Everyone hates sodium, but loves electrolytes. v3.2 Lineup Revealed!

Everyone hates sodium, but loves electrolytes. What if I told you they’re the same thing?

In fact, 67% of people want higher sodium in our ramen.

We’ll pause real quick for everyone to make the hand motions real quick--

Done? Got it out of your system?

Cool. Let’s get started then. The original 3 flavors of Vite Ramen were set at the Daily Value of 33%, or roughly 760mg of sodium, to try and balance the sodium content in the context of sodium as a nutrient.

Wait, some of you might say, sodium is a nutrient? Isn’t it a “bad thing” to be avoided?

Yeah, so... about that.

Sodium is actually one of the most important electrolytes in our body. It’s what lets our nerves fire and our muscles contract and move, and it’s actually what your brain uses to send signals. It also holds water in your bloodstream, and so despite what you might hear, if you don’t get ENOUGH sodium, your blood volume can drop, giving symptoms like:

- Feeling dizzy or lightheaded when standing up too quickly
- Brain fog and trouble concentrating
- Fatigue
- Headaches
- Muscle cramps

I’m not going to get too much into the science of that today, since I want to focus on what we’re doing with the sodium. The point here is just that it’s important to get the right amount of sodium, depending on your lifestyle and individual needs, and an “all or nothing” approach fails, well, basically everyone.

Health and nutritional needs for each individual person changes depending on each individual’s needs, it turns out. Shocking, I know.

So... what do we do when 67% want higher sodium, and 33% want even lower sodium?

First, let’s dig a little deeper on what each group of responders had to say. Keep in mind though, that this first set of answers I’m giving you are actually wrong in a sinisterly mundane way, and I’ll explain why later.

Across the board, out of 500+ respondents, both the “i want more flavor/higher sodium” and the “i want lower sodium” groups converged in caring about one thing above all:

Flavor.

After all, if it doesn’t taste good, people don’t want to eat it, even if it’s good for them.

Second in line was, predictably, protein, followed by “complete nutrition” and “vitamins”, and then the company’s values.

But I personally dislike overly averaged and overly aggregated surveys, because they actually come to the WRONG conclusions. Because when we look at this survey again, but actually split it between those who answered higher sodium versus those who answered lower sodium, we get a completely different picture.

See, the higher sodium group valued FLAVOR the most.

But the lower sodium group? They actually valued PROTEIN the most.

The higher sodium group valued PROTEIN second.

The lower sodium group valued Flavor second.

And then, importantly, in third place...

The higher sodium group valued complete nutrition/vitamins third.

And the lower sodium group, defined it as “healthier than normal ramen” as their third place.

This is extremely important. I discussed this in a previous piece about design(link here if you want to read it), but “healthy” means something different to everyone.

Our definition is on the amount of nutrients a food delivers, whether it’s macronutrients like protein, or the amount of vitamins and minerals, but it differs from person to person depending on what their goals and fears are.

For the lower sodium group, the primary definition of “healthy” has less to do with the nutrients, and places a much greater emphasis on lower sodium as the definition.

In fact, for the lower sodium group, the same complete nutrition/vitamins that was third for the higher sodium group came in at SIXTH most common response.

If we took the surveys completely as an average and aggregate, the larger majority of responses from the higher sodium group would’ve completely overridden the responses of the lower sodium group altogether.

And we’re not leaving the lower sodium group behind. We’re doing something for the lower sodium group that’s never been done before... even by us. More to come on that later.

There’s actually even another sub-group that we found, which all grouped into a specific category too. These were the ones who specifically mentioned neurodivergent traits that made it difficult for them, or for family members/kids to eat healthy. We just mentioned that healthy is different for everyone, and so, what do you think “healthy” meant for this group?

For this group by and large, it was simple:

I want myself, or my loved one, to get more nutrients.

Essentially, both autistic and ADHD people, or those with neurodivergent members in their family, faced a similar conundrum-- It wasn’t having too much of something that was the problem, and it wasn’t “I need to cut this out” that the health food industry usually promotes. It was, simply, that they needed to ADD nutrition into their meals.

Which, coincidentally, was kind of why we made Vite Ramen in the first place. I am, after all, both autistic and ADHD(two things that I think become pretty obvious the more stuff about Vite you see), and despite being not a generally picky eater, still have a lot of trouble getting all the nutrition I need in a day.

One of the biggest issues for this is sensory issues and flavor issues-- If I don’t like it, then I just... don’t really eat it, and this was something that we saw a lot of in the responses that came our way as well. Among the responses that talked about neurodivergency, autism, ADHD, ARFID and such...

100% of them answered higher sodium, more flavor.

Flavor is the major barrier for this group, and we do see population level studies showing that neurodivergent people tend to have significantly more trouble with nutrition than the average population.

Our philosophy from the very start was to try and satisfy both-- make a ramen that’s delicious, nutritious, and fast, and try to keep our sodium lower. Our v1.0 launched with 25% DV sodium, back when the FDA daily value was set at 2400mg.

