Oodles of noodles: how a global favourite became an economic red flag

If the entire (cooked) length of instant noodles sold around the world in a single year were laid out in a line, the resulting 6.2bn kilometre giga-noodle would stretch well beyond Pluto and into the depths of space. It is a fact as miserable as it is marvellous.

Instant noodles sit among the most potent weapons ever devised in the unending struggle against starvation: a product that towers, among processed foods, at the extreme value end of the cost-per-calorie scale and which its makers now proudly classify as a piece of “social infrastructure”.