The Inventor of Fast Food

Momofuku Ando was a remarkable man who changed the world.

Aged 48, he invented and manufactured ramen noodles – the world’s first fast food to help solve the food shortage crisis in post war Japan. And he wasn’t finished yet! He was an inveterate entrepreneur and a design genius.

His journey wasn’t easy, but he persevered. Originally from Taiwan, at just 22 he began with opening a textiles company with a small inheritance. Then he moved to Japan to go to university and started a sideline clothing business, when World War II happened. He retained his Taiwan nationality but stayed in Japan after the war. In trying to grow his business, he employed students under “training scholarships” – but he was caught, arrested and jailed for two years for tax evasion. Once free he started a small family business making salt, he called it Nissin, and it grew into a successful global business going strong still.

Japan was suffering a major food shortage problem, so he set up a laboratory in his work shed and through flash frying experimantation, discovered how to make instant noodles. He’d noticed that oil was removing water from tempura when frying, and found that noodles could be dried using that principle and then boiled in water to remoisturise them back into soft, edible noodles.

Now aged 48, with the 1960s starting, he manufactured Chikin Ramen, and it was a hit, expensive at the start, but over time with more sales, the noodles became very affordable, soon making it one of the most eaten foods in the country.

Ando founded the Instant Food Industry Association and started putting on the packaging the “fill to” line and the date of manufacture, among other food and consumer innovations.

When he was 61, he invented Cup O’ Noodles for the 70’s US market; he’d noticed that the Americans took his Ramen noodles, put them in a mug and ate with a fork.

He changed the world; Pot Noodles, Cup Noodles and Ramen are cheap and plentiful – it’s big business, selling 98 billion servings in 2009 alone!

Of course, Momofuku Ando was awarded all sorts of medals, and honorary titles. He took the risks and it paid off. His original thought was merely to help relieve the post-war food shortage in Japan – which he certainly did, but his experimentation created an entire industry. Without Ando, we would not have instant noodles, and the impact on food, on food production and even the essential notion of “fast food” was born because of him – and expectation of quick hot food became the norm. Today we take fast food for granted.

The design elements – especially the cup noodle – are unnoticed today as they are so ubiquitous – but in 1971, it was a revolution in food packaging. That you poured hot water and waited for a few minutes was exceptional – so easy, so convenient, and so cheap. Space age stuff. He had to design many features – from the dehydrated flavourings to the lid. Cup Noodles came with shorter length noodles and a disposable fork! It is a rare skill to be able to see past your own culture of chopsticks and bowls. He found a way to sell an inherently Japanese food to Americans by understanding what Americans want, and how they eat.

What began as a garden shed solution to a food shortage, morphed into the contemporary Japanese idea of a better life through convenience – and after that into the Japanese obsession with breaking into the US markets with consumer products that Americans didn’t even know they wanted – from the Walkman to instant noodles.

He died aged 96 at the start of 2007, and he claimed that his health and longevity was due to eating his own noodles every day.