moldybluecheesecurds 2

Thursday, September 24, 2009

JFF uncovers soup scandal

This soup is about 40% of my diet right now, so I went out and bought what I thought were two varieties of noodle soup today. Think again.

Here's the front of the box. Notice that the one on the left has 40% more noodles!


Seems great, right? Let's look a little closer:



Hmm, that seems odd. Why would you get fewer servings from the "more noodle" variety?




AHA! You get 40% more noodles because you make the soup with 25% less water.

Okay, it's not just that. Package 1 (on the left) actually weighs 176g to the 141g of the original noodle soup (Package 2).

So, instead of a pure marketing scam, we also get a fun math question (in multiple parts, as are all good math questions). You may work with others, but please do your own work or you won't learn anything.

Souper Math Question #1
Part a) How much of the package weight is the noodles (for Package 1 and Package 2)?
Part b) If an individual noodle weighs 0.5g, how many noodles are there in each package? Per cup of soup if prepared according to the directions?
Part c) What is the actual % increase in noodle density from Package 2 to Package 1, if both packages were prepared with 4 cups of water?

2 comments:

Joe said...

Holy nerd-alert Batman. Hey, I have a food scale, we could weigh the contents of each one, then prepare according to package directions, and weigh again to see if there is any difference in how the noodles take up water. Perhaps this scam is deeper than you think!!!

Joe said...

Also, why don't we get together and make a bunch of chicken stock so that you don't have to eat plastic noodles with gobs of MSG and sodium for lunch everyday. Hypertension is the silent killer, you know...