 Does kimchi lower your chances of obesity or can it give you cancer? There are different studies that confirm both statements. What's going on? I just want to say like as the World Institute of Kimchi, it's good and you should buy more. We got to talk about this on Reddit right now because there's a new study and a lot of people are questioning who it's by, the World Institute of Kimchi. They're saying that eating kakdugi, which is kimchi radish, specifically it will lower your risk of abdominal obesity in both men and women. But of course, other people came out with this other study that says eating kimchi too much could potentially lead to gastric or esophagus cancer. Who's right? Who's wrong? We're here to break it down. Make sure you like, subscribe, and turn on your notifications, guys. All right, guys. Let's talk about, because listen, we're Asian. I eat kimchi. I mean, obviously I eat Korean food whenever I eat Korean food. Sometimes we got kimchi in the fridge. Obviously lots of many different Asians or different people, not just Koreans, are eating kimchi nowadays. Well, but Koreans eat it by far the most because obviously it is their, I want to say their national dish. No, let's say if you tell me that you eat kimchi five times a week, I'm just going to go ahead and assume you might be Korean. But anyways, I think a lot of people are asking this because it is such a staple of like the Asian diet right now, especially pickled vegetables in general. Now, whether it's something particularly in kimchi that might cause the cancer. Is it the fish? Is it the fermentation? Is it the salt? Is it the, the bacteria? Or does that stuff help you? See, there's conflicting studies. Could both things be true? Oh, that's interesting. Because ultimately fermented vegetables, they are good for your butt, guy. I'm sorry. You said butt, guy. Gut, biome, guys. I think you got to take a look at who did the study, right? It's the World Institute of Kimchi. A lot of people are bringing up this study by New Zealand that said that Kiwis were good for regulating your mental health, essentially regulating your mood. A lot of people are like, yeah, New Zealand, really? That's, that's what you found out. You're saying that if I say smala sauce will help you live 150 years, I did a study that showed that, that you're saying that that might be a little bit biased. No, you are not like having the scientific backing behind your study. I think obviously there's correlation, there's causation, there's always talks about that. That would be like somebody was like, what if I said that people with kimchi have smaller eyes, people who ate kimchi, is that a correlation or is it a causation? Yeah. And I was like, oh. Well, let's just run through some of these scenarios, guys. I think, and I'm just going to make this up, but I think that for some correlation, it's like, if you eat kimchi a lot, you're also not eating other foods. So that means you're getting more vegetables in. So therefore your obesity chances might go down, right? Because if you're eating a lot of kimchi, that means you're not, maybe you're eating less carbs and you're eating less fried and preservative foods, right? For example. That'd be like saying somebody who eats a lot of fries is fatter. But you know what also might be true is that if you eat kimchi a lot, maybe you're going out to eat a lot and you're drinking and smoking. Therefore maybe your cancer rate also can go up or you're also eating a lot of charred grilled meats, which, you know, charred meats are, that's a carcinogen too on a slight amount. Right. You're talking about the whole sphere of lifestyle and the domino impact of potentially just zoning in on a very culturally specific behavior. Yeah. Yeah. Obviously, dude, kimchi is not a magic thing. I don't think it's going to kill you or save your life in small amounts. There's no way. But and I'm sure it has benefits. But yeah, I mean, I guess too much of anything, right? Hey, you know, there's a thing called overhydration. You can potentially die from drinking too much water. Yeah. Listen, guys, it's very interesting to hear all the experts disagree or agree with each other. Because if you talk to a lot of bodybuilders, Andrew, they're all about calories and calories out. Literally for a bodybuilder, I believe that that is a hundred thousand percent true. We're listening to Dr. Jason Fung, who's not our cousin, by the way, and he was saying that your gut microbiome and all these other different regulating metrics, they matter as well. Yeah. I mean, it's not just about calories. It's about like what you're getting your calories from. But I guess like, you know, people always said, oh, drink half a glass of wine at night. It's healthy. It can help you go to sleep. And then other people are like, no, all alcohol is bad for you, period. So