What do you really know about MSG?
What is Umami and MSG?
We have five basic tastes: sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and umami (savory). Umami is the taste of amino acids (building blocks of proteins) like glutamates. The most known and studied glutamate is MonoSodium Glutamate (MSG).
The story of how we came to call our fifth taste “umami” is quite interesting. In 1908, Kikunae Ikeda, a Japanese chemist, realized that his wife’s dashi (kombu kelp broth) was incredibly delicious and decided to isolate the savory flavor component to create an affordable nutritious flavor-enhancing ingredient that could be available for everyone.
In about a year he had isolated, mass-produced,
and patented monosodium glutamate (MSG) from
wheat and defatted soybeans and started selling
it under the brand Ajinomoto, which means
“the essence of flavor”.
Ikeda named the flavor that MSG elicits “umami” by combining two Japanese words “umai” meaning delicious and “mi” meaning taste.
Ajinomoto researched MSG and our umami taste to determine if there was scientific backing to their products’ tastiness. Almost a century after their MSG discovery, the our taste receptors for amino acids was confirmed through biochemical studies published in 2000 and 2002 and our fifth basic taste was officially named umami.
From the mid-1930s to 1941, the United States consumed more MSG than any other country besides Japan and Taiwan. Americans consumed added MSG especially through Campbell’s soups and Ac'cent® flavor enhancer seasoning (since 1947). MSG was as a globally popular ingredient until the 1960s when anti-MSG campaigns began.
MSG Hate Stems from Racist Hysteria
If you have ever heard anything negative about MSG it likely stemmed from the racist phrase “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome”. In 1968, the New England Journal of Medicine published a letter called “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome” written by Dr. Howard Steel posing as a Chinese-American doctor named Robert Ho Man Kwok (https://news.colgate.edu/magazine/2a019/02/06/the-strange-case-of-dr-ho-man-kwok). In this letter, Dr. Steel (as Dr. Kwok) speculates on his own personal physical reaction to American Chinese food and describes some ingredients that may have caused his palpitations, weakness and body numbness. At the end of this letter, he insinuates that this reaction is possibly due to dehydration caused by a high sodium content in the food provided by salt, soy sauce, and MSG.
Although Dr. Steel wrote this bogus letter as an inside joke for a colleague, the American media picked up on this letter and spun it into a loud hateful dialogue against MSG and America Chinese cuisine. Racist taglines like “"Kwok's Queeze” and “Chinese Food Make You Crazy? MSG is Number One Suspect" spread across America like wildfire. The sensationalized negative messaging from the letter solely pointed a finger at MSG and said “you are poison”without backing. According to Dr. Steel the journal would not retract the letter and although Steel has been outwardly apologetic about the whole affair, racist reviews and articles about Chinese restaurants had been around from the beginning of Chinese immigration to America during the gold rush era. We can’t presume when the repercussions of that racist fear-mongering drivel will end especially with the anti-additive “clean-label” movement. Today you can see “No MSG” in glaring neon lights, printed on menus, and used as a marketing claim on packaged foods.
MSG hit America’s shelves in the 1930s and has been in foods like Campbell’s soup, Doritos, KFC, Pringles, and many other products that are still around today. The hysteria against Chinese food stemming from a Japanese ingredient highlights a xenophobic fear that was not present within our own MSG-containing products until the clean label movement. It is likely that the naming of the Chinese restaurant syndrome was due to the prevalence of American Chinese cuisine in America. If Japanese cuisine had been more popular at the time, perhaps the letter would have been called the Japanese restaurant syndrome, which emphasizes how blatantly unfounded this racist reaction was.
Is MSG safe?
As stated in “How to Science” page of Food Pulp, the naming of food ingredients follows the language of chemistry. Just because you do not understand what exactly monosodium glutamate or any other chemical name means, does not meant that this ingredient is unsafe or toxic.
