Oodles of noodles: How a global favourite became an economic red flag
Cheap and calorie-filled – the quick-cooking foodstuff tells us about the state of the world.
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
In 2022, humanity collectively bought a record 121 billion servings of instant noodles – 17 per cent more than in 2018, according to the World Instant Noodles Association.
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: PEXELS
Leo Lewis
If the entire (cooked) length of instant noodles sold around the world in a single year were laid out in a line, the resulting 6,200,000,000km noodle would stretch well beyond Pluto and into the depths of space. It is a fact as miserable as it is marvellous.
Instant noodles sit among the most potent weapons ever devised in the unending struggle against starvation: a product that towers, among processed foods, at the extreme value end of the cost-per-calorie scale and which its makers now proudly classify as a piece of “social infrastructure”.