The Horror of Instant Noodles

Dear all, I shall write an informative and shocking (to me anyway) post today. Today during lab I was having a discussion with a Canadian exchange student who was in my group and we started talking about instant noodles. She started saying something about how instant noodles are pre-cooked and deep fried. I was like, whaaaa? How can that be. These past few days, since I was lazy to think of what to eat, I'd actually been eating instant noodles and wondering whether its possible to lose weight on them :p After all, its just carbohydrates in soup right? Well, she countered that by asking me whether I could explain the high fat content in instant noodles? ... I was left speechless and so decided to do some research. And the results show that instant noodles are indeed deep fried prior to us dumping them in hot water and thinking ah soup noodles, they may not be healthy but cmon they're definitely not as fattening as deep fried food. Haha.

From http://web-japan.org/kidsweb/cook/feature/ramen_te.html:

Instant ramen noodles are made with wheat flour, water, salt, and kansui, an alkaline water that adds elasticity to the noodles. First, the ingredients are kneaded together to make a dough. Next, this dough is rolled out and cut into thin noodles. The noodles are then steamed and are finally packaged after dehydration. Advanced technologies are used in every step of the manufacturing process. Dehydration is especially important for the preservability of instant ramen, so noodle makers have experimented with many methods.

Momofuku Ando, the founder of Nissin, succeeded in making the first instant ramen after much trial and error. Tempura, a traditional Japanese deep-fried food, gave him the idea of removing moisture from the noodles by frying them in oil at a high temperature. This method makes it possible to dehydrate the noodles almost completely. Moreover, it has the added advantage of leaving countless minuscule holes on the surface, making it easier for the noodles to rehydrate when steeped in hot water.

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How many of you have wondered how instant noodles are made? I never did :p