Mexicans have the hots for instant ramen
French pastries, and Spanish citrus have left lasting impressions on Mexico's cuisine. Now Japanese fast-food noodles, first imported here in the 1980s, are filling pantries across the country.
Time-pressed schoolchildren, construction workers, and office drones have helped turn Mexicans into Latin America's largest per-capita consumers of instant ramen. Diners here slurped down 1 billion servings last year, up threefold since 1999, according to a Japanese noodle association.
Urban convenience stores do a brisk trade selling ramen ''preparada," providing customers with hot water, plastic forks, and packets of salsa to prepare their lunches on the spot.
People in the countryside also developed a taste for it. As part of a food assistance program, the Mexican government distributes ramen to commissaries in some of the most remote pockets of the country, where it is supplanting rice and beans on many tables.
The product is so pervasive that a national newspaper recently dubbed Mexico ''Maruchan Nation."
Purveyors say you don't have to strain your noodle to figure out why. Nearly 60 percent of Mexico's workforce earns less than $13 a day. Instant ramen is a hot meal that fills stomachs, typically for less than 40 cents a serving. The product doesn't need refrigeration and it's so easy to make that some here call it ''sopa para flojos," or ''lazy people's soup."
Sold here mainly in insulated, disposable containers that resemble styrofoam coffee cups, instant ramen starts as a clot of precooked dried noodles topped with seasoning and dehydrated vegetables. Boiling water turns it into tender strands of pasta in broth, ready to eat in three minutes.
That's a profane act for some Mexicans whose relationship with food is so sacred that their ancestors believed humankind was descended from corn.
Food here is history. It is religion. It is patrimony. Ask anyone who has savored such delights as ''chiles en nogada," poblano chilies stuffed with spiced pork and topped with creamy walnut sauce and pomegranate seeds to replicate the green, white, and red colors of the Mexican flag.
It's also passion. In Laura Esquivel's popular novel ''Like Water for Chocolate," the sensuous alchemy of Mexican cooking unleashes a family's ravenous desires.
Small wonder that defenders of the nation's cuisine, such as Gloria Lopez Morales, an official with Mexico's National Council for Culture and Arts, are appalled that Mexican palates have been seduced by this ramen import.
Lopez is leading an effort to have UNESCO recognize Mexican food as a ''patrimony of humanity" that should be nurtured and protected. She worries that globalization is disconnecting Mexicans from their life source, be it US corn displacing ancient strains of maize or fast food encroaching on the traditional ''comida," or leisurely afternoon meal.
''For Mexicans, food is basically culture. The act of eating here in Mexico is an act of enormous significance," she said. ''We have entered a period of threat, of crisis."
Nutritionists likewise are alarmed that instant ramen, a dish loaded with fat, carbohydrates, and sodium, has become a cornerstone of the food pyramid.
With the majority of the population now urbanized and on the go, Mexicans are embracing the convenience foods of their neighbors in the United States while abandoning some healthful traditions. The result is soaring levels of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease, particularly among the poor.
''It's cheap energy," said Dr. Gustavo Acosta Altamirano, a nutrition specialist at Juarez Hospital in Mexico City, of the nation's growing addiction to soft drinks, sugary snacks, and starchy foods such as ramen noodles. ''But it's making us fat."
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