What can we all learn from stories of men trying to find friends…and failing?

Men in real life – and in the movies – are trying to figure out how to be friends. There’s been a lot of talk alleging lonely men are the cause of cultural tensions, and Hollywood has caught on (despite a similar number of women saying they are lonely, too!). Several films this year depict how society leads men into fraught, messy friendships. So, what can we all learn from toxic (or good!) friendships between men?

Brittany is joined by NPR arts and culture reporter Neda Ulaby and IndieWire awards editor Marcus Jones to dig into it.

Follow Brittany Luse on Instagram: @bmluse

For handpicked podcast recommendations every week, subscribe to NPR’s Pod Club newsletter at npr.org/podclub. 

This episode was produced by Corey Antonio Rose. It was edited by Neena Pathak. Our Supervising Producer is Barton Girdwood. Our Executive Producer is Veralyn Williams. Our VP of Programming is Yolanda Sangweni.

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.

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)

Advertisement

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?”

It’s a fun fact that Zadie Smith and Susan Straight, two boldface names in literary fiction over the past quarter-century, both live in the neighborhoods where they were raised. Smith returned to northwest London after some sojourns abroad, while Straight has remained in Riverside, Calif.; both are now but a stone’s throw from the scenes of their childhood.

Both authors also have new books out this week. Smith’s essay collection and Straight’s novel lead a batch of publishing highlights that also includes a biography, a memoir, a western of sorts, and another return home in Catherine Newman’s sequel to Sandwich.

Thomas Wolfe, eat your heart out: Turns out you can go home again. Just as long as you’re willing to face what waits for you there.

Tom’s Crossing, by Mark Z. Danielewski

Typically known for his typographical gymnastics, Danielewski plays it comparatively straight with this tale of a horse theft gone wrong. But boy, this western-horror hybrid is still a lot. It feels apt to describe Tom’s Crossing, which is nearly as long as War and Peace, the way Henry James once described Tolstoy’s epic: It’s a “loose, baggy monster.” Or less delicately, it’s a fat bear in early autumn — you know, the one preparing for hibernation? Filled with detail and cowboy affect, a bit ungainly in unaccustomed girth, this book, like that bear, is still capable of unspeakable horrors. Underestimate its sanguinary streak at your own peril.

Wreck, by Catherine Newman

Newman’s third novel in as many years is her first to feature a returning cast: Rocky and her family, whom readers met last year in Sandwich. Maureen Corrigan of Fresh Air described that book, the story of a Cape Cod vacation gone tragicomically sideways, as “my idea of the perfect summer novel: shimmering and substantive.” Wreck finds that family two years after that trip, back at home and approaching something that resembles normality — but of course, don’t expect that kind of stability to last.

Sacrament, by Susan Straight

The bard of Riverside revisits some characters from her previous book, 2022’s Mecca. This time, the city just east of Los Angeles is in the throes of an early COVID-19 surge, and her focus is on a group of nurses who are treating its victims, living separate from their families out of fear of contagion. This isn’t just a COVID novel; it’s also a chance to observe the impact of this singular moment on a community that has become synonymous with Straight, who has described Riverside as “my destiny. It’s what I’m here to write about.”

Dead and Alive: Essays, by Zadie Smith

Smith’s last essay collection was her own COVID-19 book — reflections on the strange new world the pandemic had ushered in, written and published during lockdown in 2020. Since then, she has hardly been dormant. The past five years have seen the prolific Brit produce a novel, a stage adaptation of Chaucer, several children’s books and a review of the film Tar that earned her a Pulitzer Prize nod. That piece, “The Instrumentalist,” is included in her new collection, along with more than two dozen other works of nonfiction from the past decade.

Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster

The Uncool: A Memoir, by Cameron Crowe

“I do not feel cool,” Crowe told NPR in 2022. Perhaps that’s a surprising sentiment from a man who has led an objectively glamorous life — first as a teenage music journalist, then as the filmmaker behind a handful of Hollywood dreamboats, in movies such as Say Anything… and Jerry Maguire. But don’t call it false modesty; he’s convinced of that frank self-assessment enough to have adapted it for the title of his new memoir. The book promises to elaborate on the real events that inspired Almost Famous, his semiautobiographical cult classic and its recent Broadway adaptation.

A Dream Deferred, by Abby Philip

In a conversation with NPR’s Weekend Edition, the CNN anchor explained the reason for her new biography: “Because a lot of people think of Rev. Jackson today as a civil rights leader, as an activist, they kind of skip completely over this extraordinary chapter” — his career as a politician. The book takes a wide view, including a glimpse of his troubled family life as a child and reflections on his legacy, but it’s especially concerned with Jackson’s pair of presidential campaigns in the 1980s.