Few people knew the name of Japanese Momofuku Ando, who died in early January 2007. But he is the inventor of the main Japanese invention of the 20th century, which left behind both karaoke and the portable audio player in importance. Momofuku Ando invented instant noodles.
Momofuku Ando was born in 1910 in Japanese-occupied Taiwan. His parents died when he was a child, and he was raised by his grandparents, who owned a clothing company. When Ando was 22, he started his own business and moved to Osaka.
In 1934, he successfully graduated from the School of Economics at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto and received Japanese citizenship. Things were going well, but after the end of World War II, there was a decline. Ando was sentenced to prison for tax evasion in 1948, and his company went bankrupt.
At that time, the country, which had lost the war, was in the grip of famine.
People were forced to stand in long lines for food. So Ando was very surprised when he heard that the Japanese Ministry of Health literally urged people to eat bread made from American wheat received as humanitarian supplies. Noodles were a much more familiar dish for the Japanese, but the capacity of Japanese food companies was clearly not enough to provide for the entire country.
In 1948, he decided to change his field of activity and do something that, in his opinion, would always bring income. He began to trade salt.
His product was, of course, in demand, but that did not save him from another bankruptcy. That is, at first, his company prospered. So much so that he became a prominent representative of the Osaka business community. He was invited to the boards of directors of many companies and was even made chairman of one of the local credit associations. It went bankrupt. Ando had to pay off his creditors from his own funds, which made him almost a beggar. It was then that he remembered the line he saw in 1948. Ando threw all his remaining funds into inventing a product that would not only bring in profit, but would also be useful to his fellow citizens.
Creating instant noodles was not an easy task. After all, from the very beginning, Ando rejected the idea of producing simply dry noodles: the Chinese invented a method for making noodles that could be stored for a very long time a thousand years ago. Ando's goal was much more ambitious. His noodles had to be not only cheap, but also tasty and quick to prepare. This is what he had to work with. For his experiments, Ando built a real kitchen-laboratory in a shed behind his house in the town of Ikeda.
The equipment was very simple. A traditional egg noodle maker and a large pot. At first, it seemed that the problem posed by Ando was unsolvable. The noodles either turned out completely tasteless or were overcooked so much that they turned into mush.
The breakthrough came when Ando came up with the idea of spraying the noodles with broth from an ordinary garden watering can. Then he stirred the noodles himself so that their top layer was soaked in broth, fried them in palm oil, evaporating the water, and then dried them in the form of briquettes. To cook the noodles, you just had to add boiling water to them. Ando came up with the idea of adding two packets to each noodle block: one, opaque, contained spices and broth extract, and the other, transparent, contained a small portion of palm oil.
At first, the new dish was expensive and was considered a delicacy, but after a year, prices fell and sales began to grow rapidly.
In 1958, the first products of the Nissin Food Products company created by Ando entered stores and became a real bestseller. And not only among the Japanese. Ando, who often repeated that "the world will be at peace if people do not experience a shortage of food," did not intend to limit himself to the Japanese market. That is why at first his instant noodles were produced only with chicken flavor under the Chikin Ramen trademark. There was a reason for that. "By using chicken broth in the preparation of our noodles, we were able to bypass religious taboos that exist in different countries. Hindus cannot eat beef, and Muslims cannot eat pork, but there is no culture, religion or country that forbids eating chicken," the Japanese explained.
After 12 years, Nissin Food noodles were known throughout Asia, as well as in Europe and America. However, Ando was not going to stop there.
In 1971, he came up with something that made his noodles perhaps the most popular product on the planet. A new product from Ando appeared on store shelves - Cup Noodle noodles, sold in a waterproof polystyrene foam bowl. Hot water could be added directly to it. There was no longer a need to move the noodles or wash the dishes after eating. Ando's noodles became truly economical, which was appreciated by students, bachelors, workers who wanted to save time on lunch. And soon after, dried vegetables began to be added to the noodles, which, boiled in boiling water, created the impression of a full-fledged soup. But this food innovator made his main, literally cosmic breakthrough in 2005. It was then that instant noodles in vacuum packaging appeared, created especially for astronauts. And Ando attributed his longevity to the daily use of noodles of his own invention. 
Having started with the production of chicken noodles in cellophane bags, Ando has become a real emperor of instant noodles. His company produces almost two dozen types of noodles with a variety of flavors and ingredients. Ando's empire factories are located all over the world - from the USA and Peru to Germany and Hungary - and supply their products to almost 70 countries. According to a company representative, more than 100 million people worldwide consume Nissin noodles every day.
Ando's invention has long been the property of all mankind. Of course, the world leader in instant noodle consumption is, as you might have guessed, China: the Chinese consume about 30 billion servings of this product per year. China is followed by Japan and Indonesia. With such a scale, it is not surprising that the International Ramen Association was created and that an annual World Ramen Summit is held dedicated to it. According to this summit, in 2004, people on Earth consumed 65.5 billion packages of instant noodles. And, as Ando intended, it continues to save people. The main food product for those affected by the Asian tsunami in 2004 and Hurricane Katrina in the United States in 2005 was instant noodles. Thanks to Ando, hundreds of companies in different countries now produce noodles. They have different tastes (in Poland, for example, there are noodles with the taste of borscht), but in all other respects they are not much different from Ando's invention, since manufacturers rather try to emphasize this similarity. When you open the noodles of any company, you can be sure that you will find there what Ando invented: a noodle block and two bags. Transparent - with oil and silver - with broth and spices. And in 2000, when answering the question about the main Japanese invention of the 20th century, the Japanese unequivocally put in first place not the ultra-modern computers or electronic devices, but a simple and nutritious dish familiar to almost every modern person.
The noodles invented by Ando have their drawbacks. Nutritionists and doctors argue about how healthy this food is. Restaurateurs and fighters for good taste complain that, like other fast food products, noodles kill a person’s ability to distinguish a gastronomic masterpiece from cheap cooking. Nevertheless, few doubt that the main goal that Momofuku Ando set for himself has been achieved. "Instant noodles have secured Mr. Ando a place in the pantheon of human progress. Teach a man to fish, and he will feed himself for life. Give him instant noodles, and you don't need to teach him anything else," says New York journalist Lawrence Downs. There's no better epitaph for a bankrupt man who decided to rid humanity of hunger.
