At 18 years of age, Georgi Readman, from England's Isle of Wight, has the health of someone more than four times her age. At least that's what experts say.
See also: - Ramen Rematch: Republic Ramen vs. Sushi Ken
It's not because she's a chain smoker or because she drank her liver into oblivion. It's because for the past 13 years, she's eaten almost nothing except processed ramen noodles. You might call it an addiction. You might call it an eating disorder. But one thing we can all call it is really freakin' weird.
According to reports, Readman mostly subsists on the noodles and refuses to eat fruits and veggies because she wants to die early she hates the texture. She told Yahoo!:
"I can't go to my friends' for dinner or go out for meals because I don't want them to see me freak out if the side salad touches the stuff I eat. Mum goes to the supermarket and brings back as many packets as she can afford. I always fancy noodles and could easily eat two packets at once. I've even eaten them dry and uncooked before!"
Sounds like a recipe for a weight problem to us. But she's 5-foot-3 and only 98 pounds, which is making us consider the success of her ramen diet. She says that she's been addicted since she was 5 and eats about 30 miles of noodles a year -- which is probably about as hard to do as the paleo diet, so really, maybe she's on to something.
On the down side, one pediatrician said her picky eating has probably "wreaked incredible amounts of havoc on her organs" and resulted in "stunted growth and IQ, osteoporosis, heart and kidney damage, and high blood pressure." Oh, and a shortened lifespan.
If you're still thinking her eating disorder -- because it does qualify as a selective eating disorder or extreme picky eating -- isn't that bad, here's a TED Talk video that discusses and demonstrates how differently the body digests "real" versus processed foods. It includes video evidence that ramen noodles are definitely not real food and take a hell of a lot to break down once inside the body.
"Notice how the shape of the ramen noodle is still apparent on the left . . . even after two and a half hours?," says the video. "That's because top ramen is made to survive Armageddon."
