Why we love noodles
The Food Chain
BBC
4.7 • 545 Ratings
🗓️ 6 March 2025
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What makes a noodle? Is it the shape? The ingredients?
In this programme Devina Gupta explores the history of noodles, tracing their origin back to Third-Century China. She finds out how they came to be eaten in so many different ways in so many different places.
Devina enjoys a Tibetan-influenced noodle dish in Delhi’s Monastery Market, a long-time home of Tibetan restaurants and businesses in India. She hears how noodles were one of many foods to travel the silk trading routes in the region.
Jen Lin-Liu, author of ‘On the Noodle Road: From Beijing to Rome with Love and Pasta’, tells Devina about the earliest mention of noodles in historical documents. Frank Striegl in Tokyo, who runs the blog ‘5AM Ramen’ picks up the story, explaining how noodles travelled from China to Japan and became ramen – one of Japan’s iconic dishes today.
In 1958 dried instant noodles were invented in Japan. Devina speaks to Varun Oberoi of Nissin India, to hear about the opportunities and challenges facing the instant noodle company today.
Presented by Devina Gupta.
Produced by Beatrice Pickup.
(Image: noodles dangling from chopsticks above a bowl. Credit: Getty Images/ BBC)
Transcript
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| 0:33.8 | A food that is today one of the most popular in the world. |
| 0:38.0 | It's a guilty pleasure for me. I like it. |
| 0:40.7 | Different countries have their own versions of this dish. |
| 0:43.9 | It's okay to push the boundaries and people are not going to be like, what is this travesty? |
| 0:49.7 | Noodles. We are exploring the history. |
| 0:52.8 | There were actually poems about noodles. |
| 0:55.9 | And why we love them so much. |
| 0:58.3 | Slurping is encouraged in Japan. |
| 1:01.9 | Welcome to the food chain from the BBC World Service with me, Divina Gupta. |
| 1:06.8 | And today we are diving deep into the world of noodles. |
| 1:12.6 | I have just come off a busy road near a bus terminal in the northern part of Delhi. |
| 1:18.2 | There's a flyover in front of me and at the bottom of it is the entrance to the famous monastery market. |
| 1:25.6 | This place, once a refuge for Tibetans in the 1960s, is now a bustling |
| 1:31.0 | hub for shoppers and food lovers. As I walked through the rusty iron gates, there is a narrow |
| 1:38.2 | lane in front of me. There are makeshift shops where people are selling warm winterwear and handmade jewelry. |
| 1:46.5 | Above me, there are strings of colourful prayer flags fluttering in the wind, |
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