Dr. McDougall's ramen, chicken flavor

This one's wordy. As given by the picture below, the full name appears to be "Right Foods Dr. McDougall's Baked Not Fried Ramen Chicken Flavor Non-Meat Source Fresh Flavor New Packet Inside. (Bigger Size!)" Which of course leads to the question-- what flavor IS this, "chicken" or "fresh?" When things are fresh-scented, they're not generally things I'd like to taste, like Lysol. We'll come back to this issue later.

First, pictures. I remembered to take interesting ones this time.

I'm back at school now and I don't know what's going on outside the cloistered walls and hallowed halls of the university, but the only thing on everyone's minds seems to be H1N1. (And football.) And since I'm a bandwagon-jumper I bought this little bottle of hand sanitizer and keep it in my backpack. I don't use it much, but I own it and maybe it'll kill germs via magical Hand-Sanitizer-Radiation or something. (Don't think that one through too much)


This picture actually sums up my life pretty accurately: junk food and hard science. This isn't nearly as depressing as it sounds. Actually it can be a lot of fun. Unfortunately I don't think astronauts eat a lot of instant noodles or other foods that require boiling.

Okay now for actual ramen discussion instead of trying to inject personality into this thing. Have a picture that you can actually read and see what I mean by the title:

I found this for just over two dollars at Meijer. I forget which section it was in, but I want to say the junk food subsection of the health food section, if such a thing exists. They're apparently pretty hardcore about it. Look:


Yeah, in the top left of the photo there's a man riding a bicycle. Nothing says "good ramen" like bike riding. And it's vegan. And it has green beans in it. That's just weird.

I guess my issue with it is this: Ramen is junk food. Trying to make it healthful is like... like following the lab instructor's rules and wearing gloves while handling liquid nitrogen. It takes all of the fun out of it, at the expense of making it less harmful. (Bonus points if you know why this is a fundamentally flawed analogy.)

Here we go

Okay, standard procedure, really short noodles, vegetable things, flavor packet... wait. Really short noodles? That's not how this is supposed to go.

I had a hard time getting the contents of the flavor packet into the cup because the packet was wider than the opening of the cup. Helpful hint for next time: Just cut off a corner.

While cooking, it smelled strongly of turkey. I don't understand this, as turkey is clearly neither chicken, nor lysol-flavored.


Mmm green flakes. I have an ugly floor.

I couldn't pin down the flavor, other than "gross." It tasted a little burnt although I couldn't figure out why. It's actually probably exactly what you would get if you mixed burnt turkey with green beans and green flakes (spinach?) Bad vegan Thanksgiving with noodles? At any rate I have determined that it is NEITHER "chicken" nor "fresh."

I still can't get over the small noodles. I realize I break up the large bricks into smaller pieces but not this tiny. What are they going for with this? I'm still confused.

On the positive side: It wasn't neon colored, so it probably wouldn't stain anything. It's low fat. Honestly it could've been worse. And you get to pretend you're doing something good for yourself (like biking!) while being completely passive.

READER CHALLENGE: Find me a good, readily available, vegan ramen. Emphasis on the "good." Bonus points for that, too.

Final score: ehhhhhh