‘’Trust me darling it’s safe…it’s a worm…not Maggi,’’ says the mother bird to its chicks as she beaks the ‘’worm’’ to her gaping kids– a spoof on the Nestle logo.

The instant noodle from the Nestle stables which had fed many an Indian for the past thirty years has indeed come a long way.

For years Indian moms, caught in the fast lane had been dishing out this ‘’two-minute’’ wonder to their young ones, maybe with dads eyeing the aromatic noodle from the corner of their eyes. But this instant food had caught the imagination of the entire nation and you may find this in the most unlikely of places in the country. From the icy army outposts on the Himalayas to the dense jungles of Western Ghats this new ‘’comfort food’’ is available with ease…until the bomb dropped.

The two-minute ‘Maggi’ noodles came under regulatory scanner after samples collected in some parts of Uttar Pradesh were tested in the lab and results showed that it contains high amount of monosodium glutamate (MSG) and lead.

Shockingly, it has been found that Maggi contains 17 parts per million lead, while the permissible limit is only 0.01 ppm. Even the content of monosodium glutamate (MSG) in it was found at levels above the dangerous mark. UP Food Regulatory Authority examined that chemical monosodium glutamate (MSG) in Maggi noodles was higher than the prescribed limit.

On the other hand, the company clarified about the amount of lead in Maggi, claiming that it is negligible and amounts to less than 1 percent.

Maggi has also come on the radar of the US Food and Drug Administration, which has taken samples of the instant noodles brand for testing.

Today, the entire Maggi noodles has been recalled in India. According to estimates these Noodles worth 3.2 billion rupees are on the chopping block as 10,000 trucks are busy transporting 27,000 tons of these food to their unusual end to be used as fuel in cement factories approved by the government where they would be crushed and burnt while taking into consideration that it would not dent the atmosphere.

The task is by no means a mean one for it would take at least 40 days and a huge army of workers, about 12,000 who would help destroy millions of cartons of the food after Nestle ordered one of its biggest recalls in its 100-year history.

Nestle is not new to recalls. In the past five years there has been half a dozen such instances globally. There has been a voluntary recall of KitKat Chunky after shards of plastics were found in them. Similarly, the company initiated another round of voluntary recall after Nesquik chocolate powder had been allegedly infected with Salmonella in certain batches.

In India too there were two instances of recall of Maggi brands. The first 23 years back and the second incident in 1997.

The Swiss noodle brand which has been in India for the last three decades and hence had reinvented itself today so much that it would be today hard to detect its roots which had been see been seeped in the hoary past of Japanese cuisine. Instant noodles first came to the Japanese tables through a process of ‘’Flash Frying’’, which incidentally is used still today to produce these items, by post-world war entrepreneurs experimenting in food scarce Japan of the times.

Rajiv Theodore

Its predecessor has of course been the Chinese variant which has been served in Japanese restaurants under the name –shina soba (Chinese-style noodles in a broth). This dish was popularized by the Japanese restaurant RaiRaiken in 1910.

But Japanese ingenuity made another twist to the tale. Momofuku Ando, a Japanese business man whose company by the same name, had transformed itself into a virtual noodle empire, had initially transformed this dish into a packaged item that could be within the reach of millions of hungry masses.

And to make these humble noodles a winner, Ando called them ramen, from ra (pulled, in this case by hand) and men (noodles, as in the English “chow mein”). Today, “Ramen” is associated globally for instant noodles. It is only in India that the Maggi brand is synonymous as a common noun for instant noodles.

It would take some time to put these ready to eat food back on the plates of the Indians and we may not see riots with the Maggi addicts going on a hunger rampage. However what is an obvious fallout is the fate of nearly 1,100 contractual workers who have been turned away from a Nestle India plant in Uttarakhand’s Udham Singh Nagar district after production came to a halt after the ban.