What Ramen Noodles Can Teach You About Packaged Food Stock Investments

You can be sure that the economic tides have truly shifted within an industry when customers begin to demand of commodity products the qualities they once sought out only in high-end goods.

Last week, in a bid to appeal to consumers' demands for "clean label" foods, Nissin Foods USA announced that it's updating the recipe of its iconic Top Ramen line of instant noodles to reflect the three changes most requested by customers. The company told Food Navigator-USA that it's reducing sodium across its packaged noodles by 15%, eliminating added MSG (beyond the naturally occurring glutamate found in its other ingredients), and dispensing with artificial flavors.

As a lifelong fan of instant ramen noodles, I for one will be curious to see how Nissin maintains the umami quotient in its flavor packets without the aid of monosodium glutamate, an ingredient which, though never proven to have harmful effects, nonetheless has faced much more skepticism in the West than in Asia, where it was invented in the early 20th century.

Source: Fool.com