Some people still have questions about the fact that Naruto didn’t understand romantic love and confused it with ramen, or rather, he didn’t know how it felt.He could see signs in others but understanding his own feelings was different. So I will try to explain it in this thread.

We have to understand what ramen means to Naruto. It’s not just food, he loves ramen, it makes him happy and he associates it with good memories. He likes to share it with friends and helped him to bond with Iruka. +

In fact, as the Konoha Hiden novel confirms, Teuchi was one of the first adults to treat Naruto with kindness and affection, making ramen one of the few happy memories of his childhood. In The Last novel, Naruto himself refers to the importance of ramen in his life.

It’s no wonder that Naruto associates ramen with love, since both convey to him the same feeling of happiness.

Now the scene of the gengutsu in The Last. This gengutsu traps people in their own memories, mixing them with dreams. Naruto starts seeing some of his memories and then they mix with Hinata’s memories, and that’s when he revives her confession.

*note: He understood that there was a romantic context thanks to seeing Sakura writing the name of Sasuke in the scene of the class, since it’s obvious that Naruto knows how Sakura feels for Sasuke,he always saw it.

He sees a memory of Hinata and Sakura talking about Naruto’s obtuseness to understand romantic love, which he confuses with the same love for sweets or in his case,ramen, being a revelation for him, to which he reacts confused.

Naruto thinks that the feelings he associates with ramen are the same as love. It may be funny but is Naruto,who, after seeing Kurenai with a huge belly, was unable to associate that with the fact that she was pregnant until Shikamaru told him, that’s the level of his obtuseness.

Back to the gengutsu, we have Naruto talking about how much he likes/loves ramen(daisuki, 大好き),but something changes,he sees himself saying 'yeah,i really like/love Hinata(daisuki, 大好き).This shows that Naruto is understanding the diference between loving a person and ramen+

in addition to his own feelings for Hinata, since he associates the feelings he feels for her with what makes him feel happiness and love, ramen. In short, the gengutsu acted as a guidance to put what he already felt for Hinata in context.

Another matter that confuses people is the fact that Naruto understood that Sakura loved Sasuke. Well, that’s because he saw it, her feelings always were very direct and clear. Sakura, unlike Hinata, was a very expressive woman when it comes to saying what she feelt.

Since the beginning she had a "fangirl" attitude towards Sasuke that later became true love. A fangirl attitude that Hinata never had towards Naruto. Let's think about how different they were from each other regarding Naruto and Sasuke.

Sakura blushed, hugged him, wanted his acknowlegment, tried to kiss him, fought against other girls for him, cried and suffered for him,constantly defended him. Naruto witnessed all this.He is dense,but even he was able to see these signs to assume that Sakura loved Sasuke.

Now Hinata: she blushed, trembled, when Naruto looked at her she averted her eyes, she used to hide from him, stuttered, no loud.

Hinata behaviour is the opposite of a fangirl, so Naruto misunderstanding her confession is understandable. Especially if we consider the meaning of the verb daisuki when she confessed (i like/love you very much, 大好き) and its different implications depending on the context.

Having a crush doesn’t mean understanding love, most of us had crushes as children and when you mature, you realize that they were based on superficialities. Naruto can see how others feel, how it looks to be in love, but he didn’t start to experience it until Pain vs Hinata,imo.

And lastly, clarify that the crush that Naruto felt for Sakura was always categorized as suki (like, 好き) never beyond that. Instead Kishimoto always differentiates between Naruto suki and Hinata and Sakura daisuki (like/love,大好き) towards Naruto and Sasuke.

Naruto himself described Sakura's feelings for Sasuke with daisuki. Daisuki (大好き) would be like ‘like a lot/love’, which can be misunderstood depending on the context is said.

It can be understood as romantic or anything else, such as sweets or ramen, this further reinforces the explanation that Naruto didn’t really understand +

the true meaning of Hinata's confession, since it didn’t happen in a romantic context, since they were in the middle of a fight and a chaotic moment, it’s not different from what Sasuke or Iruka did for him in the past.

Context is important in the Japanese language, that’s why Naruto knew that Sakura's confession, where she said suki (like, 好き) was romantic, because it was a calm moment, she appeared out of nowhere to say that, blushing. Obviously, Naruto understood that it was romantic.

Another example of context being important is when Kushina tells Naruto aishiteru (I love you, 愛している) in another context it would be understood as romantic, but in this case it’s motherly love.

In the Sai flashback,where by the way,he merely uses the expression suki(like, 好き,not love,as some translations wrongly stated)at that time,Naruto thought that his crush was romantic,so it’s logical that when Sai mentioned if he liked Sakura,he interpreted it in a romantic way.

Suki is the lowest way to express interest in something or a person, and Naruto’s crush was always represented like this, manga and databooks. Bad translations doesn’t help either in this cases, so it’s important to have relieble and accurate translations.