You’ve probably seen the video they’re talking about in this news clip before. Not only that, you’ve probably seen many, many news articles about how horrible this is. I got an email yesterday about the video asking about my opinion. So here goes.
Remember when you were a kid and another kid asked you, ‘do you want seafood?’ You answered ‘huh?’ and then something happened. The other kid, who was chewing something in their mouth would open wide and stick out their tongue with the chewed food on it and exclaim ‘see? Food!’ What was your reaction? Disgust.
This video seems to be the viral equivalent. I’m sure there are a lot of foods that don’t process very quickly in the gut – kale, for instance. Not only that, I’m sure 99% of what we eat, however appetizing to begin with, looks really different and exceedingly unpalatable when churning in our stomachs. To be honest, I’m more disgusted by the guy who had to get the camera-pill out when it was ejected from the other end and plug it into a USB port…
Anyways, the reason this video went viral wasn’t because of the fact that it was instant noodles or that it was something internal and ubiquitously considered ‘gross.’ These are both things that are easily found on the Internet with ease. What happened here was the grip of ‘clickbait.’ Clickbait is a link that begs you to click it with a catchy title; something like ‘Just Wait Until You See What This 5 Year Old Does With A Diaper That Has Mothers everywhere Up In Arms.’ Click, click, click. Who cares if it’s true or accurate, it’ll get you over to their site – so you can see the adverts on their page. Page views equal money folks, that’s just the way it is.
So when you see ‘A Scary Look At The Digestion Of Instant Ramen Noodles Inside Your Stomach – A Deadly Ingredient You Need To Know About,’ you click. This one had a fairly well done article that went into the dangers of TBHQ, however it doesn’t cite exactly how much TBHQ is in the average brick of instant noodles, just that large amounts of it wasn’t good for a lab rat.
I like the fact that the study hasn’t gotten the researcher caught up in a crazy buzz really, especially when he says it doesn’t prove anything and he still eats instant noodles. It’s funny how the source of the video isn’t the source of all the hype and buzz. But notice how at the beginning of the news clip it has a big banner saying ‘Health Alert.’ Keep watching – you’ll see commercials soon.
