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The story
Bean sprouts have long propped up household budgets and restaurants thanks to their rock-bottom price of 20-30 yen a bag, but a TV program reported that producers are shutting down or going bankrupt one after another as profitability collapses. The report noted that Jiro-style ramen shops, known for piling on mountains of vegetables, could end up struggling to secure enough bean sprouts. The news sparked a wave of reactions on 5ch, where voices saying “we should support producers even with a bit of a price hike” clashed with others saying “they’re perishable and have no nutrition anyway, so it’s no great loss” — alongside plenty of posts trading tips on storage and cooking.
Bean sprouts: cheap, packed with nutrients, and a friend to ordinary households. Right now, producers across the country are shutting down or going bankrupt one after another, raising concerns about the impact on restaurants and home dinner tables.
■ Vegetable-piled ramen in trouble
Customers slurping down “Jiro-style” ramen — a mountain of vegetables atop ultra-thick noodles — can’t help but smile.
Source: news.tv-asahi.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
They go bad too fast to keep stocked in a home fridge. Maybe if you've got a big family doing constant grocery runs you could use them up in time, though.
Must be rough on restaurants too if they let them go to waste — though since they're so cheap to begin with, the money lost probably isn't huge.
I always buy them at that price, so ¥30 feels insanely expensive to me.
Because they're an unsung hero that fools can't even see.
Just like you've managed to live your whole life without understanding even that much — the world has reasons and social structures that the people involved can't change even if they wanted to.
Because rival companies undercut them on price, and customers just switch over.
But then you're the complainer demanding extra cabbage instead?
No vegetables at all doesn't taste good either. And too much cabbage makes it too sweet — also bad.
My regular supermarket stocks both a ¥19 bag and a ¥32 bag of bean sprouts — I make a point of buying the ¥32 one.
That's just because your cooking technique is bad. Take fresh bean sprouts, stir-fry them quickly over high heat until the core just starts turning translucent, toss with seasoned salt and pepper and a bit of garlic — that alone turns it into a perfectly decent dish.
Bean sprouts do have nutrients.
Re: #33
Just quickly stir-fry them while they're fresh and season them, then once they've cooled store them in a Tupperware — that turns into an easy side dish that keeps about a week, right? Making them into a vinegared dish works too.
Kids in the Reiwa era won't get that reference.
Even if it gets pricier, we're talking a bag going from ¥30 to ¥35. Even at ¥50, the impact is maybe a few fewer customers a day, if that. Say a shop gets 200 customers a day — if the cost per bag goes up ¥20, that's a ¥4,000 total cost increase. That's about the same hit as failing to sell four bowls of ¥1,000 ramen. And a shop pulling in ¥200,000 a day is already a thriving business. Skipping the fine print here, just keeping the numbers simple to make the point.
Seriously, who's out there raging because ¥29 became ¥80?
I'd honestly be happier if they turned a profit and gave us a wider variety of bean sprouts.
Same with tofu — the stuff from small specialty shops really is tastier, even if pricier. A dedicated bean sprout specialty shop probably isn't realistic, so I'm hoping supermarkets can sort something out.
Nobody, that's who. It's a vegetable that's done us a huge service at Jiro — no harm done even if it hits ¥100.
So true. I wish they'd sell them in half-size bags.
Can't you just freeze them?
There's no other crop you can harvest just a week after sowing. Because you can harvest it over and over in such a short span, the price ends up basically given away.
Actually, that might be a good thing. Green mung bean sprouts reportedly help block sugar absorption, so it's not quite fair to say they have zero nutritional value.
What happens to your blood sugar when you eat green mung bean sprouts with rice?
https://localab.net/sprouts-and-rice/
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
Bean sprouts have a short production cycle — about a week from sowing to harvest — and most of the raw mung beans used are imported. It’s an intensely price-competitive, low-margin business, so rising raw material and fuel costs hit producers especially hard. The thread split over whether a modest price increase should be accepted: many commenters said they wouldn’t mind even if a ¥29 bag became ¥80, while others pointed out that bean sprouts spoil quickly and households often can’t use up a whole bag before they go bad. There was also pushback against the claim that bean sprouts have “no nutritional value,” with some noting that green mung bean sprouts may help suppress sugar absorption — suggesting a gap between the common perception and their actual nutritional profile. Note that the premise of producers “shutting down one after another” comes from the original TV report, and the specific number of closures or which regions are affected could not be independently confirmed within the scope of this article.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Speed+) thread “Low Margins, High Volume! Bean Sprout Producers Keep Shutting Down — the ‘Bean Sprout Scramble’ Threatens Jiro-Style Vegetable-Piled Ramen.”
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