Lifestyle
Why Japan’s instant ramen titan is testing a new kind of noodle in L.A.
Nissin Foods, the Japanese giant that brought the world instant ramen, is testing a new kind of noodle in Los Angeles.
Its sprawling, old factory and corporate office in Gardena is now churning out protein-fortified pastas for Angelenos who want more bang for their bowls.
Nissin invented Cup Noodles, a go-to meal for people across the globe and a favorite among those on a budget. More than 100 billion portions of instant noodles from hundreds of companies are consumed every year.
In the U.S., much of Nissin’s expansion came from Gardena, where it started producing noodle packets in the 1970s. By 1973, the company launched Cup Noodles, an innovation aimed at Americans who liked to drink soup from cups.
The latest American preference Nissin has noticed is a surging demand for protein among mainstream consumers. It is popping up in snack foods, espresso drinks and breakfast cereals. Even Pop-Tarts and Doritos have released products with extra protein.
Nissin launched a new Los Angeles-based noodle company to capitalize on the trend this year. The company, Kanzen Meal, which now has around 10 employees, recently began serving up nutrient-dense meals from the frozen foods aisle. Its products are available in dozens of grocery stores across Southern California.
“There’s an interest in nutrient density and people want more bang for their buck out of the foods that they eat,” Kanzen Meal chief executive Bob Little said. “We think that there’s an opportunity to bring those consumers back to the frozen aisle.”
Kanzen Meal’s shrimp teriyaki, spaghetti Bolognese and other products have up to 24 grams of protein .
Convenience food companies around the world have been struggling with a slowdown in many markets as consumers increasingly avoid highly processed foods. Meanwhile, the spreading use of Ozempic is making it easier for millions of people to control their appetites and be choosier about what they consume.
Amiud this trend, Nissin shares have fallen around 30% over the last 12 months.
Workers pack noodles along the production line at Nissin’s manufacturing plant in Gardena, Calif. in 1972.
(Bruce H. Cox/Los Angeles Times)
Nissin, which opened its facility in Gardena in 1972, recently established a new regional headquarters in Torrance, where Kanzen Meal is based. Many of its attempts to remain relevant start in L.A.
This month Nissin announced its upcoming launch of a “hot water van” that will tour the U.S. and distribute samples of instant noodles. For the holiday season, it has unveiled both turkey and pumpkin pie-flavored Cup Noodles.
With the establishment of Kanzen Meals, Nissin is looking to Los Angeles as the prime testing grounds for its products.
“We’ve got deep ties to the Los Angeles area and we thought that this would be a great market for us to start in,” Little said in an interview. “We recognized early on that Los Angeles is the epicenter of well-being.”
Kanzen Meal products hit shelves in stores such as Gelson’s and Bristol Farms in June. Since then the company has been growing rapidly, Little said. The company announced this month it would expand its distribution to stores on the East Coast in states including New York, Connecticut and North Carolina. It plans to have products in 1,000 stores by the end of the year.
Little attributes the swift growth to a surge in consumer demand for simple access to nutrients, especially in Southern California.
“Kanzen Meal’s frozen noodles are available in dozens of stores in Southern California”
(KANZEN MEAL)
Kanzen will introduce two new frozen products this month, including spicy Dandan noodles and spaghetti carbonara. Each meal contains macronutrients, fats, carbs and fiber and retails for $6.99 to $7.99.
As added protein trends online and in stores, nutritionists are warning consumers to pay attention to all the components in a product. Some with a high dose of protein may also contain large amounts of sugar and sodium, experts said.
“The bigger picture here is that just because something has more protein does not mean it’s healthier for you,” said Yasi Ansari, a Los Angeles-based registered dietitian and nutritionist.
The protein boom actually could lead to American consumers overindulging, Ansari said. The average woman needs around 46 grams of protein to prevent a deficiency, and the average man needs 56 grams, she said.
Protein bars typically contain 20 to 30 grams of protein, and new products such as the Starbucks protein latte can have up to 36 grams.
“Protein is vital to the body’s cells, but we may be missing out on other nutrients that we could be getting from a whole food profile,” Ansari said.
Little said Kanzen Meal’s products offer a healthy balance of ingredients. “Kanzen” means complete in Japanese, he pointed out.
Retail analyst Dominick Miserandino said the demand for protein is creating opportunities for new products, including within the $91.3-billion U.S. frozen food market. But the proliferation of food items advertised as high-protein, ranging from toaster pastries to tortilla chips, could lead consumers astray, Miserandino said.
“It might give a false consumer impression that having these snacks is always a healthy choice,” he said. “Are you going to now have a generation of kids eating snack foods for their daily dose of protein?”
Ever wondered how long it would take to build an accessory dwelling unit, or ADU, in your backyard?
