Why I Drink Worcestershire sauce

Hey all, Tim here.

Every day, I drink at least one shot of Worcestershire sauce.

Yeah, the brown stuff in a glass bottle that no one can pronounce that comes in a paper bag.

And it’s because... Wait, hold on, let me take a step back here. This relates to Pro+, our new 42g, 460 calorie ramen, I promise.

First, imagine the food that you hate the most. Think about its flavor, the texture, and how much you don’t like to eat it. Got that in your head?

Good. Now imagine you need to eat it at least once a day, if not two. And a bunch of it, too.

That’s me and protein shakes. I absolutely HATE the taste of protein powder. I can taste it through basically any flavoring, and the texture of the resulting liquid, whether it’s foamy or thickly settled, gives me chills just thinking about it.

But, I drink it every single day anyway. Why? For the simple reason that protein is incredibly important (https://viteramen.com/blogs/news/why-were-taking-protein-to-the-next-level) for a lot of different reasons, and often not even the obvious ones of getting stronger and getting more aesthetic.

I’m sure many of you have seen our infamous commercials, and a lot of people have the idea that because I look a certain way, because I started a healthy food company, I must have peak health.

In reality, I suffer from chronic back and neck pain. I have constant problems with my hands, have asthma, have some mild autoimmune issues sometimes, and a whole lot of other physical health problems. Over the years, I’ve learned how to deal with most of them pretty decently-- from self-massage to stretching to understanding when I need to take a break or an inhaler and so on and so forth.

But more than anything, I’ve understood how nutrition and the food I eat affects my pain. 

That’s where the Worcestershire sauce comes in. No, it’s not some secret nutritional powerhouse.

Rather, a high protein diet reduces my pain. A lot. At least some of this chronic pain happens because of existing scoliosis and a shoulder dislocation that happened when I hadn’t crossed a decade in age yet and was never inserted back properly, and so can’t be fixed by the usual advice of “get out of your chair every 30 minutes” and that sort of stuff.

It just hurts. All the time. No matter what. When I wasn’t taking care of my nutrition before, I would have days where I’d lay in bed, unable to do much of anything because I was stricken by pain. Just dealing with the sensation was exhausting, and my mind would be numb, foggy, rendering me unable to think. Protein, after all, is the building blocks of muscle and tendon. Without it, your body can’t heal well-- it’s like trying to build a brick wall, but you don’t have bricks to build with. The more material you can give your body, the more you can maximize your healing process, or at least not get bottlenecked for lack of materials.

My body is in the process of constantly breaking down, and healing, and breaking down, and healing because some of my genetics happened to be unlucky. And so when I wasn’t getting enough protein, I wasn’t healing, and so it hurt.

I also happen to have ADHD, and am on the spectrum for autism, even though it might not seem like it sometimes. This also meant that I have a textural and sensory aversion to some foods. Proteins I generally liked eating, but trying to get all my protein through whole foods was a struggle, trying to chew again, and again, and again, and my jaw would hurt and eating, that thing that I love so much, had begun to be a chore that I dreaded.

And so I turned to protein shakes. I’m a firm believer in the concept of “Eat What You Want, Add What You Need,” which, if you think about it, does form the basis of Vite Ramen and Nanoboost.

Surely, I thought, it’d be easier to just drink all the protein, right? No chewing required, you can just chug, and get it over with in a short amount of time. True... to some extent... except that, turns out, I hated this taste and texture. And being as thick as the liquid was, it’d linger in my mouth, and I’d be burping up the disgusting aftertastes for hours, each time sending me into a coughing, grimacing mess as I experienced that flavor all over again.

That’s where Worcestershire sauce comes in. I’m still not sure exactly where I got the idea, but at some point, I noticed that just a few drops of Worcestershire sauce would completely remove the whey protein taste from my mouth, and prevent the aftertaste from coming up as well. Who knows how that works, or why, but it did, and it solved, at least, part of why I hated it. At least I wouldn’t have to taste the flavor as much.

But it didn’t do anything about the texture, and the fact that I still had to endure chugging it all the time. See, as high protein as Vite Ramen is, at the end of the day I’m still aiming for roughly 125g - 150g protein. With an average of 28g protein across our flavors, it helps get me closer than if I’m eating regular noodles, but I’m still having to add more protein shakes than I’d like in a day. If I were to eat just Vite Ramen, I’d need close to 5 meals to reach my protein goal, and thus, exist with less pain.

Vite Ramen, after all, was developed to be a more generalist type of meal, allowing for a strong base of nutrition rather than specializing in any one area.

Vite Ramen Pro+, on the other hand, is designed specifically to help cram more protein in to recover better, and hopefully reduce the amount of protein shakes I need in a day. And in this aspect, Vite Ramen Pro+ is also designed to be something I wanted to eat instead of dreaded, so that taking care of my health no longer had to be as much of a chore.

This gives me much greater freedom to enjoy life, and enjoy eating a wider variety of foods as well. In theory, if I wanted to, I could eat 3 meals a day of Vite Ramen Pro+ to get 126g protein... and then fill the rest of my day with other foods that I like eating, like cookies or chips or other foods that just taste real good but might not have a whole lot of nutrition in it.

I mean, not that I’d recommend that being the case, as I still think whole foods, freshly prepared foods should be what you eat regularly, but like... hey, gotta indulge your inner kid sometimes right?

That’s why Vite Ramen Pro+ exists. It’s a more specialized version, designed specifically to help those of us who want high protein diets but to still eat ramen and eat the things you like, and have some more flexibility in what you enjoy while still taking care of yourself.

It is, also, a culmination of everything we’ve learned over the years, and a testament to the kind of passion, tenacity, and skill we strive for each and every day-- because right now, Vite Ramen Pro+ cannot be made by anyone else in the world except by us, no matter how much money they have.

And I’m really, really proud of that. But as to why and how? Well, I’ve talked long enough for this time. You’ll have to wait until next time to find out :^)

Vite Ramen Pro+ release March 4th!

Remember to be kind, and savor life’s little victories.

-Tim, CEO/Founder Vite Kitchens