Are your instant noodles still safe to eat?

Whether two-minute noodles are safe to eat has become a concern for many consumers who often eat this instant meal due to its convenience and low price.

Five children – two in Mpumalanga and three in the Eastern Cape – died after eating two-minute noodles recently, while the department of health is also investigating a case of food poisoning in Gauteng. So far, there has been no conclusion about what the children died from.

Instant noodles or ramen are a precooked and dried blocks of noodles sold with a sachet of flavouring, that are cooked or soaked in boiling water before eating. The main ingredients are usually wheat flour, palm oil, and salt, while the flavouring contains salt, monosodium glutamate, seasoning and sugar.

People have been eating noodles for hundreds of years, but the modern instant variety was created by Japanese inventor Momofuku Ando in Japan and first sold in 1958 by Ando’s company, Nissin. Ando developed the process of flash frying noodles to ensure a longer shelf life. In Western countries, the noodles are usually air-dried.

ALSO READ: Three children die after eating noodles in Eastern Cape

What could have been behind the children’s deaths?

Dr. Hanli de Beer, senior lecturer in the department of consumer science at the Northwest University, says since the noodles are dry there is little chance that any organism could have grown on them in sealed packets.

This is what allows the noodles to have along shelf life like rice and normal pasta.

“Although it does not spoil, what happened during the preparation and when the children ate it would be important. Food poisoning happens when a toxic substance is in the food that is eaten. Symptoms appear very quickly within a few hours after being eaten,” she explained.

De Beer says the responsible toxin could also be chemical, such as instances where a contaminated container is used to prepare the noodles. Some toxins are produced by bacteria, which could be activated by heat shock.

However, she says her first suspicion would be that the culprit is the flavouring, because this could possibly have been contaminated by spore-forming bacteria.

“These organisms’ spores are also heat-resistant, which means that even if you boil the spores of Bacillus cereus, it would not be destroyed. The heat would activate the spores.”

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De Beer says if the noodles were cooked and left to stand for a while to cool before the flavouring was added and then left again in bowls before the children ate them, several organisms could have grown and produced toxins.

Nicola Brook, director of Foodpath, also suspects the noodle flavouring could well be where the problem lies as it contains many more potentially contaminated ingredients than the noodles themselves.

“The specific flavour variant is important because it will determine the list of ingredients in the seasoning.”

She says according to best before dates, instant noodles can last in the food cupboard for six to nine months from date of production, but this is a quality guide only.

“The noodles should be safe even after this time, due to their dryness. Expired stock in itself is not normally a risk for such a product. Standard dry pasta has a shelf life of two years.”

Brook also says the contamination might not necessarily be a pathogen, and could also be a chemical contaminant, but both could be present in one of the flavouring ingredients. She says if it were a pathogen, it could be a toxic Escherichia coli, but this is not typically associated with such a product.

E coli 0157 is known to cause death in children, but usually when it is present in meat products. However, this kind of pathogen could also be found in poor quality drinking water, such as water from a river or dam with cattle nearby.

Boiling the noodles should eliminate any such pathogen though.

What a manufacturer says

Though the specific brand of noodles responsible for the deaths has not yet been disclosed, many have been speculating on social media about who is responsible.

One brand, Maggi two-minute noodles and the tastemakers (flavouring) are manufactured at Nestlé’s Babelegi plant in Hammanskraal.

“All our noodles have an expiry date and the shelf life is nine months. When the product is near expiry, retailers return the product so that it is destroyed once it reaches the expiry date,” said Saint-Francis Tohlang, corporate communications and public affairs director at Nestlé for East and Southern Africa.

“Nestlé implements a strict food safety and quality management system at all our manufacturing facilities and our products go through stringent food safety and quality assurance processes. Nestlé has, to date, not been contacted by any authorities in connection with these incidents.”

The company is not in possession of any information to conduct an internal investigation and all its noodle products are still sold across the country.

ALSO READ: 37 people in hospital over suspected food poisoning in Cape Town

Food safety is important

These cases showed how important food safety is. De Beer says care givers must always be careful when preparing warm food that is not eaten immediately because it keeps the food in the danger zone where organisms can grow.

Brook says it is important to focus on the five basic keys of food safety from the World Health Organisation:

1. Choose (Choose safe raw materials)

2. Clean (Keep hands and utensils clean)

3. Separate (Separate raw and cooked food)

4. Cook (Cook thoroughly)

5. Safe Temperature (Keep food at a safe temperature)