An Underrated 'Noodle' You've Never Heard Of Can Lower Cholesterol And Blood Sugar At The Same Time

You've probably seen (and eaten) your fair share of noodles. Most have similar nutritional profiles, including being relatively starchy, which can send your blood sugars sky high. But there's a limited-starch noodle on the market that's worth trying if you're interested in controlling your glucose levels, as well as lowering your cholesterol and eating light, while still getting a noodle fix.

You'll find this product marketed as "shirataki noodles." However, the name is a bit of a misnomer: Though shirataki noodles look like traditional noodles, they aren't. They're actually a gel-like byproduct of an Asian vegetable called a konjac plant. (Side note: There's emerging evidence that you should be adding more konjac to your diet.)

When the dense root of the konjac plant is turned into a type of flour, it can be mixed with water to form a moldable substance. The substance is formed into smaller noodle shapes that won't break down during cooking, allowing you to swap shirataki noodles for conventional noodles or pasta in some of your favorite recipes.

Because shirataki noodles are almost entirely made up of water, they're just 20 calories a cup. Though they're not nutrient-dense and can't be called a functional food, they do bring along a whopping 6 grams of a fiber known as glucomannan per one-cup serving.

It's glucomannan that gives shirataki noodles their potential health benefits. When consumed, glucomannan acts like other soluble fibers in the digestive tract. As it moves from the stomach through the bowels, it slows down the processing of foods. In turn, sugars are digested slowly, leading to less of a sudden sugar spike.

A 2023 meta-analysis of six trials that was published in Nutrients documented the sugar-lowering effects of glucomannan. Participants involved in the trials experienced reduced sugar numbers both before and two hours after eating. The meta-analysis also showed that eating glucomannan could reduce total and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol levels.

Just how much of a difference could eating glucomannan make on your cholesterol readings? A 2017 review in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition examined data from 12 studies, and found that eating roughly 3 grams of glucomannan from konjac each day could lower LDL cholesterol by 10%. But are shirataki noodles really healthy enough to trade for other types of noodles? Maybe, but before you start eating shirataki noodles all the time, you should be aware that they do have some notable downsides.

First of all, shirataki noodles supply your body with very few calories, so you can't depend on them to give you the carbohydrate-related energy boost of other noodles and pasta. Of course, if you're routinely surprised to hear how many foods have more carbs than you realized, you may like knowing you can't overdo it with this food.

Additionally, the high fiber content in shirataki noodles may cause initial gastric discomfort. A best practice when adding more fiber to your diet is to gradually increase your intake. As clinical dietitian Grace Whitmer advised in an interview for MD Anderson Cancer Center, "I would counsel a patient to start with adding one serving of fiber-containing food at a time so that your gut bacteria have time to adjust to digesting the increase in fiber."