In the case of Alvaro “Al” and Nenette Alcazar, a retired couple, who downsized from a six-bedroom home in New Orleans to a one-bedroom ADU in Los Angeles, it took just 3½ months.
“We went on vacation to the Philippines in November, right as they were getting started on construction,” Al says of the ADU his son Jay Alcaraz and his partner Andy Campbell added behind their home in Harbor Gateway. “When we returned in March of this year, the house was ready for us.”
The Alcazars were surprised by the rapid completion of their new 570-square-foot modular home by Gardena-based Cover. By the time construction was finished, they hadn’t yet listed their New Orleans home, where they lived for 54 years while raising their two sons.
Andy Campbell, seated left, and his partner Jay Alcazar’s home is reflected in the windows of the ADU where Alcazar’s parents Al and Nenette Alcazar, standing, now reside.
Jay Alcazar and Andy Campbell’s backyard in Harbor Gateway before they added an ADU.
(Jay Alcazar)
Alexis Rivas, co-founder and CEO of Cover, was also surprised by how quickly the ADU was permitted, taking just 45 days. “The total time from permit submittal to certificate of occupancy was 104 days,” he says, crediting the city’s Standard Plan and the ADU’s integrated panelized system for making it the fastest Clover has ever permitted.
For Al, a longtime religious studies professor at Loyola University New Orleans and community organizer, the construction process was more than just demolition and site prep. Seeing the Cover workers collaborate on their home reminded him of “bayanihan,” a Filipino core value emphasizing community unity and collective action.
“Both of my parents were public school teachers,” says Al, who was exiled from the Philippines in 1972. “When they moved to a village where there were no schools, the parents were so happy their children wouldn’t have to walk to another village to go to school that they built them a home.”
“It’s only one bedroom but we love it,” says Nenette Alcazar. “It’s the right size for two people.”
Like his childhood home in the village of Cag-abaca, Al says his and Nenette’s ADU “felt like a community built it somewhere and carried it into the garden for us to live in.” Only in this instance, the home was not a Nipa hut made of bamboo but a home made of steel panels manufactured in a factory in Gardena and installed on-site.
Jay Alcaraz, 40, and Campbell, 43, had been renting a house in Long Beach for three years when they started looking for a home to buy in 2022. Initially, they had hoped to stay in Long Beach, but when they realized they couldn’t afford it, they broadened their search to include Harbor Gateway. “It was equidistant to my job as a professor of critical studies at USC, and Jay’s job as a senior product manager at Stamps.com near LAX,” Campbell says.
When they eventually purchased a three-bedroom Midcentury home that needed some work, they were delighted to find themselves in a neighborhood filled with multigenerational households within walking distance of Asian supermarkets and restaurants.
The ADU does not overwhelm the backyard. “It looks like a house in a garden,” says Al Alcazar.
“We can walk to everything,” says Jay. “The post office. The deli. The grocery store. We love Asian food, and can eat at a different Asian restaurant every day.”
Adds Campbell: “We got the same thing we had in Long Beach here, plus space for an ADU.”
At a time when multigenerational living is growing among older men and women in the United States, according to the Pew Research Center, it’s not surprising that the couple began considering an ADU for Jay’s parents soon after purchasing their home, knowing that Al and Nenette, who no longer drives, would feel comfortable in the neighborhood.
They started by reviewing ADUs that the city has pre-approved for construction as part of the ADU Standard Plan Program on the city’s Building and Safety Department website. The initiative, organized by former L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti’s office in collaboration with Building and Safety in 2021, was designed to simplify the lengthy permitting process and help create more housing.
The 570-square-foot house has a single bedroom and bathroom.
Jay and Al Alcazar have coffee in the kitchen of the ADU.
They reached out to several potential architects and secured a line of credit for $300,000. They decided to go with Cover after touring its facility and one of its completed ADUs. “We liked that they were local and their facility was five minutes away from us,” Campbell says.
The couple originally envisioned removing their backyard pergola and lawn and adding an L-shaped ADU. But after consulting with Rivas, they decided on a rectangular unit with large-format glass sliders and warm wood cladding to preserve the yard.
The configuration was the right choice, as the green space between the two homes, which includes a deck and drought-tolerant landscaping, serves as a social hub for both couples, who enjoy grilling, sharing meals at the outdoor dining table and gardening. Just a few weeks ago, the family celebrated Al’s 77th birthday in the garden along with their extended family.
Nenette, a self-described “green thumb,” is delighted by the California garden’s bounty, including oranges, lemons, guava trees and camellias. “I can see the palm trees moving back and forth and the hummingbirds in the morning,” she says.
“They’re a lot of fun,” Jay Alcazar says of his parents. “They are great dinner companions.”
Although some young couples might hesitate to live close to their parents and in-laws, Jay and Campbell see their ADU as a convenient way to stay close and support Jay’s parents as they age in place.
Besides, Jay says, they’re a lot of fun. “They are great dinner companions,” he says.