The skill I’d gained in Michelin Star kitchens didn’t quite transfer over to food manufacturing, and so our v1.0 wasn’t just poorly received-- in fact, many people despised it. Myself included, actually. Read more about that here.

By v3.0, we’d raised our limit to 33%, and we’d started introducing “unlocked” flavors that weren’t locked on the 33% sodium anymore, and those flavors became increasingly popular. Introducing another Core vegan flavor to the lineup, woodland umami mushroom, which wasn’t at 33% also showed us something incredibly important. When we took a survey for that flavor, it absolutely rocked vegan white miso in popularity and ratings, because the sodium levels, and thus flavor, were higher.

(here, I’d like to drop another note that sodium is not just salt, and is present in a ton of different ingredients, from soy sauce to miso to even meat powders, so it’s never as simple as “just remove salt and people can add it,” it’s more like “remove and lower all the other ingredients”)

But, still, it was a compromise, and one that got a resounding ehhhhh from everyone. For those who wanted lower sodium, that 33% DV crossed many people’s sodium thresholds, and they no longer could purchase it. Sure, there were the 0% sodium Vite Naked Noods, but many people wanted the flavored full ramen packets.

Similarly, the increase in the sodium improved the flavor, but not nearly to the level that the partner flavors we had, which were “unlocked sodium/flavor” had, which always ranked higher than the original, 33% sodium versions.

Compromises are like the aggregated results. They kind of don’t please anyone, and can even make some people more upset.

So, for upcoming Vite Ramen v3.2... We’re doing something unprecedented.

For v3.2, we’re releasing the v3.2 Core line:

- Garlic Pork Tonkotsu
- Roasted Soy Sauce Chicken
- Vegan White Miso
- Woodland Umami Mushroom

At FULL flavor, full sodium strength, rebalanced and going all in on FLAVOR. In the upcoming patch notes, I’ll discuss exactly what we changed, and why, and how we also ditched having micro-precision on nutrients that no one cared about in order to punch flavor to its absolute maximum, through the roof...

Making the absolute tastiest, most ridiculously umami rich ramen ever.

Every packet contains MORE real  pork, MORE real chicken, MORE real miso, MORE real mushroom, MORE flavor and more deliciousness.

Like, it’s not an exaggeration to say it’s probably 50% better in flavor than even v3.1, and people already loved v3.1.

But hey, we’re not leaving the lower sodium people behind either, because for v3.2, we’re also releasing...

V3.2 Lower Sodium line:

- Garlic Pork Tonkotsu Lower Sodium
- Roasted Soy Sauce Chicken Lower Sodium
- Vegan White Miso Lower Sodium
- Woodland Umami Mushroom Lower Sodium

Remember the old v1.0 with lower sodium that no one really liked? This ain’t that. We slammed ALL our flavor knowledge and skill into this, rebalancing and tweaking it with the same flavor oomph that we did with the Core line.

And even better...

The old v1.0 was at 25% DV of 2400mg, meaning 600mg sodium per packet.

These new v3.2 Lower Sodium versions are balanced on the new FDA Daily Value of 2300mg.

And they’re only 20% DV, or only about 460mg of sodium per packet(give or take 10mg or so)

They’re AWESOME in flavor, easily surpassing the old v3.0 in taste, because we brought the same MORE deliciousness to these as well.

But even more than that... we’ve stolen the secret of flavor that the food industry has been keeping to themselves, the secret behind v3.2,  a powerhouse that has over 20x the amount of MSG...

And we’ll be bottling it for you to use on anything you want, too.

They’ll all be available in Batch 7, beginning on October 16th, for our 10th anniversary birthday!

But meanwhile, we’ll have some minor changes, dubbed v3.1.1, for both Batch 5 and Batch 6. I’ll drop these as a quick note here--

Basically, some of our suppliers have stopped producing some key ingredients that we use, and we’re substituting with other ingredients. This affects primarily the pork in Garlic Pork Tonkotsu, though the new dehydrated pork stock we’re getting is arguably better anyway, and will be what we’ll be using in v3.2 as well.

We also had a potassium salt that was bound to rice starch, that helped add the perception of salinity without additional sodium, and that’s also been discontinued. Batch 5 and Batch 6 will no longer carry this ingredient as well, and will receive slight tweaks in other ingredients to make up for it-- it’s largely unnoticeable, though, and both potassium and sodium levels will NOT be changed for v3.1.1.

But hey, if you wanted to get in on Batch 6, it’s still open! The estimated delivery date for Batch 6 is November through December, depending on when you get your order in, though we’ll keep you updated based on what’s happening.

So, if you want to keep your ramen supply ready and topped up, get in on Batch 6 before it’s over on October 15th!

And as always, remember to be kind, and savor life’s little victories.

Let us know what you think of the changes!

Both full Patch Notes and some new other things will be revealed later too... for instance, if MSG is so good... why hasn’t anyone made an MSG 2? :^)

-Tim, Founder Vite