The paper describes the social history of noodle consumption in the Philippines. The theoretical framework used for the description is Max Weber’s rationalization theory and the method used is the qualitative historical method. The data consisted of purposefully selected documents from libraries, news accounts, internet articles with regard to noodle consumption; interviews of experts in history and in food technology; and interviews of “Japayukis” and their households from Sampaloc, Manila. The findings showed that the historical change in the Philippine noodle consumption is a process of rationalization that involves the greater use of instrumental rationality, but, at the same time, leads to the lesser use of substantive rationality as the independence of the Philippines as a nation-state and the interpersonal relations among Filipinos as encaged by instrumental rationality.
