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世界で初めてインスタントラーメンを開発したことで知られる「日清食品」の創業者、安藤百福さんは今月５日、急性心筋こうそくのため大阪府内の病院で９６歳で亡くなりました。
９日付けのニューヨークタイムズは「ミスター・ヌードルに感謝」という見出しで安藤さんに関する社説を掲載し、「自動車や携帯用ヘッドホンステレオなど、戦後日本が行ったチームによる開発とは違う」として、安藤さんがひとりで試行錯誤の末にインスタントラーメンを開発したことを指摘しました。
そのうえで、「インスタントラーメンは、世界中で毎日１億人が食べている。
安藤氏は、人類の発展に尽くしたとして、永遠に語り継がれるだろう」と述べて、安価で手軽に食べられるインスタントラーメンを開発した業績をたたえました。
日本人の残した業績が、アメリカの新聞の社説で取り上げられることは異例なことで、アメリカでもインスタントラーメンがいかに普及しているかを物語るものとなっています。
安藤さんを讃えるニューヨーク・タイムズ記事 ⇒
Appreciations
Mr. Noodle
Published: January 9, 2007
The news last Friday of the death of the ramen noodle guy surprised those of us who had never suspected that there was such an individual. It was easy to assume that instant noodle soup was a team invention, one of those depersonalized corporate miracles, like the Honda Civic, the Sony Walkman and Hello Kitty, that sprang from that ingenious consumer-product collective known as postwar Japan.
But no. Momofuku Ando, who died in Ikeda, near Osaka, at 96, was looking for cheap, decent food for the working class when he invented ramen noodles all by himself in 1958. His product — fried, dried and sold in little plastic-wrapped bricks or foam cups — turned the company he founded, Nissin Foods, into a global giant. According to the company’s Web site, instant ramen satisfies more than 100 million people a day. Aggregate servings of the company’s signature brand, Cup Noodles, reached 25 billion worldwide in 2006.
There are other versions of fast noodles. There is spaghetti in a can. It is sweetish and gloppy and a first cousin of dog food. Macaroni and cheese in a box is a convenience product requiring several inconvenient steps. You have to boil the macaroni, stir it to prevent sticking and determine through some previously obtained expertise when it is “done.” You must separate water from noodles using a specialized tool, a colander, and to complete the dish — such an insult — you have to measure and add the fatty deliciousness yourself, in the form of butter and milk that Kraft assumes you already have on hand. All that effort, plus the cleanup, is hardly worth it.
Ramen noodles, by contrast, are a dish of effortless purity. Like the egg, or tea, they attain a state of grace through a marriage with nothing but hot water. After three minutes in a yellow bath, the noodles soften. The pebbly peas and carrot chips turn practically lifelike. A near-weightless assemblage of plastic and foam is transformed into something any college student will recognize as food, for as little as 20 cents a serving.
There are some imperfections. The fragile cellophane around the ramen brick tends to open in a rush, spilling broken noodle bits around. The silver seasoning packet does not always tear open evenly, and bits of sodium essence can be trapped in the foil hollows, leaving you always to wonder whether the broth, rich and salty as it is, is as rich and salty as it could have been. The aggressively kinked noodles form an aesthetically pleasing nest in cup or bowl, but when slurped, their sharp bends spray droplets of broth that settle uncomfortably about the lips and leave dots on your computer screen.
But those are minor quibbles. Ramen noodles have earned Mr. Ando an eternal place in the pantheon of human progress. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime. Give him ramen noodles, and you don’t have to teach him anything.
- Re: 米紙［ニューヨーク・タイムズ紙］ 即席めんの安藤さん絶賛（NHKニュース） ink 2007/1/11 00:01:52
(2)
- Re: ＞単に小麦の消費を促したからでは・・・ ⇒ かもしれませんネ。（本文ありません） gataro 2007/1/11 00:06:50
(1)
- 死体が好きな宗教団体が生前から狙いをつけていたんでしょうｗｗ 姫 2007/1/11 01:18:32
(0)
- 死体が好きな宗教団体が生前から狙いをつけていたんでしょうｗｗ 姫 2007/1/11 01:18:32
(0)
- Re: ＞単に小麦の消費を促したからでは・・・ ⇒ かもしれませんネ。（本文ありません） gataro 2007/1/11 00:06:50
(1)
- Re: すみません、URLが抜けていました。 gataro 2007/1/10 19:09:12
(0)
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