I guess at the end of the day, guys, how do you feel about it? I just know this. When I eat kimchi, which I eat it maybe now, once every 10 days, you know, I don't, we don't have it in the fridge, but I eat it with every Korean meal that I eat. I eat quite a bit of Korean food now. It makes me feel good. Right. I feel good when I eat it, but I don't eat it five times a day either. So I don't know what to tell you guys. Listen, guys, if you have it in your fridge, make sure you air seal it at least twice. Anyway, let's get into the comments section. Somebody said, ah, yes, men in a country where obesity is seen as the most horrible sin and virtually blocks you from ever climbing the social ladder at a lower risk because eating kimchi. So basically this girl was pointing out that Korea has cultural norms for both men and women where essentially being obese and looking like the original lookism guy will ruin your life in South Korea and you'll never move up at your soul base, you know, conglomerate, whether that's a medium size or a large company. So she's saying, well, isn't it just a Korean cultural thing and Koreans eat kimchi? So why are they trying to attribute it to kimchi when it's just being Korean? Mm, interesting. Yeah, that's like saying, hey, listen, people who eat kimchi three times a day, well, who even eats kimchi three times a day? Probably Koreans. Right. So like I said, it's like saying somebody has jet black hair and smaller eyes because they eat a lot of kimchi and the kimchi did that to their body. Somebody said you also probably walk 20 times as much as you do back home because obviously in Seoul everybody is walking around a very walkable city similar to New York City. Somebody was just saying, you know, there's no correlation between causation. You know, it just puts you in a lifestyle sphere. Somebody said, back in the day, there was a study in the 80s where people were like, yo, we discovered that people who are beekeepers are all thin. You gotta become a beekeeper and get bees around you. But as it turns out, Andrew, everybody who is a beekeeper sort of just fits with this like old liberal, like LL being like lifestyle and they just happen to be very thin. Right, right, right. Of course, other people were talking about, no, kimchi is a prebiotic food. It's rich in fiber. Fiber keeps you satiated for longer, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Andrew, this is more your field. This is the Huberman Dr. Jason Fung Zone where we're getting into things that I personally do not think matter very much. Okay. But I'm not saying they don't matter. I'm just saying you could get lost in the weeds, in my opinion. Defend the weeds. What's the weeds? No, all this prebiotic, probiotic. You know what I mean? Yeah, it makes me feel good when I eat it. That's all I know. I don't have like, I haven't gotten diarrhea from kimchi, have you? It depends on where it was from. Well, I don't know. I just have it, you know? So it makes me feel good when I eat it with greasy meats. But yeah, I wouldn't eat it four times a day either. I'm just not. But a lot of people are saying if kimchi cuts through the greasy meats from, let's say, sanggy up, so pork belly, Korean barbecue, should you be eating that sanggy up, so to begin with? Exactly. So if you eat kimchi with greasy meats, but you eat greasy meats three times a day, then that's not good for your, that's not good for your health either. Somebody said, what about eating it with rice? Rice is not entered. People debate whether rice is good for you nowadays, right? Dude, I just think everything is good for you and everything is bad for you. Like I just think like, yeah, I mean, I don't know, man. I don't know, man. It's so hard to tell right now. Right. Somebody was just saying it's the chicken or the egg paradox. You know, it's just that Asian people in general are just healthier. However, a lot of people are pointing out, Andrew, that in East Asia, as well as Southeast Asia, a lot of Western diseases like heart disease or like high blood pressure are rising due to food sources stabilizing and becoming more commercialized and a higher presence of refined foods and refined snacks. Yeah. I mean, so let's look at kimchi or a lot of Asian preserved vegetables. They do have a lot of sodium, right? And things are fermented. You're saying that kimchi, despite having a low caloric content, doesn't have a very high sodium content. I mean, I grew up, even when I was eating kimchi in high school at my friend's house, I would say we all knew it was salty. Like everything is salty. Like panchon, the side dishes can be very salty. Right. Or have a lot of sesame oil. Fish paste or shrimp paste. No, there's like sesame oil. There's salt. There's fermentation. There's sugar sometimes if the anchovies are very sweet in that syrup, which