Campbell, who enjoys having coffee on the outdoor patio with Al, agrees. “When I met them for the first time 12 years ago, they had a group over for dinner and hosted a karaoke party until 3 a.m.,” he said. “I was like, ‘Is this a regular thing?’”
A teak bed from the Philippines and family mementos help to make the new ADU feel like home.
Unlike the Alcazars’ spacious 1966 home in New Orleans, their new ADU’s interiors are modern and simple, with white oak floors and cabinets and Bosch appliances, including a stackable washer and dryer. Despite downsizing a lifetime of belongings, Al and Nenette were able to keep a few things that help make the ADU feel like home. In the living room, mother of pearl lamps and wood-carved side tables serve as a reminder of their old house. In their bedroom, a hand-carved teak bed from the Philippines, still showing signs of water damage from Hurricane Katrina, was built by artisans in Nenette’s family.
“Madonna and Jack Nicholson both ordered this bed,” Nenette says proudly.
The couple chose a thermally processed wood cladding for its warmth. “It will develop a silver hue over time,” says Alexis Rivas of Cover. “It’s zero maintenance.”
But one thing didn’t work out in their move West. When they realized their sofa would take up too much room in the 8-foot portable storage pod they rented in New Orleans, they decided to purchase an IKEA sleeper sofa in L.A. It’s now in the mix along with their personal artifacts and family photos that further add memories to the interiors, including a reproduction of the Last Supper, a common tradition in many Filipino homes symbolizing the importance of coming together to share meals. With limited storage, the families share the two-car garage, where Al stores his tools.
“It’s only one bedroom, but we love it,” says Nenette, 79, of the ADU, which cost $380,000. “It’s just the right size for two people.”
The ADU feels private, both couples say, thanks to the 9-foot-long custom curtains they ordered online from Two Pages Curtains. “When the curtains are open, we know they are awake, and when their curtains are down, we know to leave them alone,” Jay says, laughing at their ritual.
In terms of aging in place, the ADU can accommodate a wheelchair or walker if necessary, and Rivas says a custom wheelchair ramp can be added later if necessary.
Now, if only Jay could mount the flat-screen television on the wall, Al says, teasing his son. It’s hard to escape dad jokes when he’s living in your backyard — and that’s the point.
“It’s really nice having them here,” Andy says.
Jay Alcazar and Andy Campbell enjoy having Al and Nenette Alcazar close. “They feel like neighbors,” Jay says.
After losing his family and home in the Philippines when Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law in the country, Al, who once studied to be a priest, says he’s deeply moved to be the recipient of the bayanihan spirit once again.
“I was tortured in the Philippines, and it didn’t break me,” he says. “So having a home built by a friendly community really points to a shorter but more spiritual meaning of bayanihan, which is, ‘when a group of friends,’ as my grandma Marta used to say, ‘turns your station of the cross into a garden with a rose.’ Now, we have Eden here in my son’s backyard.”
A model of the statue of Barbara Rose Johns pictured in 2023, two years before the real thing was unveiled at the U.S. Capitol.
Amy Davis/The Baltimore Sun/ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters
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Amy Davis/The Baltimore Sun/ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters
In 1951, a Black teenager led a walkout of her segregated Virginia high school. On Tuesday, her statue replaced that of a Confederate general in the U.S. Capitol.
Barbara Rose Johns was 16 when she mobilized hundreds of students to walk out of Farmville’s Robert Russa Moton High School to protest its overcrowded conditions and inferior facilities compared to those of the town’s white high school.
That fight was taken up by the NAACP and eventually became one of the five cases that the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed in Brown v. Board of Education, whose landmark 1954 ruling declared school segregation unconstitutional.
“Before the sit-ins in Greensboro, before the Montgomery bus boycott, there was the student strike here in 1951, led by Barbara Johns,” Cameron Patterson told NPR in 2020, when he led the Robert Russa Moton Museum, located on the former school grounds.
Johns’ bronze statue is the latest addition to Emancipation Hall, a gathering place in the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center that houses many of the 100 statues representing each state.
Every state legislature gets to honor two notable individuals from its history with statues in the Capitol. For over a century, Virginia was represented by George Washington and, until a few years ago, Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.
Lee’s statue was hoisted out of the Capitol — at the request of then-Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat — in December 2020, the year that a nationwide racial reckoning spurred the removal of over 100 Confederate symbols across the U.S.
The same month, Virginia’s Commission on Historical Statues in the United States Capitol voted unanimously to select a statue of Johns to replace it. Johns, who died in 1991, was chosen from a list of 100 names and five finalists, including Pocahontas and Maggie Lena Walker, the first Black woman to serve as president of a U.S. bank.
Exactly five years and a multi-step approval process later, the 11-foot statue — created by Maryland artist Steven Weitzman — has finally moved in. It shows a teenage Johns standing at a podium, raising a book overhead mid-rallying cry.
