No-Men

I’ve eaten ramen because I was broke, not because I thought it would make me smarter. That’s the real story. It’s cheap protein at midnight, a way to feed yourself for almost nothing. Every student knows this. The nutritional angle is a fiction we told ourselves to feel better about eating the same thing three times a week.

Then Japan released a product that actually bought into the fiction. No-Men is ramen supposedly engineered for brain function, with B vitamins and whatever else they convinced themselves matter. The thing has an unnatural color, nothing like regular ramen. It looks like someone took the cheap convenience food and tried to scientize it.

The stupidity and earnestness of it deserves respect—the belief that you could make ramen noble just by adding the right ingredients and marketing it right. Someone looked at broke students and thought: what if we made their survival food actually do something? It’s hilarious and hopeful at the same time.

The stuff was apparently Japan-only when this was written, though that was probably years ago. By now it might be in some Asian market, or it might have died in obscurity, which feels more likely. I’ve never looked for it. But if I found myself in an Asian grocery store late at night, hungry and nostalgic, I’d probably buy a pack just to see. It wouldn’t make me smarter. I’d eat it anyway.