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Food Non-Fiction

Food Non-Fiction tells the incredible true stories behind food. We delve deep into the history and fascinating facts about the most famous and interesting foods. We look forward to taking you on this wild food journey, through history, and around the world.
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Now displaying: February, 2016
Feb 25, 2016

This Food Non-Fiction podcast episode investigates the question - who created the California Roll?

Thank You to Our Interviewees:

Hidekazu Tojo

Trevor Corson

David Kamp

Thank You to Looperman Artists for the Music:

Drum Loop Republic by attackyak

Japanese Vibes Rhodes Only by raphael29

edm pluck for intro by capostipite

Dusted Jazz Loop by LeuNatic

Poppy Acoustic 2 by BradoSanz

Poppy Acoustic 3 by BradoSanz

Feb 17, 2016

In this Food Non-Fiction episode, we go nerdy and cover a paper titled "Simply Walking into Mordor: How Much Lembas Would the Fellowship Have Needed?" by Skye Rosetti and Krisho Manaharan.

The paper calculates how many pieces of lembas (elvish waybread) the Fellowship of the Ring would have had to pack for the journey from Rivendell to Mordor.

Special Thanks to Looperman Artists for the Music:

Concert Cello - Heaven by kickklee
Apollo by SANTIAGOO
Amazing Strings by BakoBone

Feb 11, 2016

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.

He was 47 that year, and had once again lost his livelihood. But Ando was not one to give up. He saw every failure as muscle added to his body. He thought once more about food and remembered a day when he had seen people waiting in a long line for a bowl of noodles.

He thought that it would be wonderful if the hungry could have a bowl of warm noodles whenever they needed it. So, he began searching for a way to make instant noodles.

To prepare, he built a shed in his backyard that was to be his makeshift lab for creating instant noodles. He bought a used noodle making machine, a chinese wok, some flour and cooking oil.

He set his criteria right from the start. His noodles had to be tasty, nonperishable and ready in less than 3 minutes. He knew he had to figure out two things to create instant noodles - first, he had to find a way to remove all moisture from the noodles, in order to make them nonperishable. Second, he had to find a way to revive the noodles by putting the moisture back in.

He worked for a year in his backyard shed until he finally got the creative insight that he needed. This happened while he watched his wife making vegetable tempura.
Ando once said that, “Perspiration might lead to inspiration, but only if you set clear goals”. He set clear goals, he worked hard, and he got the inspiration he needed.

When Ando watched that tempura batter enter the frying oil, he recognized two important things. One was that the oil pushed the water out of the batter. Two was that water exiting the batter created little pores in the it. So dipping noodles in hot oil would remove all the water from the noodles, making the noodles nonperishable AND create pores in the noodles, so that water could re-enter the them and moisten them up again. The year was 1958 and Ando had created the world's first instant noodles.

Unfortunately, when Ando approached wholesalers, they told him it was too expensive for consumers, because at the time, it cost 6 times as much as a serving of fresh noodles. So, undaunted, he took matters into his own hands and organized tastings around the city

The tastings were successful and within a year, he had a factory and was producing 100,000 packs of instant noodles a day.

Right from the very first packs of instant noodles, Ando had planned to go international. He knew he was going to sell his product in the west. That’s why the very first flavor of instant noodles was flavored like Chicken Noodle Soup.

Not soy sauce flavored, but chicken noodle soup flavored, because Ando knew that people in the west might find soy sauce flavoring too foreign.

He famously said “Let them eat it with forks!" showing that he wanted to spread his product to the west and was going to accommodate western norms.

In 1966, Ando traveled to Los Angeles to promote his product. According to an article by Karen Leibowitz, he saw the supermarket executives he was meeting with reuse their styrofoam coffee cups to hold instant noodles.

At this point, he already knew that making portable bowls was the next step to improving the convenience of instant noodles, and now he knew that the bowls should actually be shaped like cups!

Cups would be the trendy new way to eat noodles. Bowls were outdated. Cups you could carry around with one hand without soup spilling!

Ando chose young adults as his target market. In order to reach his target market, he again used tasting events. This time he set up tasting events in Ginza, the fashion district in Japan. It was a successful tactic and cup noodles took off.

Ando’s cup noodles were brilliantly designed. Because manufacturing equipment at the time lacked the finesse to evenly wedge the noodles into the cups, he had the machines put the cups over the noodles instead.

We should also note that the noodles went in the mid portion of the cups, so they did not sit at the bottom. Having noodles in the mid portion of the cups made them more structurally sound, a great asset for shipping. As well, the noodles had room to expand on both sides when hot water was poured in.

Ando’s innovations took off. By 1973, Nissin had opened its first factory in the US. Today, Nissin continues to innovate. Ando had wanted his product to feed the masses - he never intended his noodles to be considered cheap, unsubstantial food. So these days, his company is working on adding nutrients to the centre layer of their noodles.

Nissin has created a line of healthier noodles called Raoh that are not fried. These noodles consist of 3 layers of different textures to mimic fresh noodles - the outer layers are silky and the inner layer is chewy. They’ve achieved these different textures by changing the levels of gliadin and glutenin that combine to form the gluten in the noodles. The chewy center layer is where they are working on adding nutrients.

 

Special Thanks to Looperman Artists for the music!

Ambellient by Danke
Piano Quality Cajsa by MINOR2GO
Piano Quality Make A Wish 2 by MINOR2GO
Poppy Acoustic 2 by BradoSanz
Poppy Acoustic 4 by BradoSanz

Feb 4, 2016

In this Food Non-Fiction podcast episode, we tell you how the accountant, Walter Diemer, ended up creating the world's first commercially available bubble gum. Walter worked for the Frank H. Fleer Corporation founded by Frank H. Fleer who had invented the world's first (not commercially available) bubble gum. After Frank died, his son in law, Gilbert Mustin, eventually took over the company. There are few sources on how Walter became involved with making bubble gum, but according to a book titled, "It Happened In Philadelphia", Mustin had set up a lab for working on a gum base. This lab happened to be near Walter's office. Walter helped watch over a gum concoction one day and became fascinated with the idea of making a successful bubble gum. He played around with recipes and eventually created Dubble Bubble.

Thank you to Looperman artists for the music:

edm pluck for intro by capostipite
Drum Loop Republic by attackyak
Japanese Vibes Rhodes Only by raphael29

Thank you to Bob Conway for the interview

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