The Humble Origins of Instant Ramen: From Ending World Hunger to Space Noodles
By Karen Leibowitz, Jun 22, 2011 1:00 PM
About 4,000 of the 5,000 terrible cliches about instant ramen begin with starving college students. As Karen Leibowitz explains in Lucky Peach, Momofuku Ando didn't aim to stuff hungry co-eds with his creationhe wanted to end world hunger.
In the last hundred years, Japan has given the world a number of remarkable inventions the Walkman, the bullet train, the digital camera, the fuel-efficient car, karaoke. But in a poll conducted in December 2000, the Japanese people chose instant ramen as the greatest Japanese innovation of the twentieth century.
And as unlikely as it seems, instant ramen's creator, Momofuku Ando, had exactly such ambitions in mind. Instant ramen may seem like a trivial consumer product, but it has helped millions of people survive economic and natural disasters, which is no small accomplishment. And in the aftermath of Japan's recent tsunami and nuclear crisis, with instant ramen feeding thousands of displaced citizens, Ando's legacy has proven its importance once more.
... (cont'd in the link)
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