are delicious, but they are sweet. So it's like, I think as much as panchon is vegetables and I think we all like eating it. You're talking about the side dishes. Yeah, I can't. It is true that you eat too much. It is salty. Like that's it. So whatever, if it makes your blood pressure higher, then that's not good ultimately either. Right. You're not supposed to eat that like six times a day. Right. Right, right, right. I mean, I guess it would be like sauerkraut with Polish or German people. You could say sauerkraut itself is like low caloric, even though it's high sodium content. But they probably eat it with pretzels and sausages, which are both caloric, dense, nutrient, not dense foods. Yeah. Do that study where people who eat sauerkraut three times a day, maybe their guts are really good, but they also have big beer bellies because they're eating the sauerkraut with the sausages and the pretzels at the beer garden. Yeah, exactly. And Koreans like to drink with their food too. So if they're eating that much kimchi, that many meals, maybe they're drinking more too. You're talking about kimchi and then a tanbe? Somebody just said maybe morbidly obese fellows are less inclined to take time out of the day to consume fermented cabbage. And then somebody posted a picture of Kim Jong-un saying no, obviously they did not weigh the deer leader. Hilarious. Ultimately, here's my takeaway, Andrew. Kimchi is kimchi. It is a low calorie, high volume food that is very high in sodium. So it is a very specific cultural food. They consume it in South Korea. I'm assuming probably North Korea too. There's no stats on that. Probably 3X, 4X, 5X, potentially compared to the western world, 10X, 20X, more there in terms of a usage ratio than anywhere else in the world. So of course you could correlate like kimchi consumption with anything. You could say kimchi consumption is correlated with K-pop consumption, which is correlated with K-drama consumption, which is correlated with Solwasu, that expensive Korean brand makeup brand's consumption. So it is true. Are we talking about correlation or causation? Wow. Also, I will say this though. I was just looking up the ingredients that make up kimchi, Andrew. Like you said, there is some things that some people, they question after the fermentation process, is it a nitrate? Or is it more the foods that you eat with kimchi that could be nitrates, which sort of leads to that cancer correlation? Right. Yeah. So I guess like, what does these studies mean to you, man? Can anybody just twist anything to fit anything you want nowadays? I think studies are, because I don't want to fight against science, but studies, one study does not prove something to be true forever. You know, because it's like, you still have to look at the control, who's the variable. I mean, I think you take it with, you take it with a grain of salt in a way, but you have to understand that it's probably like, there's probably some truth to it, but you also don't. Like when people just say, oh, studies show this and someone quotes a study, it's like, you didn't read the study. You don't know who was tested, what they actually tested on. People just read the headline. So I think at the end of the day, maybe just don't eat kimchi five times a day. That's just what I would recommend. That's just a lot of salt. Well, the study did say if you have it over five times, then you have an increased chance of abdominal obesity. Yeah, yeah. I would just say, healthily speaking, I mean, if you eat kimchi every day, maybe at most twice a day. Yeah. Gakdugi, the kimchi radish one, was by far the healthiest kind, though. Yeah, because that one is, has more, has less like salt and more than the Napa cabbage kimchi. Right. It's more just like fresh almost. Yeah. Yeah. So I guess, I guess eat that. You mean the one that comes with fried chicken? Just a cubed one. Yeah. Sometimes it like barely has, I mean, it has a little flavor on it. Yeah. That's not even my favorite one. Of course. Of course I like the leafy kimchi more, but of course that's the one that probably has more sodium. More nitrates possibly. Yeah. Anyway, guys, let us know what you think of the concept, you know, of this whole argument back and forth. I'll say this, man, I think there's a lot of juking of the stats in 2024. And we, you know, you just gotta be intellectually honest about it. See both sides, see what's true about it, but see what's false about it. I mean, when in doubt, moderation, man, when in doubt, moderation. If you eat green, clean and lean, and you keep out a lot of preserved stuff, you probably should be okay, man. If your grandpa can recognize it or your grandma can recognize what you're eating, it's probably a good play. Let us know what you think in the comment section below. Until next time, we're the Hop Hop Boys. Peace.