a two minute chat about instant noodles

They’ve been your comfort food, your midnight snack, your study nosh and your drunken feast. They saved you from starvation in foreign countries when you couldn’t recognise - or afford - anything else.

Everyone has their favourite brand, their favourite flavour. Chicken or Beef? Maggi or Mi Goreng? Microwave or boil? And most importantly, to drain or not to drain?

Choices aside, this iconic student food has done more than just tide you over till pay day. 100 million packets of them were sent as humanitarian aid during crises in North Korea, India and Russia. Fortified with additional vitamins and minerals, they provided a calorie dense, non perishable food source for thousands of refugees and people who had lost their homes.

In Thailand, instant noodles were used as an economic indicator during the East Asia Financial Crisis. Mama brand instant noodles were able to demonstrate through their increased sales that people could no longer afford to buy more expensive foods, and were turning to cheaper alternatives.

The BBC last year reported that the Chinese Communist Party had ‘slammed’ instant noodle producers after accusing them of contributing to inflation by illegally colluding to raise prices by up to 40%. The three producers were found to have met three times to fix prices, which the government said ‘damaged social stability’.

In a country which consumes 44 billion packets of them, more than half of the yearly total consumption of noodles, it’s a feasible claim. If only the ACCC would admit that Kevin Rudd has done the same by raising the price of RTD’s.

With over 85 billion servings of instant noodles now eaten worldwide every year, it is hard to believe that the Japanese food industry considered instant noodles to be a novelty when a Japanese company called Nissan Foods first launched them in the marketplace in 1958.

Forty-two years later, in 2000, instant noodles were voted as the most important Japanese invention of the century, in front of kareoke (2nd place) and CD’s (5th place). Momofuko Ando, the Taiwanese inventor employed by Nissan, also invented cup noodles, which are most popular in the UK sold under the name ‘Pot Noodle’.

Before being voted the most hated brand in the UK in 2004, Pot Noodle made headlines in 2002 by producing a limited edition ‘Edwina Curry’ flavour, after a female politician of the same name revealed she had a four year affair with former UK Prime Minister John Major. The company is renowned for their tongue in cheek advertisements, one of which, with the tagline “Have you got the Pot Noodle horn?” received 572 complaints. An earlier campaign which titled Pot Noodles ‘the slag of all snacks’ was banned.

So what makes instant noodles so popular? Undoubtedly it has a lot to do with the low cost, ease of preparation, and versatility of the product. Almost any flavour can be added to instant noodles, which have branched out from traditional varieties like chicken, nori and satay to more creative varieties like pizza, cheese, sausage roll and turkey and stuffing for the festive season.

In countries as diverse as Nigeria, Peru, Russia and Saudi Arabia the popularity of instant noodles is rising, and have been adapted into regional variations, suited to the local economy and environments. In the Philippines, instant noodles are often eaten for breakfast, served with garlic rice and dried fish. In Mexico, where a common name for instant noodles is ‘lazy soup’, chilli and lime is added.

In Australia, instant noodles have a reputation as a student food, a junk food and often nutritionally void. One packet supplies almost half of the average person’s daily recommended intake of salt, along with a quarter of the daily recommended intake of fat, but negligible contributions to essential vitamins and other minerals.

With these dietary credentials, it’s unsurprising that school tuckshops have replaced instant noodles with healthier alternatives. However, their ubiquity in supermarkets, Asian grocers, petrol stations and student accommodation indicate a continuing appreciation for instant noodles in Australia – backed up by all those packets in your bin.

inside your noodles : the instant noodle vox pop

Dave Gilbert pre-flavours and microwaves his noodles, which are preferably what he describes as a tasty Maggi Chicken flavour.

Meredith Gee swings between Mi Goreng and Maggi and has different cooking methods for each. She calls Mi Goren ‘ugly noodles’ on account of the egg pictured on the packet.

Alice Campbell is also a Mi Goreng fan, but in the past has admitted a fetish for adding curry powder or cream to Maggi noodles.

Demi Pnevmatikos eats her noodles out of a cup with what she calls a ‘splade’. We think she means ‘spork’.

Chris Luong thinks Fantastic noodles are, well, fantastic, especially in Pizza flavour, and likes to add leftovers to make them a bit more exciting.

Tyson Shine will only eat the soup of his noodles ‘if it involves home brand shredded cheese... oh yeah baby!’. He also likes to ‘leave them long so i can put it in my mouth and swallow about 90 per cent of the noodle before i pull it back up my throat and drop in my sisters bowl so i get hers too’. Sick.

Scott Cowen buys 5 packs of Home Brand instant noodles which have no individual packaging, thereby saving the environment.

Andrew Love is a fan of the noodle bowl style noodles and thinks Maggi have nothing on Asian brands with their little packets of sauces, powders, oils and vegies. Spicy Beef is his flavour of choice and he likes to stick with the instant theme of the noodles by adding things like frozen peas, chilli sauce and peanuts that you don’t have to fuck about with too much.

Danna Cooke would really prefer that none of us ate instant noodles because they are made with palm oil, the production of which she says is going to cause the extinction of orang-utans in the wild within 10 years. She says she can no longer eat instant noodles because after her daughter alerted to this fact all she can taste is orang-utan.

John Fulbrook remembers when No Frills brand instant noodles were 17 cents a pack and recommends eating all the raw bits that come off the main clump.

Claire Knight keeps a stash of instant noodles in her pigeonhole at Radio Adelaide and suggests adding steamed carrots, zucchini, brocolli or capsicum along with a little soy sauce.

Emma Durdin’s favourite instant noodle recipe involves sweet chilli sauce and grated cheese and apparently tastes best at midnight. She made her boyfriend type the recipe out at length on Facebook, only to have me edit it down to this. Sorry.
Jonathan Brown eats his noodles raw after adding the flavour to the packet and shakin’ it round a bit (maybe that’s where Claire’s supplies have been disappearing to!)

Cass Selwood thinks one should never microwave their noodles and is a strict boiler. He prefers Ayam plain noodles but adds all sorts of exciting things like garlic, ginger and chilli along with mushrooms, tuna, soy, coriander and oyster sauce.

Leah Marrone says that she wasn’t allowed instant noodles because her parents didn’t think they were real food, and still thinks there is no excuse not to eat real pasta now either. She says if you want some recipes for cheap easy food so you don’t have to stoop to the level of instant noodles to email her.