Do you like eating instant noodles (方便面)? The food is easy to make and cheap to buy. People have celebrated its 60th birthday this year. It was invented by a Japanese businessman Momofuku Ando in 1958.

China is the biggest market for instant noodles. It can be a snack for students, a meal on a train, or just a choice for hungry workers. More than 46.2 billion instant noodles packets were sold on the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong in 2013, a BBC article reported. But by 2016, those sales had dropped to 38.5 billion packets, according to the World Instant Noodles Association.

One of the reasons for the drop could be the rise of online food delivery services (外卖服务). They can bring you food wherever you are. They also offer more choices and tastier food. According to a 2016 survey by China Youth Daily, about 70 percent of young people order meals online once a week.

This shows that Chinese people now expect higher for the quality of their food, according to Shen Hongbing, a professor from Chongqing Technology and Business University.

Facing this challenge, instant food companies are trying to do something to increase sales. For example, Kangshifu, one of the largest instant noodle companies, puts more natural food and fewer man-made tastes into the noodles and it also tries to make its noodles non-fried (非油炸), which can cut the calories (卡路里) and bring less fat. Another big company, Tangdaren, take actions too. It changes the price from 9 yuan to 7 yuan for each bowl. There are many other instant food companies following them to improve their products to meet people’s needs.

Will instant noodles disappear one day? We don’t know. But they have surely left a mark on dining history.

Some students go to the Sunny Restaurant (阳光餐馆). What do they say about it? Let’s have a look.

Have you ever heard of over-processed foods? They are actually foods made in factories with long lists of additives (添加剂) and you can hardly recreate them in your own kitchen. Things that you like, including chips, cookies and ice-cream are typical examples of such foods.

According to a recent study in the British Medical Journal, over-processed foods are loved all over the world and many people are even addicted (成瘾的) to them. The study found that in some cases, if people stop eating over-processed food, they easily feel sad.

But how does that happen? Usually, natural foods are either high in carbohydrates or fat. Over-processed foods, however, are high in both. So, they have much more calories than natural foods. Also, our body breaks down natural foods slowly while over-processed foods work in the opposite way. Chemicals from over-processed foods break down as soon as they reach the stomach. Our brain catches such a message almost at the same time. As a result, we will feel happier and want to eat more.

Research has shown that about 14% of adults and 12% of children are addicted to over-processed foods. What’s worse, people who love eating over-processed foods easily become over-weight, have high blood pressure or develop heart illnesses.

Scientists call for more attention to over-processed foods. Governments worldwide are taking action. As many as 103 countries have already put taxes (税收) on some major kinds of over-processed foods, which means people need to pay more to buy them. There are also laws to order producers to add nutrition labels (营养标签) to these over-processed foods so that buyers can make wiser choices when deciding whether or not to buy them. In some developed countries, certain additives are not allowed to come into these over-processed foods any more.