Let’s break down the name monosodium glutamate. “Mono” means one and “sodium” (the chemical element “Na”) and is part of salt (sodium chloride). So “monosodium” only means there is one sodium ion (one element unit) in this molecule. “Glutamates” are amino acids, which are components of proteins. Amino acids are defined by having an amine (-NH2) and carboxyl (-COOH) group on the molecule. “Monosodium glutamate” is a molecule that looks granular just like sugar or salt. The actual chemical structure looks more like this:
Image taken from Yvette d'Entremont of scibabe.com and self.com
The Chinese restaurant syndrome (CRS) has been studied heavily since 1969 and has been generally debunked. I say generally as a minuet 1-2% of the population who are hypersensitive to MSG, often presenting allergic response symptoms. Hypersensitivity to MSG is called the “MSG symptom complex”, which thankfully does not have racist undertones. If you believe you have MSG symptom complex, go get yourself diagnosed by a doctor as self-identifying food sensitivities promotes misinformation and fear-mongering.
Both of the components of MSG, sodium and glutamic acid (an amino acid), are necessary for our body to function. Glutamic acid is actually a non-essential amino acid produced naturally by our bodies and has diverse functions in our body. I won’t go into depth on why those compounds are nutritionally important in this article, but feel free to read about it in the sources below,.
I believe that adding MSG to food should be as ubiquitous as adding salt; they both have nutritional importance and provide flavor enhancement. Of course, adding too much of any ingredient is not great and, if you add too much salt/MSG, you could become dehydrated from the sodium. Drinking more water is the easy solution for that though.
MSG, as glutamate, is a natural component of tomatoes, mushrooms, meats, breads, cheeses, some vegetables, and yeast extracts. Without a thought, you likely eat glutamate every single day.You might think that the processed added ingredient MSG is broken down in the body differently than MSG naturally present in foods, but research has shown that is not the case and that the body treats the sodium and glutamate the exact same way.
The scientific consensus on MSG is that it is a safe food ingredient. Regardless of any media hysteria, the FDA has unwaveringly considered MSG to be generally recognized as safe “GRAS” since 19586. In 1987, MSG was placed in the safest category of food ingredients by the Joint Expert Committee on Food Additives of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organization.
How is MSG made?
Originally MSG was isolated and prepared from kombu kelp. Globally MSG is produce through the bacterial fermentation of carbohydrates (sugar beets, corn starch, molasses, or cane sugar). “It is prepared by fermentation of carbohydrate sources, such as sugar beet molasses by acid hydrolysis, by the action of micrococcus glutamicus on a carbohydrate and subsequent partial neutralization, or by hydrolysis of vegetative proteins.
MSG is often sold in two forms: a white crystalline powder similar in appearance to salt or sugar or as an ingredient in a packaged food product. MSG can exist in various added ingredients (mushroom powder, yeast extracts) and is sprinkled into thousands of packaged food products such as salad dressings, chips, crackers, instant noodles, frozen foods. Hopefully that helps assuage any fears you might have.
How do you cook with MSG?
MSG is delicious ingredient and I have a jar of it at home next to my other spices. MSG is a flavor-enhancer like salt or sugar. If a savory food is bland, I will add a couple dashes while cooking from time to time. It is great in soups, vegetable dishes, curries, etc. To be clear, just like salt, you really do not need a lot of MSG, just a pinch or two should do it. I recommend getting some just to try it out and see if you can even notice a flavor difference or not. You may be surprised at how well it can amp up a vegetarian or vegan meal that you thought wouldn’t be quite savory enough. MSG is often found at asian grocery stores and online (stop supporting Amazon).
MSG is good
In summary, MSG:
is found naturally in a variety of foods
has been produced and consumed in a variety of foods since the early 1900s
is produced in a safe value-added way
is supported by the scientific, food safety, and human health communities
Is an ingredient that 1-2% of the population is sensitive to just like other food allergies, but there is still no scientific research that conclusively links MSG to migraines/headaches
MSG got a bad rap from a bad joke in the 1960s-1970s and its reputation has not quite recovered due to continuous misinformation. I hope you share this knowledge with others and now feel confident consuming MSG both naturally and as a flavorful additive just like salt.
This is a quick overview of MSG, but for a more complete cultural history I recommend a Harvard course paper called “FACT OR FICTION? The MSG Controversy” by Monica Singh; I think she did a great job revealing the rich history of MSG. I also recommend the article “A Short History of MSG: Good Science, Bad Science, and Taste Culture” by Jordan Sand. I will gladly email you a pdf of this article if you would like. It is important to note that Jordan glosses over the poor scientific practice of directly connecting the results of mice studies to human health, which is discussed in the How To Science section of Food Pulp.
Thanks for reading!