The recall of Maggi noodles has many Indians wistful and perplexed over the fall of an iconic brand

The India government's recall of Maggi instant noodles isn't just any food scare. It's a total heartbreaker.

Writer Sandip Roy of First Post says several generations of Indians (including him) hold the Maggi brand close to their hearts. " I don't think there is a child [in India] who has grown up in the '90s, especially among the middle class, who has not at some point, either taken a boxful of Maggi noodles for lunch or been served up a bowl of Maggi Noodles when he or she came home from school."

But it was more than that. Roy says when he was growing up in India, Maggi noodles represented a "kind of cosmopolitanism in a packet." Those were the days of a nonaligned, semi-Socialist India. The country had a friendship treaty with the Soviet Union and products like Coca-Cola were prohibited. Sandip Roy says that made the availability of the processed two-minute Maggi noodles, made by Nestle, something unusual: "It didn't have to be ground or grated to be cooked in the kitchen. It felt like a whiff of the West."

The Maggi instant noodle brand commands (or commanded) 70 percent of the instant noodle market in India. Sandip Roy says it was the ad campaigns that made Maggi so successful. Though the instant noodles are full of salt and fat (and tests now show MSG and lead), they were marketed as a healthy snack. "Maggi was basically sold in India as kind of a piping hot symbol of mother's love. Every ad for Maggi, and there's been enormously popular ads, have all featured smiling happy children all running home and then they say, 'Oh Mommy, I'm hungry!'.  And the mother says, 'Two minutes, darling.'  And then she whips up these noodles and throws in some vegetables.  If you don't look at that fine print you would think that you're actually sort of serving up something healthy for your children." Roy says the Maggi advertising campaign managed to marry the ideas of healthy, a mother's love, and fun. "The 2-minute noodle packets still carry the slogan: 'Mommy, I'm hungry'."

India is not new to food scares and others have been much more lethal. In 2013, at least 23 children died in Bihar after eating a school lunch that turned out to contaminated with pesticide. And just last month, a study found a lot of e coli bacteria in Delhi street food. But Sandip Roy says those incidents, while tragic and disturbing, are local. The Maggi brand is consumed in every corner of India. "When I was growing up, it was more of an urban middle class kind of snack but in the last few years the Nestle company has aggressively marketed Maggi to villages and small towns." Maggi reduced the packet size to make it cheaper and marketed it almost as a health food by adding micro-nutrients like Vitamin A and iron. "For rural people who might not have the wherewithal to read all the nutritional information, it sounds like ome healthy snack comprising of whole wheat noodles is available to them as well."  

Sandip Roy cautions that the Maggi lead scare may mask something more serious in India. "I would say that the scientific evidence points to the fact that the standards for food safety are actually really lax in India." This week The Indian Express newspaper reported on a kind of black list that the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India had distributed to state officials of some 500 products that had not been approved. The list includes products from companies like Starbucks and Kellogg's. 

For its part, Nestle, which owns Maggi, is digging in its heels. It's challenging India's ban on its instant noodles and has asked an Indian high court to review the federal order to pull Maggi from store shelves. Nestle says it will wait for a court decision before starting to sell the noodles again.

Even before the Maggi recall, India has been plagued with food health issues. The FDA has rejected more food exports from India than from any other nation, and in February said one product from Guyarat contained "part of a filthy, putrid, or decomposed substance or be otherwise unfit for food.”