Vietnam consumes an average of 5.4 billion packs of instant noodles a year, standing only behind China, Indonesia, and India on the list of the world’s biggest instant noodle consuming countries, according to a Japanese industry group.

The country is the world’s fourth largest in terms of annual consumption of instant noodles, but the Southeast Asian nation ranks third when it comes to the consumption per capita, the Tokyo-based World Instant Noodles Association (WINA) said in its report released on Wednesday.

A Vietnamese person consumes 56.2 packets per year on average, following the Republic of Korea and Indonesia, according to the report.

An individual consumer in China, home to more than 1.3 billion people, eats only 36 packets of instant noodles per year, it said.

In the 2013 report, Vietnam also stood at the fourth position, while those in the top three were China, Indonesia, and Japan.

Every person on the planet currently eat more than one packet of instant noodles monthly, with global sales of the portable meal topping 100 billion units annually, according to a WINA report last year.

Vietnam’s instant noodle consumption has been growing steadily over the last six years. Consumption in 2013 jumped 32.68 percent from the 4.04 billion packets recorded in 2008.

The country’s instant noodle consumption growth rate in the five years from 2008 to 2012 was 24.32 percent, while the rate was 3 percent in China and Indonesia, and 5 percent in the Republic of Korea and Japan during the same period.

Vietnam is home to around 50 domestic and foreign-owned instant noodle producers and manufacturers, collectively producing 50 billion packets a year, according to 2012 statistics by the Vietnamese Ministry of Industry and Trade.

Instant noodles were invented in Japan by Momofuku Ando, founder of major noodle maker Nissin Foods, in 1958.

They are sold dried or pre-cooked in packets, and can be boiled quickly with accompanying flavoring powder and seasoning oil.