MSG: A must-have pantry staple seasoning. Add some umami to your dishes while also confronting your own xenophobia.
Let’s break this down into three points: what is MSG, what is umami, and why is there a racial component to this discussion?
What Is MSG (monosodium glutamate)?
Monosodium glutamate is a seasoning composed of sodium, water, and the amino acid glutamic acid. It was first discovered by a Japanese chemist named Kikunae Ikeda, who derived it from seaweed.
Today, MSG is made from fermenting starches and sugars in a similar process to beer and wine making.
It occurs naturally in foods such as tomatoes, seaweed, and cheese, and is also in ingredients such as hydrolyzed vegetable protein, yeast extract, soy extracts, and protein isolate. MSG seasons canned soups, chips, and fast food, as well as many condiments and sauces.
You’ve likely been eating it without knowing. While MSG has to be labeled on package ingredient lists if it is an added seasoning, naturally occurring MSG does not have to be listed.
MSG has been a controversial seasoning since 1968, when a letter was published in the New England Journal of Medicine inventing a syndrome called “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome”. This letter blamed the ingestion of MSG on a variety of symptoms such as palpitations, skin flushing, numbness and headaches. However, studies since attempting to prove that MSG is the cause of these symptoms are inconclusive at best.
The FDA considers MSG as “generally recognized as safe”, noting that in high quantities it may be dangerous or have negative side effects. I would argue that is true with many things.
Two important takeaways:
- If you eat food that gives you a headache, palpitations, numbness, etc., don’t eat that food. Your symptoms might be caused by the MSG, a glutamate sensitivity, or a food intolerance. I would never recommend eating foods that make you feel ill. Listen to your body, and check in with a health professional.
- The science says it’s not likely the MSG causing your symptoms, unless you are consuming it in very large quantities.
What is umami?
Umami is best described as “savory”. It is one of the five basic tastes, with salt, sweet, sour and bitter being the others. The concept of only five basic tastes is another controversial opinion to be saved for another post. Today, let us say there are only five.
Umami flavors are found in foods such as broths, meats, cheeses, mushrooms, tomatoes or seaweed, and in fish sauce and soy sauce. You sense umami through receptors that will respond to glutamates, hence why monosodium glutamate lights up those receptors.
Umami flavors add depth to your dishes and excite your palate. For myself, they add comfort to a dish. MSG is an easy way to accomplish this. It’s why a lot of my favorite foods have either naturally occurring or deliberately added MSG.
MSG and Xenophobia
The 1968 letter mentioned above coined the xenophobic term “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome”, which essentially blamed the writer’s vague symptoms on Chinese restaurants that used MSG. The concept, while not founded by actual research, spread like wildfire. It had long lasting effects on the entire Asian restaurant community in North America, not only Chinese restaurants. While Asian restaurants were not the only ones adding MSG to their food, American consumers blamed them as being the cause of a myriad of symptoms. Asian restaurants placed large signs in their restaurants and menus claiming “NO MSG”. American patrons would choose these restaurants as “healthier” alternatives of their MSG-using counterparts.
Even today, a quick google search of “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome” still sees the offensive term in common use to describe alleged MSG intolerances. Dictionaries still use this term to describe the symptoms a person may experience after consuming MSG.
It is important to note other beloved North American fast food restaurants, such as KFC and Chick-fil-a, did not suffer from the stigma of MSG usage. Neither did our favorite chip companies like Doritos and Pringles, or even condiments like some ketchups, salad dressings and mustards.
The letter, since proven to be unfounded in follow up double-blind studies, specifically stigmatized Asian restaurants for their MSG usage. American style restaurants and products, however, were largely unaffected, despite their use of MSG.
Why did we target a specific ethnic group’s usage of monosodium glutamate as the cause of these symptoms, while ignoring Western consumption of both naturally occurring and added MSG seasoning? To me, this is part of a larger conversation about how “healthy” or “safe” we view certain cuisines (and therefore groups of people), and how we view European cuisines vs. Asian cuisines. More simply, it was a xenophobic response based on fear and ignorance of Asian cuisine.
I see this play out daily in the North American culinary scene. We under-value restaurant meals that are not European, we fear ingredients that are foreign to us in taste or name, or we believe that somehow, French dishes laden with butter and cream and sugar are somehow just objectively healthier than meals from the global south for no other reason than they are familiar.
MSG: Your New Pantry Staple
So there you have it. That’s my hot take on MSG usage. My advice? Stock up your pantry with some Ajinomoto MSG seasoning today and live your beautiful, umami-filled life.
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