Japanese instant ramen noodle expert Masaya Oyama, 55, slurps noodles at a shop and restaurant that specialized only in varieties of instant noodles in Tokyo.

SEOUL, South Korea — Kim Min-Koo has an easy reply to new American research that hits South Korea where it hurts — in the noodles. Drunk and hungry just after dawn, he rips the lid off a bowl of his beloved fast food, wobbling on his feet but still defiant over a report that links instant noodles to health hazards.

“There’s no way any study is going to stop me from eating this,” says Kim, his red face beaded with sweat as he adds hot water to his noodles in a Seoul convenience store.

“This is the best moment — the first bite,” Kim, who indulges about five times a week, says between gulps. “The taste, the smell, the chewiness — it’s just perfect.”

Instant noodles carry a broke college student aura in America, but they are an essential, even passionate, part of life for many in South Korea and across Asia. Hence the emotional heartburn caused by a Baylor Heart and Vascular Hospital study in the United States that linked instant noodles consumption by South Koreans to some risks for heart disease.

The study has provoked feelings of wounded pride, stubborn resistance, even nationalism among South Koreans, who eat more instant noodles per capita than anyone in the world.

The U.S. study was based on South Korean surveys from 2007-09 of more than 10,700 adults aged 19 to 64, about half of them women. It found that people who ate a diet rich in meat, soda and fried and fast foods, including instant noodles, were associated with an increase in abdominal obesity and LDL, or “bad,” cholesterol. Eating instant noodles more than twice a week was associated with a higher prevalence of metabolic syndrome, another heart risk factor, in women but not in men.

The study raises important questions, but can’t prove that instant noodles are to blame rather than the overall diets of people who eat lots of them, cautions Alice Lichtenstein, director of the cardiovascular nutrition lab at Tufts University in Boston.

“What’s jumping out is the sodium (intake) is higher in those who are consuming ramen noodles,” she says. “What we don’t know is whether it’s coming from the ramen noodles or what they are consuming with the ramen noodles.”