Instant Noodles: Japan’s most proud invention

You may be surprised to know that the instant noodles that the whole world is eating today is the result of one of the most important inventions in 20th century food technology. The inventor was a Japanese man named Momofuku Ando, also known as the King of Instant Noodles or Noodles Papa. A 2000 survey by the Fuji Research Institute showed that many Japanese people consider instant noodles to be Japan’s most proud invention.

WHY DO PEOPLE LIKE INSTANT NOODLES?

Instant noodles are probably the most convenient food available worldwide, from remote rural areas to bustling cities. Everyone loves this food because it is easy to eat and prepare: just put the noodles in a bowl or cup, add boiling water and cover, and after a few minutes, you will have a delicious hot meal. For manual or mental laborers in today’s industrialized era, where time is as precious as gold, having such a food is invaluable. Housewives also welcome it, including Westerners who are used to eating bread, now also enjoy making instant noodles for breakfast, a timely meal for those who are in a hurry to go to work.

In case there is no boiling water, we can still eat the noodles raw without fear of stomachache. That is why instant noodles are the best food to use for disaster relief in areas affected by natural disasters. On TV, we often see military planes dropping sealed boxes of instant noodles to people trapped in floods; everyone chews on the raw noodles, it’s so convenient. Border guards, police, and forestry officers on business trips or combat on high mountains and deep forests always carry a few packets of instant noodles instead of dry rations. The rich also do not disdain it: our wealthy ladies traveling abroad for official or private business often bring a whole box of instant noodles with them, staying in hotels without needing to go to restaurants or use kitchen utensils but still feel full. In short, instant noodles are everyone’s favorite food regardless of wealth.

What about the nutritional value of instant noodles? If they are produced according to the standards of the world’s most famous instant noodle company, Nissin, then you can eat this food for a whole year and still be healthy.

In 2004, Mr. Momofuku Ando, the chairman of Nissin company and the president of the World Instant Noodle Association, traveled to Shanghai as part of a four-year global journey to taste instant noodles produced around the world. In Shanghai and Nanjing, he tasted more than 300 types of instant noodles made in China. At the annual meeting of the Association in Shanghai, which he chaired, the attendees were amazed to see that he was still healthy and strong at 94 years old. They asked him what his secret to longevity was, and Ando replied, “I owe my health to eating instant noodles every day!” Indeed, he lived to be 96 years old by consuming this unique dish.

Momofuku Ando, the father of instant noodles, was a Japanese man of Chinese origin, born in 1910 in a wealthy family in Taiwan, then a Japanese colony. Ando’s birth name was Wu Baifu. He became an orphan at a young age and lived with his grandparents. As a child, he began working in his grandfather’s silk fabric shop in Tainan, in southern Taiwan. At the age of 22, Ando used his inheritance from his parents to start a company that produced woven textiles. At that time, there were few textile merchants, so his company prospered. A year later, he had enough capital to move to Osaka, Japan’s second-largest city, and start a company called Nihon Dengyo Kosha, which specialized in textile trade and machinery equipment. At the same time, he also studied economics at a university there.

At the end of the Pacific War, the Allied bombing raids flattened almost all cities and industrial facilities in Japan, including Ando’s factory and shop. The economy was devastated, and tens of millions of people were unemployed. Food and energy sources such as electricity, coal, and oil were extremely scarce. When the war ended, Momofuku Ando did not give up and wait for American aid. Instead, he turned to the grocery and food business.

In 1948, he founded the food company Nissin. At first, Nissin produced simple table salt: laying sheets of metal on the coast to create salt fields, letting in the tide water, and drying the water with sunlight, leaving the salt residue on the sheets. At that time, he applied for Japanese citizenship and became a citizen of the country.

Back then, Japan was very short on food and received a lot of flour aid from the US. The Japanese government advocated using flour to make bread and launched a movement to encourage everyone to make and eat bread in the European and American style for the sake of convenience and to save time and fuel, which were scarce at the time. Ando opposed this method, believing that people should be encouraged to use flour to make an instant noodle type, as the Japanese had been used to eating noodles for thousands of years. When he saw people lining up outside in the freezing weather to wait for a bowl of hot noodles, Ando pondered if he could create a type of noodle that didn’t require long cooking time and could be eaten right after pouring boiling water. He presented this proposal to the local government, but they said they could not do anything, so he was advised to execute the idea himself. However, due to a lack of funding, Ando didn’t know how to proceed.

On September 4, 1948, Ando founded Nissin Food Company and began experimenting with making instant noodles. The most challenging issue was how to make the noodles quickly absorb the boiling water and cook right away. One evening, while watching his wife cook with frying oil, Ando had the idea to use fried oil to make the noodles expand and absorb water quickly. It was easier said than done, and Ando experimented hundreds of times before succeeding. To make the noodles taste good, he soaked them in a soup made from beef or chicken bones and then dried them.

After many failed attempts, on August 25, 1958, 48-year-old Momofuku Ando successfully produced the first batch of instant noodles with chicken flavor under the Ramen brand, commonly known as Chikin Ramen (“chikin” is the Japanese phonetic transcription of “chicken” in English). This type of food didn’t require cooking, just putting it in a bowl, pouring boiling water, covering it, and waiting for a while, and it was ready to eat. It was very convenient for the Japanese people during those difficult times, so it sold very well. At that time, Japan was rapidly industrializing, and everyone was short on time, so instant food was increasingly being consumed.

