicester, authored a scientific paper called “The capacity of foodstuffs to induce innate immune activation of human monocytes in vitro is dependent on food content of stimulants of Toll-like receptors 2 and 4.” Not the snappiest title, but he wasn’t writing for Esquire, either.

Published in the British Journal of Nutrition, the paper made the case that certain microbes present in certain foods—primarily meats and processed foods—could stimulate the human immune system, causing inflammation that could eventually increase a person’s chances of atherosclerosis (hardening of arteries) and other diseases. It was impressive research, but it didn’t exactly capture the public’s attention.
It did, however, grab the eye of Michael Greger, MD, an adamantly vegan doctor who runs the website NutritionFacts.org. Greger posted a video drawing, in part, on Erridge’s research. The video was titled “Dead Meat Bacteria Endotoxemia.” Greger contacted Erridge to tell him about the video, but only after he’d produced it and posted it online. Erridge wasn’t too concerned; he was happy that someone was talking about the research.

Greger’s website is apparently where those at What The Health found out about Erridge’s work. They posted Greger’s video, and Erridge’s article, on their website’s fact-check page, giving a much more dramatic introduction:
Within minutes of eating dead meat bacteria toxins, the body gets a burst of inflammation, stiffening or paralyzing the arteries.
(For this story, we also reached out to A.U.M. Films & Media, the distributor for What The Health, to put us in touch with the filmmakers. While A.U.M. initially agreed to provide a statement, they changed their minds once we’d forwarded a few questions, noting that it “seems quite difficult for us to be able to participate in [the] piece at this time.”)

But while What The Health made some exaggerated claims, the documentary might also have glossed over some extraordinarily important research. Erridge’s study is complex, but if replicated, it could help scientists limit cases of diabetes, atherosclerosis, and even obesity—without changing the way we eat.

The documentary’s “dead meat bacteria” descriptor isn’t quite accurate.

While “dead meat bacteria” might be an excellent band name, it’s not much of a scientific descriptor. The toxins in question aren’t just on meat—and their “paralyzing” effect on arteries is significantly overstated, too.
“There are some elements of truth in [What The Health’s claim] from a scientific perspective,” Erridge notes. “They’re right that bacteria produce these molecules, which our bodies see as foreign, and that when they’re ingested in a particular way, we can absorb them and trigger inflammation. But it’s very, very mild inflammation, and it doesn’t immediately paralyze your arteries.”
In other words, at normal levels, those toxins won’t end a person’s life immediately (though Erridge did note that they might have that effect “if you injected somebody with huge quantities,” which he wouldn’t recommend).

Exaggerated claims by filmmakers aside, Erridge’s research is still new and somewhat controversial among scientists. The prevailing opinion in the field has been that saturated fats or low-density lipoprotein cholesterols are what cause that “paralyzing” inflammation. For a time, Erridge believed those hypotheses, but his research led him to what What The Health would term “dead meat bacteria”—he calls them bugs.
They aren’t literal bugs, but rather several strains of bacteria present on the surface of many foods. Those bacteria create pathogen-associated molecular patterns, or PAMPs, which may be the culprit behind the dangerous inflammation.

That discovery basically occurred by accident.

Erridge was considering whether the microbes already in our guts create the inflammation when he received what he thought was an incredibly stupid question.
“As I was doing that work and developing new tools to look at the gut microbiota, a reviewer of one of my papers asked me, ‘How do you know these microbes weren’t coming from the food?’ And I thought at the time, ‘that was one of the stupidest questions ever.’”

“But I thought, ‘I have to address this at some point, so I’ll just do a couple of experiments to show that it’s complete rubbish, and then I can move on.'”
As he quickly learned, there are no stupid questions in science.
“I did these experiments, which I thought were going to be complete duds. And it turns out that a lot of processed foods are full of just massive quantities of these molecules, which I did not expect at all.”

Erridge thinks that those molecules might trigger an immune response in humans, and after he performed a few experiments, he published the unsnappilly-titled 2011 paper, which he now describes as “speculative.”