Its pedestal is engraved with the words: “Are we going to just accept these conditions, or are we going to do something about it?”
Johns is credited with helping end school segregation
Johns was born in New York City in March 1935, and moved to Virginia’s Prince Edward County during World War II to live on her grandmother’s — and later, father’s — farm.
According to the Moton Museum, Johns — the niece of civil rights pioneer the Rev. Vernon Johns — grew increasingly frustrated by the lack of resources at her school. Classrooms were located in free-standing tar-paper shacks that lacked proper plumbing, with no science laboratories, cafeteria or gymnasium at all.
She later wrote in an unpublished memoir that when she finally took her concerns to a teacher, they responded, “Why don’t you do something about it?” She felt dismissed at first, but gave the idea more thought and decided to unite the student council members to coordinate a strike.
“We would make signs and I would give a speech stating our dissatisfaction and we would march out [of] the school and people would hear us and see us and understand our difficulty and would sympathize with our plight and would grant us our new school building and our teachers would be proud and the students would learn more and it would be grand,” Johns wrote, according to the museum.
On April 23, 1951, Johns gathered all 450 students in the auditorium and convinced them to walk out, to protest their school’s conditions and campaign for a new building. The strike lasted roughly two weeks and caught the attention of the NAACP.
NAACP lawyers Spottswood Robinson and Oliver Hill filed a lawsuit (Davis et al. v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, Virginia) in federal court, challenging the constitutionality of segregated education in the county’s schools.
The court ultimately sided with the county, but did order that its Black schools be made physically equal to white schools. A new Black Moton High School — known as “Moton 2” — was built in 1953 to avoid integration.
The following year, the Supreme Court declared school segregation unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Ed, based on the Farmville case and four others from across the country. But it took years for the ruling to actually be enforced throughout the U.S., especially in Virginia, which enacted a set of anti-integration laws that came to be known as “Massive Resistance.”
Prince Edward County schools were officially integrated in 1964, after being closed for five years in an attempt to avoid it. Moton 2 was reopened as the Prince Edward County High School and remained in use until 1993.
As for Johns, she was sent after the walkout to live with relatives and finish her schooling in Alabama due to safety concerns. She attended Spelman College and graduated from Drexel University before working as a librarian for Philadelphia Public Schools. She married the Rev. William Powell, with whom she raised five children before her death at age 56.
Johns has been recognized in Virginia over the years. Her story is now a required part of lessons in the public school curricula. In 2017, the Virginia Attorney General’s Offices were renamed in her honor. And the following year, the Virginia General Assembly designated April 23 — the anniversary of the walkout — as Barbara Johns Day statewide.
Johns’ sister, Joan Johns Cobbs, told member station VPM last year that their family is honored by this newest tribute in the nation’s capital.
“I think Virginia is trying to correct some of its inequities,” Johns Cobbs said. “I think the fact that they chose her was one way they are trying to rectify what happened in the past.”
Bucking a trend in 2025
Plans for Johns’ statue have been in motion since well before President Trump’s second term, which has been marked by a rollback in diversity initiatives and the reinstallment of Confederate monuments.
One of Trump’s executive orders along those lines, aimed at “restoring truth and sanity to American history,” calls on the secretary of the Interior to restore public monuments and markers on federal lands that have been changed or removed since 2020.
In October, a statue of Confederate Gen. Albert Pike was reinstalled in a D.C. park, five years after protesters tore it down and set it ablaze.
As is customary, state leaders and members of Congress will be in attendance at Tuesday’s statue unveiling. Among them will be House Speaker Mike Johnson as well as Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican who campaigned in part against critical race theory and has eliminated DEI initiatives in office.
Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., who also plans to attend the ceremony, issued a statement beforehand praising Johns’ “incredible bravery and leadership she displayed when she walked out of Moton High School.”
“I’m thrilled that millions of visitors to the U.S. Capitol, including many young people, will now walk by her statue and learn about her story,” he added. “May she continue to inspire generations to stand up for equality and justice.”
‘Stranger Things’ Noah Schnapp
Tears Flowed After Filming Wrapped …
Finale Is Super Sad!!!
Published
TMZ.com
Noah Schnapp says the “Stranger Things” cast and crew had tears in their eyes when they filmed the final episode of the hit Netflix series … and he’s expecting fans to get emotional when the finale drops.
We got Noah in New York City on Tuesday, and our photog asked him if the tears were flowing when the final ‘ST’ season was wrapping up.
Noah confirms our suspicions and says the upcoming finale is going to be super sad … and he’s even nervous for it.
The cast is gonna get together one last time to watch the finale, and Noah’s anticipating more tears there, too.
The “Stranger Things” finale is set to be released on Netflix — and in theaters — on Dec. 31 … so the end of an era is near.
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