Not just seeking profit for oneself

Some people saw the popularity of instant noodles and tried to counterfeit the Ramen product. Due to their poor quality, some people who ate the Ramen brand noodles got food poisoning. In order to maintain the reputation of his product, Ando had no choice but to apply for trademark registration and patent protection. In 1962, his company officially registered the brand name of the instant noodle product and obtained a patent; Ando then sent warning letters to companies that were counterfeiting his product.

But in 1964, Ando made a heroic gesture by ending his monopoly on instant noodle production, founding the Japanese Noodle Industrial Association and publicly disclosing his patent, transferring the technology to other companies so that they could also benefit.

As for himself, he began to think about selling the product overseas. During a market research trip to the United States in 1966, Ando found that Americans ate differently from the Japanese, using spoons, forks, and plates instead of chopsticks and bowls. So he came up with the idea of packaging instant noodles in thick, waterproof paper cups, adding boiling water, and being able to eat the noodles without a bowl.

In 1970, Nissin opened its first branch in the United States. On September 18, 1971, Nissin’s instant noodles in a cup appeared for the first time in the world. Nissin’s “Cup Noodles” product began to dominate the market outside of Japan, bringing in substantial export revenue for Japan, which needed foreign currency to develop its economy.

Since 1963, Nissin has been listed on the Tokyo and Osaka stock markets, and the investment capital pouring into the company has rapidly increased instant noodle production, meeting domestic and export demand.

In the 2000s, the world consumed about 85.7 billion packages of instant noodles annually, with Nissin holding the largest market share of 10 billion packages. The total value of global instant noodle production in 2003 reached $14 billion, truly an important product! Today, the world consumes over 100 billion packages of instant noodles each year! Nissin Foods alone sells 5.5 billion packages annually in Japan.

In 1999, the city of Osaka established the Momofuku Ando Instant Ramen Museum, named after its founder. In the first six and a half years, over one million people visited the museum, which demonstrated how highly regarded Ando’s invention of instant noodles was. The museum includes a restaurant called “My Cup Noodles Factory” where customers can make their own cup noodles, choosing from 5,460 flavors, except for two vegetarian options, all of which have beef, chicken or fish. They also offer a unique dish called Cup Noodle Ice Cream. Each cup noodle made and eaten on site costs 300 yen, or approximately $2.79 USD. Japan currently has three instant noodle museums: The Momofuku Ando Instant Ramen Museum in Ikeda, Osaka; The Yokohama Cup Noodle Museum; and the Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum, the first two of which were established by the Nissin Corporation.

In 2005, Ando developed a type of instant noodle called “Space Ram,” which was vacuum-packed to provide Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi with food to eat in zero gravity during the space shuttle Discovery’s mission to the International Space Station.

According to the World Instant Noodles Association, China consumed 46.2 billion packets of instant noodles in 2013. However, it is widely believed that South Korea is the country with the highest consumption of instant noodles. American-Korean chef David Chang is also a fan of instant noodles. Some Americans calculated that if they ate instant noodles for every meal, costing only 13 cents per packet, they would only spend $142.65 USD on food for the entire year, which is very cheap. (In Vietnam, Hảo Hảo instant noodles cost 4,000 VND per packet, equivalent to 18 cents USD).

In June 2005, at the age of 95, Ando retired and remained as Honorary Chairman of Nissin. He also planned to hold an international conference on instant noodles in Osaka in 2008, but he did not live to see it. On January 5, 2007, he passed away in Tokyo due to heart failure.

Later, Mr. Koki Ando, the son of the founder, took over as Chairman of Nissin Foods Group after his father. On May 2nd, 2016, Chairman Koki Ando announced that the leading brand of Nissin Foods Group, Cup Noodles, had reached 40 billion cups sold worldwide since its launch.

INSTANT NOODLES IN VIETNAM

Since the early 1970s, Chinese capitalists in Saigon began producing instant noodles using Nissin’s technology. Nowadays, Vietnamese instant noodles are exported to many places. I remember after the liberation of the South in 1975, on the occasion of National Day, every employee in central agencies, factories, and enterprises in Hanoi was given two packs of “Hai Tom Noodles” brought from Saigon. When people opened the cute little plastic bag with a fragrant smell and the image of two plump red prawns, everyone was overjoyed and considered it a delicacy. Everyone enjoyed the crispy and fragrant noodles, which were both delicious and satisfying. Up until now, despite having tried many types of noodles, many people still find Hai Tom Noodles the most delicious.

According to the report of the World Instant Noodles Association (WINA), with a consumption of over 7.03 billion packs of instant noodles in 2020, Vietnam has surpassed India and Japan to become the third largest consumer of instant noodles in the world, after China and Indonesia. By 2021, Vietnam’s consumption of instant noodles increased to 8.56 billion packs, higher than India (7.56 billion packs) and Japan (5.85 billion packs), but still behind China (43.99 billion packs) and Indonesia (13.27 billion packs).

Vietnam is the 19th country to have a Nissin factory. In March 2011, Nissin Foods Group established Nissin Foods Vietnam Company and opened a instant noodle factory with an area of over 60,000 square meters in the Vietnam Singapore 2A Industrial Park in Binh Duong province, equipped with the most advanced technology from Japan.

The fact is that the instant noodle industry has a very promising development potential. This further shows the admirable contribution of Mr. Momofuku Ando.

Thanks to the timely organization of instant noodle production in Russia and Eastern Europe in the 1990s, some Vietnamese entrepreneurs quickly became millionaires and billionaires. Currently, they are contributing to the industrialization and modernization of the country.

By Nguyen Hai Hoanh