How to Diet with Ramen

Ramen is a popular food for folks on a very tight budget.

I know ramen pretty well, I've eaten lots of it in my time. I'm half-Japanese, and I grew up on the stuff!

As far as eating ramen while on a diet, the trick is simple. When you open up a package of ramen, throw away the soup base packet. Don't use it. That's where much of the fat and sodium is.

Instead, substitute it with plain old soy sauce. Soy sauce itself is fat-free, and sugar-free. If you can, add some garlic, and red pepper for some spice. If you want to get more creative, throw in some chopped green onion, bean sprouts, mushrooms, and pea pods.

The soup base packet that comes with ramen is very high in fat, and very high in saturated-fat. In fact, the soup base contains "chicken fat" as an ingredient, that's assuming you've bought the chicken-flavored ramen. And oddly enough, the soup base contains a small amount of sugar.

Here are the nutrition facts labels for Top Ramen (top) and Maruchan Ramen (bottom), both Chicken-Flavored...





Notice that both nutrition facts labels claim that each package contains 2 servings. That means you have to double the numbers, assuming you're going to eat the entire contents. Thus the 7gm of fat is actually 14gm of fat. And the 3.5gm of saturated fat, is actually 7gm. Ouch!

By throwing out the soup base packet, you'll spare yourself from all that fat and cut those calories way down. In fact, you'll cut those calories in half, and you'll spare your blood vessels from all that saturated fat.

But what if you were to use the soup base packet anyways, but did not drink the soup? Well, the fat will still stick to the ramen noodles. So, you'll still end up consuming more fat than if you were to substitute the soup base packet with soy sauce instead.