Food Non-fiction

In this Food Non-Fiction podcast episode, we tell the rollercoaster story of the birth of instant noodles. On March 5, 1910, Momofuku Ando was born in Taiwan and raised by his grandparents. This was during the 50 years of Japanese rule that started after Japan won the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895. He was a natural entrepreneur and started a clothing business when he was only 22. With his success, he moved to Japan the next year and expanded his clothing company while still attending university. But during WWII, he lost everything when Osaka was firebombed by American forces. It was a tragedy that informed his world-view. He saw the hungry all around him. In a 1988 interview, he said, “the world is peaceful only when everyone has enough to eat. Everything starts with food.” With his strong respect for food, he made his first attempt at entering the food industry by producing salt and nutritional products but it was too competitive. Instead, he worked as chair of a credit union until it went bankrupt in 1957