Throughout the state of Pennsylvania, every day individuals make soup in a cup for lunch. The easy meal, which often comes in a Styrofoam cup, is enjoyed by people of all ages including young children. Though the simple meal is widely popular with many, burn doctors are not included in the lot.

This unpopularity is due to the number of burn injuries caused by the soup seen at hospitals throughout the country. The director of a California burn unit reported two or three patients reporting the injury a week. Another hospital in Washington D.C., indicated that five or six patients a week come in with soup burns. The trend is particularly disturbing when one considers that in many of the cases, the victims are children.

The children seen at hospitals often sustain burns to their torso, chest, arms and sometimes legs and their privates. Surgery is necessary in around 20 percent of the time.

Instant soup's propensity to cause burns is due to several causes. The first is due to the very nature of the food. Upon absorbing water, the noodles become sticky. When they make contact with the skin they tend to cling to it. This reportedly results in burns that are worse than when just hot liquid is involved.

The second problem is the design of most of the cups. A majority of them are tall with a wide opening at the top and a smaller base. This design makes it easy to tip over, a problem that is especially prevalent with toddlers.

The burn director of the California hospital has called the soup cups "uniquely troublesome" and appears frustrated that the common injuries are so clearly due to the design of the soup cup. What do you think? Do you think changing the design of the cup would reduce the number of these types of burns?

Source: NPR, "Why Burn Doctors Hate Instant Soup," Mara Zepeda, Dec. 5, 2011