Beginning in September 2024, Snopes began receiving reader mail asking us to investigate a claim spread in videos on social media platforms including Facebook, YouTube and TikTok alleging that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had issued warnings after five children died within hours of eating instant ramen noodles contaminated with bacteria.
The claim was false.
According to the videos, the children complained they felt like they were being "eaten from the inside out" and died not long after symptoms appeared. The videos claimed that the ramen noodles were contaminated with bacteria (depending on the video, either Listeria or Streptococcus) and that one-third of all adults infected by eating ramen would die. However, no such statement existed.
Furthermore, despite the videos claiming that the product (which they never explicitly identified) had been recalled, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had not issued any recalls on ramen noodles recently. The closest we found was a Sun Noodle recall in May 2024 over undeclared egg white powder, not bacterial contamination.
In 2021, five children in South Africa did die not long after eating instant ramen noodles. In 2024, three children in India and Pakistan died after eating ramen. Some versions of the videos used news articles of these events to justify their claim.
However, according to the South African outlet Sowetan Live, who spoke to the police and the ramen manufacturer, at least three of the children died of poisoning, which the manufacturer claimed was from an insecticide, not the ramen. There was no public information on the causes of death of the children in Pakistan or India.