Here’s why this research has the potential to change the world.

We’re simplifying here, but Erridge essentially made the case that certain microbes on the surface of our foods release the PAMPs. The PAMPS then cause inflammation—our bodies see the molecules, which look like germs, and respond accordingly. In heavily processed foods, those microbes often grow into larger colonies, and in turn, PAMP levels rise.
[pullquote align=”center”]We designed a diet that was very low in these PAMPs … [and] to our surprise, a whole bunch of markers went down …[/pullquote]
With finely cut foods, PAMP levels rise rapidly by the day, even when the foods are refrigerated. Ground beef and sausage seem to be particularly susceptible to this effect, and common cooking methods don’t rid the meats of the PAMP molecules.

However, the effect isn’t restricted to meat. The “bugs” seem to love chopped onions, in particular, so foods like jarred pasta sauces might create more of a dietary threat. Sadly, chocolate is another high-PAMP food, since chocolate processing requires fermenting the cocoa beans for several weeks.
Fresh foods seem to have very low PAMP levels, but finely chopped foods have much higher levels of the molecules. Unprocessed meats—steaks, for instance—don’t seem to pose as much of a problem, since the bacteria doesn’t permeate the meat (though Erridge notes that steaks can be unhealthy for other reasons). Also, no two meats will have the exact same bacterial species, so as Erridge says, “it’s possible to find a perfectly good sausage.”

Erridge’s work didn’t stop in 2011. He later designed a new experiment to test the hypothesis in vivo (in actual living organisms), comparing the health markers of 11 human volunteers before and after they participated in a special diet.
“We designed a diet that was very low in these PAMPs, and we tested the food to make sure that it was low in PAMPs,” Erridge says. “And to our surprise, a whole bunch of markers went down [for] cardiovascular risk and risk of insulin resistance. We saw the leukocyte count go down, not so far that it would cause infection or anything, but certainly bring some [people down to] the low-risk category for a bunch of diseases.”

That’s not all: The low-PAMP diet seemed to help people lose weight.

Erridge’s team wasn’t expecting that. They hadn’t set out to create a weight loss diet.
“This was surprising, because we’d been asking the people to eat just as much food as they wanted to the whole way through [the study], and they weren’t complaining of being hungry,” Erridge says. “They’re eating just as much as they wanted, but they still lost weight.”

If Erridge’s research is correct, it could explain why diets like the Mediterranean diet seem so heart-healthy: They forbid processed foods, so they’re naturally lower in PAMPs.
But Erridge also noted that dietary studies are notoriously difficult, since researchers have trouble accounting for all the factors that inevitably affect the results. He was careful to note that, while he’s confident in his research, he welcomes criticism of his methods.
If he’s right, his work could change the way we eat. By ridding foods of PAMPs, we might be able to eliminate the moderate inflammation we get from eating certain foods. That could lower rates of heart disease, diabetes, and obesity worldwide, and it wouldn’t require any large-scale dietary changes.

We’ve got a ways to go before that’s a reality, but it’s exciting work.

Erridge’s research needs to be replicated, and he’s currently working on additional research that might provide more insight. Nothing is concrete yet, so stating the “dead meat bacteria toxins” cause a “burst” of “paralyzing” inflammation is pretty dramatic. Scientists prefer to use more measured terms when describing their work, since hypotheses are subject to continual reevaluation and change.

That’s really one of the key takeaways here: These studies might save millions of lives, but they also might fizzle out with the next round of research. While Erridge is a respected authority in his field, he doesn’t pretend to have all of the answers, and he seemed genuinely delighted at the idea that he might be proven wrong.
That’s really how innovations like these start: You’ve got to be willing to ask stupid questions, and you’ve got to be willing to change course when you don’t get the results you’re expecting.

Oh, and you might discover that chocolate is secretly evil. That revelation didn’t go over so well with Erridge’s team—or with the doctor himself.
“I do still eat chocolate,” Erridge admits. “[My diet] probably hasn’t changed as much as it should.”