This misunderstood flavor enhancer may not be the villain it’s been made out to be
My sous chef recently proclaimed that MSG is bad for you. I was shocked. I assumed that all chefs knew by now that MSG wasn’t the demonized substance it used to be. Surely everyone in the food industry had watched chef David Chang’s food and travel Netflix series Ugly Delicious or reposted funny clips from Uncle Roger? It appeared not.
It helped me realize that I am perhaps existing in a bubble with other MSG-accepting chefs, while the world at large still takes a negative view. Let’s break down the myths about this fantastic ingredient so you can use it with understanding. Plus, you’ll enjoy the perk of feeling superior in your knowledge; the next time you hear someone saying MSG is bad, you can educate them.
Let’s start with what MSG is in its most natural form. Monosodium glutamate is a sodium salt of glutamic acid. This particular acid is an amino acid that’s a building block of protein. It naturally occurs in food items like Parmesan cheese, seaweed, tomatoes, soy sauce and oysters. It’s commonly used in products such as gravy, condiments, soups and ramen. (Thanks to all the bad press, it gets listed under pseudonyms such as “flavor enhancer.”)
The idea that MSG is bad for you dates to the 1960s, when a letter in a medical journal theorized about what the writer called “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome.” After a night out at a Chinese restaurant, he got headaches, dry mouth and other unpleasant effects which he attributed to the MSG that is used. This then started snowballing — other doctors wrote in, The New York Times published an article about it and it became a real thing.
Keep in mind, this was all theorizing. At the time, no actual studies had been made, no double-blind tests had been done, nothing legitimate in the way of scientific research had happened. (Tests have been done in more recent years but frustratingly, they’ve tended to involve giving people much more MSG than they would ever encounter normally.) People got caught up in this MSG-phobia. It became culturally accepted that MSG was bad and that it was always in Asian food — Chinese restaurants started posting signs that read “We use NO MSG” — despite the fact that it was also widely used in Western food. For a time in the 20th century, the US was the largest importer of MSG.
So why the immediate tie to Asian cuisines? Modern MSG does have an Asian origin story — it was discovered by a Japanese chemist, Kikunae Ikeda, who in 1908 enjoyed his wife’s broth so much that he investigated what was giving it the taste he loved. He isolated the part of the edible kelp, or kombu, that created the flavor and combined it with salt to create “monosodium glutamate.” Within a year he had patented it and started production. Ajinomoto, the company he started in 1909, is still thriving.
So it is a manufactured product. Sure, you might say, MSG is naturally occurring in some foods but how can we trust this artificial modern stuff? Surely it’s all dangerous chemicals?
The US Food and Drug Administration website explains how MSG is made now: “Today, instead of extracting and crystallizing MSG from seaweed broth, MSG is produced by the fermentation of starch, sugar beets, sugar cane or molasses. This fermentation process is similar to that used to make yogurt, vinegar and wine.”
The magic of fermentation, just like kombucha. It’s almost healthy! Seriously though, is it bad for you? Folks, it’s like anything — eat a lot of salt and it’s bad for you; eat a lot of sugar and it’s bad for you. MSG is now generally accepted globally as safe to consume. Hey, it can also be used as a tool to reduce sodium intake without compromising flavor. Harvard University’s health website suggests that “If you replace half a teaspoon of table salt with the same amount of MSG, you’ll reduce the sodium content in your food by about 37 percent, without losing much flavor.”
Unfortunately, the whole narrative surrounding MSG has been shaped directly from that long-ago letter, bringing with it a stigma of mistrust. But the good news is, you can now consider yourself educated and armed with the right knowledge. Go buy yourself some MSG and start experimenting! A small sprinkle in a pumpkin soup, a dash in your Bolognese, a dusting in your dumpling mix, the possibilities are endless. It’s not “No MSG,” it’s “Know MSG.”