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Your favorite instant ramen is getting a recipe overhaul—the very first in the 45 years since Cup Noodles started selling in the U.S. Gardena's own Nissin Foods USA announced Thursday that the company had revamped their just-add-water pantry staple, removing MSG and artificial flavors, and reducing the amount of sodium in each cup.
"Those three changes together were kind of like the Bermuda Triangle," Nissin Foods USA Vice-President of Marketing Leslie Mohr said, explaining that they had to be implemented without sacrificing the flavors that instant ramen fans have loved for years.
Al Multari, chief executive of Nissin Foods USA (the American branch of the much-larger Japanese Nissin Foods Group), told the L.A. Times that the changes were in direct response to customers, "who wanted the same taste but with an improved nutritional profile."
"Most recently, we asked our consumers what changes they'd like to see in our Cup Noodles product. They told us that without sacrificing taste, the three most compelling changes we could make to our recipe were: lower sodium, no added MSG and no artificial flavors. This is exactly what we've been able to accomplish," Multari said in a press release.
The Times reports that a pre-revamp single serving of Cup Noodles’ most popular flavor, chicken, contained 60% of the recommended daily sodium intake; the new recipe reduced that number to 45% of the recommended daily intake. We still wouldn't exactly call it healthy though: according to The Wall Street Journal, a serving of Cup Noodles 2.0 will still contain a third of your recommended daily saturated fat intake.
Along with their press statement, Nissin Foods USA also released some pretty epic b-roll footage from their Gardena factory, showing just how exactly the sausage instant ramen gets made. We wouldn't describe it as particularly appetizing, but it is weirdly mesmerizing to watch:
