Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Domo Arigato Mr. Momofuku

Episode Date: October 28, 2020

In the year 2000, people in Japan were polled and asked what the greatest Japanese creation of the 20th century was. They didn’t pick the walkman, digital cameras, or the compact disc. Nor did they pick any even any cultural achievements like the works of Akira Kurosawa, anime, or Pokemon. What they selected as the greatest Japanese accomplishment of the 20th century was…….instant noodles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the year 2000, people in Japan were polled and asked what the greatest Japanese creation of the 20th century was. They didn't pick the Walkman, digital cameras, or the compact disc, nor did they pick any cultural achievements like the works of Akira Kurosawa, anime, or Pokemon. What they selected as the greatest Japanese accomplishment of the 20th century was Instant Noodles. Learn more about the simplest, cheapest food in the world and its inventor, Momofuku Ando on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. is trending on TikTok. Vaccines are poison.

Then your yoga teacher says that sex traffic children are being sacrificed by satanic liberals, but it's all okay. The Great Awakening is coming. What is happening? Every week on Conspiratuality Podcast, we explore the fever dreams that suck friends, family, and wellness gurus

down the right-wing cult spiral in a search for salvation. This episode is sponsored by Audible.com. My audiobook recommendation for today is Rice, Noodle Fish, Deep Travels Through Japan's Food Culture by Matt Goulding. In this 5,000 mile journey through the noodle shops, Tempura temples, and tea houses of Japan, Matt Goulding, co-creator of the enormously popular Eat This, Not That book series, navigates the intersection between food, history, and culture,

creating one of the most ambitious and complete books ever written about Japanese culinary culture from the Western perspective. You can claim your one-month trial to Audible and your two free audiobooks, by going to audible trial.com slash everything everywhere, or by clicking on the link in the show notes. Japan's greatest inventor wasn't actually Japanese. Momofuku Ando was born in Taiwan in 1910 to a Chinese family with the birth name Wu Bai Fu. In 1933, Ando moved to Osaka where he started a clothing company. After World War II, Taiwan became the Republic of China and he had to choose if you wanted Japanese citizenship or Taiwanese citizenship.

He chose Taiwanese to keep some family property on the island, but continued to live in Japan. By the late 1950s, Ando's company had gone bankrupt, he had been found guilty of tax evasion, and he started a new company which sold salt called Nissen. Japan at this time was also dealing with some serious food issues stemming from the end of World War II. Japan was receiving foreign aid in the form of wheat from the United States and encouraging its people to eat bread. However, bread was never a staple of the Japanese diet. It wasn't something that people were used to consuming. It just wasn't Japan either.

The same wheat was being sent to Korea and Taiwan with the same recommendations of consuming bread. Ando wondered why they weren't encouraging people to eat noodles instead of bread, which the people in the region were used to eating. He had a meeting with officials in the health ministry and expressed his concern about promoting bread as opposed to noodles, which were also made out of flour, but which would be more readily adopted by the population. The representative from the health ministry told him, why don't you solve this problem? So he did. In 1957 at the age of 47, he set to work to try to create a type of noodle that would be easy to make at home. He bought an old noodle making machine, 18 kilograms of wheat, some cooking oil, and set to work. He eventually came up with a way to fold and shape noodles and then flash fry them to create something which could last a long time and be easily prepared by boiling water. The process of flash frying reduces the water content in the noodles by 95%. With the addition of a freeze-dried flavor packet, he created the modern instant noodle. In 1958, his company Nissen released the first instant noodle product, chicken ramen. Believe it or not, when the product was first launched, it was released as a high-end luxury product

priced at six times the price of regular ramen. Within five years, however, the price had dropped in instant noodles were a huge hit. By 1963, they were selling 200 million servings annually. In many ways, the popularity of instant noodles in Japan, mirrored the rise of TV dinners in the United States. Consumers wanted something fast and easy to eat that fit into modern lifestyles. As instant noodles took off in Asia, they weren't yet a big hit in the United States. In countries like Japan, most people might have a noodle bowl or some experience cooking noodles. That didn't exist in the U.S. To expand into the American market in 1971, Ando at the age of 61,

introduced the cup noodles. The idea for cup noodles came from talking to an American supermarket manager who took the noodles, broke them up, and put them into a coffee mug to prepare it. Cup noodles were noodles packaged and served in a styrofoam cup. These noodles were intended to be eaten with a fork rather than chopsticks. All you needed was boiling water, and you had a packaging container and a bowl all in one convenient form. For years, there was a steaming cup noodle advertisement, right in the middle of Times Square in New York, below the spot where the ball dropped on New Year's Eve. Instant noodles went on to be far more successful than anyone could have ever imagined. There were over 103 billion servings of instant noodles served each year around the world.

That's 13.2 servings per person each year for every person on Earth. Indonesia is the largest consumer of instant noodles at 12 billion servings per year. Instant noodles have become extremely sophisticated. I personally remember on my travels going to stores in Japan and seeing entire aisles that had an amazing selection of instant noodles. They've gone well beyond small styrofoam cups and are now large bowls. I even had some packets of actual preserved meat or eggs you could just add. It wasn't just powdered flavor packets. In 1999, Nissen opened up an Instant Noodle Museum in Yokohama, Japan,

and today there are actually two museums to celebrate the Instant Noodle. In 2005, Japanese astronaut Soshi Naguchi flew on the space shuttle, and Nissen created a special type of instant noodle which could be eaten in zero gravity. In Japan, probably the vending machine capital of the world, they have instant noodle vending machines that not only dispense noodles in a cup, but also the hot water to make the noodles as well. In the U.S. prison system, packages of ramen are often used as currency. Each package is known as a soup, and you can tell how well someone is doing in prison by noting how many soups they have.

Instant noodles have become the stereotype for what college students eat. I remember eating it all the time in a tiny little coffee pot when I was in university. Lots of people gravitate towards instant noodles when times get tough. During the initial days of the COVID-19 crisis, from February 23rd to March 21st, 2020, Walmart reported a 578% increase in instant noodle sales. Innovation in instant noodles hasn't ended. There are now some companies which have self-heating instant noodle bowls that just require adding water, which doesn't even have to be hot. One company has created a package that will dissolve in water, thus ensuring that there is no waste product to be left behind. On January 5th, 2007, Momofuku Ando passed away at the age of 96. His famous saying is that, peace will come when people have food.

There are only a few people in the world who can claim to have fed as many people as Momofoku Andu has. Every day, hundreds of millions of people are fed with his creation. So on behalf of the billions of people who have eaten instant noodles, may I say, Domo origato, Mr. Momofuku. Executive producer of Everything Everywhere, Daily is James Mackela. Please remember to support the show over at patreon.com

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