You’ve been here before.

Hours sitting in front of a glaring computer screen, subjecting yourself to the dim lighting of your bedroom—a slave to your perfectionism. Your crossed feet have been asleep for hours, contrary to your eyes which remain wide awake. Your spine threatens to snap; would it hurt you so much to stretch your back every once in a while?

Your stomach growls. Again. You decide to not ignore it this time.

You stand up and the room spins—you’re conscious enough to know why. You somehow make your way to the kitchen in the darkest corner of your apartment. You open the cupboards and you are greeted by your stash of instant noodles (you also notice that it’s depleting in number). You grab the spicy flavor because it keeps you full for a longer time compared to the regular one. You open the lid a bit. Reaching over for the thermos, you pour hot water in the cup.

You ignore the bolded warning on the packaging that reads “EAT IN MODERATION.” Three minutes pass by. Dinner is served.

How does that one taste compared to last night? And the night before that?

For the longest time, instant cup noodles have always been a staple dinner option for college students who have to work around a tight budget or schedule. Simply pouring hot water into a cup and waiting three measly minutes for food to finally satiate your stomach’s demands is significantly easier than having to cook a proper meal (and then having to wash dishes afterwards). But at what cost? 25 pesos for each cup as the main course and a side dish of a decline in your health, focus, and long term well-being—that is the price to be paid for overindulgence and overdependence on instant noodles.

Ajmera, MS, RD (2023) posits that frequent consumption of instant noodles has been linked to poor diet quality and an increased risk of metabolic syndrome—a condition that increases your risk of heart disease, diabetes and stroke. This is chiefly due to the fact that instant noodles are low in nutritional value, have copious amounts of sodium and lack essential nutrients such as fiber, protein, and healthy fats (Agarwal, 2023). While eating instant noodles from time to time might not be inherently harmful, it becomes a different story when it is used as a substitute for healthy meals.

Furthermore, overconsumption of instant noodles deteriorates not only on one’s physical health, but one’s mental health as well. In particular, consuming ultra-processed foods, instant noodles being one of these, has been associated with increased depressive symptoms and anxiety (Newman, 2024). Given that, overly relying on the convenience of instant noodles in order to alot more time to study or attend to assignments might be counterproductive since the noodles consumed may restrict focus and hinder one’s ability to efficiently produce good quality academic outputs.

Ironically enough, eating noodles (especially during your birthday) is often associated with longevity; granted, it’s not exactly cup noodles that have this association, but rather a more well-balanced, nutritional pancit bihon.

But you are a college student: you are in higher education, you have a degree you hope to complete, and the burden of the school system is weighing you down. You have a job just to keep up with your expenses and necessities, on top of the school work you have to accomplish in a week. Even the mere act of eating becomes a privilege, much less eating healthy. What’s there, on hand, are those cup noodles; what keeps you forging on and alive, never mind health, are those cup noodles.

People often think of college as their lowest low. The moment when they’ve hit rock bottom. The time when there was nothing but needless indulgences as their solace.

The thing is, though, the body needs energy as a car needs fuel to run. Make no mistake: this is not to enable eating junk food, but if that is all that you can manage to whip up, then what reason is there to dissuade you from eating? Your entire life, you’ve been kept alive by all that you took—from the nutrients your mother supplied while you were unborn and an infant, to the baby formula when you were a little older; from the bits of vegetables your parents tried to hide to get you to eat something healthy, to the bread and cheese you ate as your afternoon snack while your friends were out waiting for you.

And right here, right now, you take another bite of that familiar texture on your tongue—that very same strand coated with MSG, a burst of that familiar spice that numbs your tongue with every slurp. Numb, like how you’ve grown towards the routine that you’ve built without your awareness, and only then do you take notice when you’ve seen the pile of empty cups and wrappers in your trash bag.

You’ll eventually come to a realization. Something so far out of your control, something you wish you could implement. You want to stop. You want to eat healthy, you want to eat something filling, and you want to part with instant noodles, but you know you can’t. Do you stop eating altogether? No, you don’t. You start eating more.

There is this idea that if you’ve been eating fast food, the most ideal way of “fighting against” the unhealthiness of thus is to limit what you eat. Reduce the meal, turn to doing something healthy like exercise to lose what you’ve gained. Take back what you discarded. Here’s the thing, though: that doesn’t help you by a mile. What you can do that helps, however, is to start adding nutrients to your food. You can start with a handful of frozen vegetables, or maybe an additional protein source with a boiled egg. Whatever nutritious food it is that you can add, that’s what you add—but you never, ever not eat.

You’ve been here before.

Food is a creation of man. Instinctually, we knew we had to survive, and that’s how years and years of development led us up to this point.

In front of you is your pack of instant noodles for the night. The wrapper crinkles under your touch, the uncooked noodle breaking from the inside with how tight you hold it in your palms tonight.

Maybe I’ll get kimchi and fried egg with this one tonight, you think.

Sometimes, all we have is fast food and a wish for a better life. And so be it; let your survival come in the form of that. Instinctually, we know we have to survive. Realistically, we know it’s hard to survive. And so all we have right now is this. All we’ll eat for now is this.  

As Ryoko Kui wrote in Delicious in Dungeon: “Eating is the exclusive privilege of the living. In order to live, we have to keep eating.”

You take a slurp of your noodles. You bite into the firm strand, and you feel the crunch of the kimchi as its fermented flavor bursts in your mouth. It runs through your nerves, and the sourness takes you aback for quite a while. When the spice aftertaste kicks in, you cut the sunny side up in half and watch as the yolk runs on your plate. You take a look at your spread.

The feeling of tiredness casts over you, but the heavy feeling is no longer there. Your eyelids refuse to stay open, but your body is lighter than it feels. You think it’s ridiculous—maybe even the placebo effect—but you can’t help but be convinced that it’s because you’ve added more to the table.

You think that maybe, just maybe, tomorrow night should also be like this. You hope that tonight is just the first of many.

You think that maybe, you’ll start to live while trying to survive.