Fats, Vitamins and Minerals

A blatant lie I keep seeing on television is that instant noodles are good for you. Here, this lie is being pushed two ways: [1] the convenience of cup or bowl-type instant noodles (the type where you just add hot water) is being pushed to office workers especially those who need to work late hours as food that gives “supreme invigoration.” [2] the soupy type of instant noodles (as different from the dry or “pancit canton” type is being pushed to kids and families as a breakfast meal. I think that these are very dangerous kinds of advertising that muddle our ideas of good nutrition.

Recently I have been eating more and more home-cooked meals that are very simply - vegetables, chicken, some beef, and more fruit and bread for snacks rather than processed snacks like crisps and biscuits. Sometimes, I eat instant noodles and have observed a great difference in the way I feel immediately after eating. I always have a light and energized feeling after eating simple home-cooked meals especially if there was not much fat in the meals, whereas after eating instant noodles I often experience a bit of sore throat, an abrasive feeling on my tongue, a rather heavy dizzy kind of feeling and I also remain feeling hungry.

With these effects, I think it’s a flat lie to say that instant noodles give “supreme invigoration” because they don’t. For anyone who has to work overtime, eating instant noodles will only make you feel worse, it won’t energize or invigorate you, it may fill your stiomach for a while, but the instant gratification is not worth the heavy drained feeling that will affect your health and your work. And with these effects, I think it’s very dangerous to propose that instant noodles are good breakfast meals. We know how important a good breakfast is for everybody and yet advertising and media is trivializing it by pushing quick cook unhealthy breakfast ideas.

If companies are going to advertise their instant noodle products, then they can do so without lying. For example, one advertisement shows a bunch of women secretly enjoying the new sweet and spicy flavor of an instant pancit canton product. That’s fine, surely instant noodles can capitalize on their new flavor ideas without having to push lies that concern our health and well-being, especially of our young people.

EMail This Post This entry was posted by Fats on Friday, October 27th, 2006 at 1:56 am and is filed under Media Watch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.