COAMILPA, Mexico — Only 3 years old, Leon Gustavo Davila Hinojosa is still learning to speak Spanish. But the precocious youngster already knows a bit of Japanese: "Maruchan."
That's a brand of instant ramen noodles that to him means lunch. Leon's grandmother stocks them in her tiny grocery store in this hamlet 40 miles southwest of the capital. The preschooler prefers his shrimp-flavor ramen with a dollop of liquid heat.
"With salsa!" he said exuberantly at the mention of his favorite noodle soup.
Through the centuries, Moorish spices, French pastries and Spanish citrus have left lasting impressions on Mexico's cuisine. Now Japanese fast-food noodles, first imported here in the 1980s, are filling pantries across the country.
Time-pressed school kids, construction workers and office drones have helped turn Mexicans into Latin America's largest per-capita consumers of instant ramen. Diners here slurped down 1 billion servings last year, up threefold since 1999, according to a Japanese noodle association.
Urban convenience stores do a brisk trade selling ramen "\o7preparada\f7," providing customers with hot water, plastic forks and packets of salsa to prepare their lunches on the spot.
People in the countryside have developed a taste for it too. As part of a food assistance program, the Mexican government distributes ramen to commissaries in some of the most remote pockets of the country, where it is supplanting rice and beans on many tables.
The product is so pervasive that a national newspaper recently dubbed Mexico "Maruchan Nation."
Purveyors say you don't have to strain your noodle to figure out why. Nearly 60% of Mexico's workforce earns less than $13 a day. Instant ramen is a hot meal that fills stomachs, typically for less than 40 cents a serving. The product doesn't need refrigeration and it's so easy to make that some here call it "\o7sopa para flojos,\f7" or "lazy people's soup."
Sold here mainly in insulated, disposable containers that look like Styrofoam coffee cups, instant ramen starts as a clot of precooked dried noodles topped with seasoning and a few dehydrated vegetables. Boiling water turns the lump into tender strands of pasta in broth, ready to eat in three minutes.
That's a profane act for some Mexicans whose relationship with food is so sacred that their ancestors believed that humankind descended from corn.
