Battle of the Foods *_*

by AlexP

In our quick, modern, lifestyle, it is not uncommon for people to eat processed foods that require little preparation, or get an easy snack and call it a meal. Three examples of this is canned Beef Stew (Southgate brand), Ramen Noodles (Nissin), and Sliced White Sandwhich Turkey (Butterball brand). It is my quest to find out which one of these foods is the healthiest to eat for lunch or dinner to give you energy and nutrients. Looking at three common instant foods that require little preparation, I hypothesized before examining them that the beef stew and ramen noodles are the unhealthiest and that the sandwich turkey meat is the healthiest. My reasoning for this was that the stew and the noodles were more likely to be processed and have extra preservatives and ingredients then the meat. It is important that we pay attention to the added ingredients in our foods to make sure we aren't ingesting any synthetic/ unnatural chemicals into our bodies that could interfere with our health. A person's health is greatly influenced by what they eat. As the number of these unnatural chemicals put in our foods has increased, so has the rate of obesity and similar health problems increased in the US.

Upon reading the nutritional facts on the food labels, I was surprised by the high amount of sodium in all of the foods. I also noticed the low serving size suggested by the product. For example, the serving size of ramen was half of the entire container and was said to have 970mg of sodium per serving. Normally, a person eats the entire package of ramen in one sitting, which adds up to 1940 mg of sodium/ salt in one meal! According to Livestrong.com, regularly consuming large amounts of salt/ sodium has many negative health consequences, including high blood pressure and hypertension. http://www.livestrong.com/article/427018-what-does-sodium-do-in-the-body/

The ramen noodles also had a high number of total carbohydrates, higher than the other two foods. Although there are some other nutrients, they are not in significant amounts. Ramen noodles is basically just carbs and salt.

The beef stew also had a high sodium level of 970mg of sodium per serving, as well as 19g of fat and 10g of protein. The high levels of fat are because of the meat in the stew. Most of the ingredients are healthy except for the “textured vegetable protein product” that was vague. The ingredients are more healthy then that of the ramen and had some vegetables to make up for the fat. However, the container size was also particularly small- one would have to eat two to feel full.

The lunch turkey meat had the smallest serving size of the three- only one slice. A regular person would normally eat about five slices, so instead of 230mg of salt per serving it would be 1150mg (which is still a lot of salt), 40 calories times 5 is 200 calories, 4g of protein times 5 is 20g of protein, 1.5g of fat times 5 is 7.5 grams. In the ingredients, however it lists corn syrup and modified food starch which are unhealthy. Although there aren't any vitamins or minerals in the lunch meat, eating five slices would have less calories than the other two foods, more protein then the other two, and slightly more salt than the stew. However there is 50mg of cholesterol for 5 slices of lunch meat.

The size of each serving in the three foods can explain the changes in nutritional content. Having different serving sizes would skew the comparison since there wouldn't be an equal amount of mass per each food. This would significantly affect the data because people usually look at the nutrition facts first without seeing how big a single serving size they are eating is and it can cause them to ingest more calories than is said on the side label. For example, the turkey lunch meat looked healthiest at first but that was mostly because of the small serving size.

Also, none of these foods are nutritionally complete. You need to eat other foods that are rich vitamins and minerals in addition to these foods to maintain a healthy diet.

My hypothesis was partially correct in that the ramen was the unhealthiest. It was also disproved because when analyzing my results, I found the stew had the most nutrients compared to the ramen and 5 slices of lunch meat. The stew had the lowest sodium out of the three, highest amount of fiber, had a good source of protein and Vitamin A, had some fats and carbohydrates to use for energy, and was therefore more nutritionally diverse than the other two foods. Because it covered more food groups/ areas of nutrition, I would say that the beef stew is the healthiest out of the three choices.