Hands up: instant noodles are my guilty pleasure.

The leading source of sustenance among college students, there’s just something so retro and comforting about a heaping serving of hot soupy dough strings, especially in winter.

What eventually put me off however is the fact that many of the more popular noodle pot brands were hiding a ton of calories, fat, flavour enhancers and other nasties underneath that tinfoil lid.

This week, I discovered the best news ever in my local SuperValu: instant noodles are back… and they’ve had a very impressive makeover.

Half the calories

Mr Lee’s Pure Foods just launched three of their six Asian inspired instant noodles into selected SuperValu stores across Ireland, offering a convenient lunch to go that comes in at a reasonable 200-ish calories.

To compare, Pot Noodle Beef & Tomato flavour contains 436 calories per pot, as well as 8.5g of fat.

Mr Lee’s Hong Kong Street Beef flavour contains 218 calories per pot and 1.5g of fat. It’s practically a health food.

The award-winning pots are loaded with the finest freeze-dried veggies, air-dried Vietnamese rice noodles, herbs, spices and traditional chef-crafted broths to create a real food experience.

They are also low in saturated fats, calories, Sugarwise certified low in sugar and both gluten-free and palm oil free. The vegan friendly Zen Garden Vegetables flavour is registered by the Vegan Society too, but the most important thing is they taste incredible.

At €2.95 per pot (SuperValu stocks Zen Garden Vegetables, Coconut Chicken Laksa and Hong Kong Street Beef) they last forever in your desk for about the same price as a sandwich.

Put the kettle on and relive your college days, without the weight gain.