MSG

I once had occasion to shadow several cooks of Nepali heritage who had been refugees from Bhutan. I observed them cooking a meal, writing down every ingredient as it was prepped and every step as the dishes were made. I then turned my notes into a standard recipe format that others could follow.

There was a very skillful interpreter on the scene, but, for the most part, a potato is a potato and an onion is an onion. However, there was one mystery ingredient that kept popping up that we had trouble identifying. The interpreter, who is a fantastic cook herself, knew what it was but could not come up with the English word for it. The first cook we observed had bought it in bulk and stored it in an old honey jar, so no help there.

It was a white, slender, crystallized flake with no hint of aroma. When I took a pinch of the flakes and popped them in my mouth my first thought was, “It tastes like vegetable soup.” I went home that night, fired up the Google machine, and went off on a search. Because of that hint about vegetable soup and because my partner and I like to peruse mom-and-pop ethnic grocery stores for fun, I was able to figure out – fairly quickly, really – that the mystery ingredient was none other than Monosodium Glutamate – the dreaded MSG.

I’ve never given MSG any real thought beyond doing the cultural shorthand that a lot of people do: MSG = Bad. It’s the Chinese Restaurant Syndrome thing, right? But what did I really know about it? Given it’s reputation, it would not have surprised me if it was made from the same stuff as lawn fertilizer.

I came across an article published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition called The History of Glutamate Production by Chiaki Sano. In 1907, a Japanese professor wondered what it was about the taste sensation he got from his wife’s soups that he just couldn’t put his finger on. It wasn’t exactly sweet or salty or sour or bitter which were the four accepted categories that taste buds were supposed to be able to taste.

What professor Kikunae Ikeda thought he was tasting did not match those categories, at least not exactly. With his wife’s help, he was able to determine that a type of seaweed called kombu, which was a traditional flavoring agent of soup stocks, was the source of the unique flavor.

He figured out that an amino acid called L-glutamate was responsible for a new taste he called “umami.” He was able to concentrate L-glutamate and crystalize it. MSG became one of the most widely used food additives across SE Asia because it adds great flavor to vegetarian dishes. There’s a parallel between MSG and Nutritional Yeast, which is also used to give umami flavor to vegetarian cooking, but which does not have the negative reputation that MSG does.

Both MSG and Nutritional Yeast are derived from fermentation. For MSG, the bacteria strains Corynebacterium glutamicum, Brevibacterium lactofermentum, and Brevibacterium flavum produce L-glutamate when they gobble up the sugars in molasses and beet sugar.

Nutritional yeast is made from the Saccharomyces cerevisiae bacterium and is also grown in beet sugar or molasses. It is then deactivated by heat and does not go through a crystallization process like MSG does. It’s vegan-friendly, tastes similar to Parmesan cheese, and has about as positive a reputation as it gets in the natural foods world.

For the sake of accuracy, I picked up a bag of MSG when I recreated the dishes made by the Nepali cooks. I’ve made the dishes with and without MSG and I do believe that adding MSG makes a noticeable difference. For those too freaked out by the thought of intentionally consuming Monosodium Glutamate, Nutritional Yeast can be substituted for MSG teaspoon for teaspoon.

As for me, I don’t think there is anything to get wigged out about and it sounds like chefs like David Chang aren’t either. There’s a reevaluation of MSG going on in the chef world. When cooking for myself, I’ve been adding it to soups and vegetarian dishes, though I don’t usually include it when cooking for others. It adds a different dimension of flavor and since it is a crystal it dissolves and blends cleanly.

It’s crazy how MSG and Nutritional Yeast can be so similar and have such wildly different reputations. I do think Jeffrey Steingarten’s comment about MSG probably says it all: if MSG is so bad, how come there aren’t a billion Chinese people walking around with headaches all the time?