Noodles for Food Security

The Committee on Food Security is meeting in Rome this week. I'm pretty sure nobody there is thinking about instant noodles. Perhaps they should be.

Because ...

Last year, about 100 billion packets and cups were sold, according to the World Instant Noodles Association—about 14 servings per person.

This singular fact stuck with me as I listen ed to Laurie Taylor interviewing Deborah Gewertz about her new book The Noodle Narratives: The Global Rise of an Industrial Food into the Twenty-First Century. The entire story was full of fascinating insights into the global phenomenon of instant noodles, which at base are nothing more than (very) cheap calories that can easily be tailored to any culture's preferred flavour profile.

Gewertz and her co-authors explain that instant noodles serve "an important role in satiating hunger and in sustaining lives for many worldwide, including those hanging on under difficult circumstances. ... As a protean food designed for quotidian consumption, instant noodles have already shown a remarkable capacity to ease themselves into diverse lives."

It is that obvious appeal of instant noodles to the poor that set me thinking. At the moment, they supply calories and flavour and little else in the way of nutrition. How much would it increase the cost of a pack of instant noodles to fortify them with micronutrients? And would that be money well spent?

p.s. I can't help but hope that Professor Gewertz's forebears might possibly once have been called Gewürz.