THE ARTICLE
MSG is a stabilised version of glutamic acid, a chemical discovery of Kidunae Ikeda of Tokyo, Japan around the turn of the twentieth century. Glutamic acid is an amino acid produced by the human body and is present in many foods. When cooked or fermented, it breaks down and becomes glutamate. Glutamate was initially made naturally from boiling dried kombu seaweed. Glutamate can also come from dried shrimp or bonito flakes, or from fermented soy. The tinned version of glutamate is stabilised with salt, and is known as monosodium glutamate: MSG. MSG was sold as a condiment in Japan and was known for creating the taste sensation “umami” or “deliciousness.” Professor Ikeda is now known as one of Japan’s 10 greatest inventors ever, as his invention made him very wealthy indeed and became one of the best-selling products ever all over Asia.
Research has shown that glutamate is present in many foods including human milk, which may explain some of our great interest in it. Glutamate is considered one of two of nature’s taste enhancers for babies, the other being sugar (lactose) in maternal milk. And now we use it ourselves for the same purpose, both intentionally and unintentionally. Grated parmesan cheese, for example, adds “deliciousness” to spaghetti. After World War II, manufacturers began adding MSG to canned and frozen foods because it enhances their taste. MSG soon became present in a host of food products all over the globe. The people of the world now consume over 1.5 million tons of MSG, or monosodium glutamate, each year.
However, MSG began to get a bad reputation in April 1968, when the New England Journal of Medicine published an article about “strange symptoms” occurring when eating at Chinese restaurants. They named the problem “Chinese restaurant syndrome.” Although the article was not specifically about MSG, a sort of sub-culture of researchers dedicated themselves to uncovering the dangers of MSG, the foreign contaminant in American cooking. Some studies dosed rats with huge amounts of MSG and reported brain lesions, and implied the effect on humans of a single serving of Asian soup would be the same.
Further research has not confirmed that MSG is responsible for any specific illness related to “Chinese restaurant syndrome.” No official government or academic organisation has ever found the need to warn people against consuming MSG. But the idea persisted in people’s minds and became part of popular culture. By the 1980s, a third of all Americans believed it was harmful. MSG has been blamed for a host of illnesses and conditions including depression, Alzheimer’s, allergies, migraines, and heart disease. However, every public body that has ever researched these claims, including the European Union, the UN food agencies, the US FDA, and various world governments, have come up negative on proof of MSG’s culpability.
In recent years, manufacturers have hidden their use of MSG by giving it other names such as “natural flavourings”. They promote MSG as a chemical in the same way the water we drink and the air we breathe are chemicals. Even the anti-additive movement admits that ‘industrially produced” and “naturally occurring” glutamate are chemically identical and are used by the body in the same ways. Despite all of these messages, the public image of MSG has not improved much. Some nutritionists, psychiatrists and researchers remain convinced it is dangerous. Thirty-seven years after the discovery of “Chinese restaurant syndrome”, MSG remains in prison but not convicted of any crime. However, there might be one argument in favour of not keeping MSG powder in your kitchen: it occurs naturally in so many foods, and eating real, fresh foods is generally closer to nature and therefore better for you than using additives. You’ll get MSG naturally from the following foods:
- roquefort cheese
- parmesan cheese
- soy sauce
- walnuts
- fresh tomato juice
- grape juice
- peas
- mushrooms
- broccoli
- tomatoes
- mushrooms
- oysters
- corn
- potatoes
- chicken
- mackerel
- beef
- eggs
- human milk
Some of the names given to MSG added to products include:
- monopotassium glutamate
- glutavene
- glutacyl
- glutamic acid
- autolyzed yeast extract
- calcium caseinate
- sodium caseinate
- E621 (E620-625 are all glutamates)
- Ajinomoto, Ac'cent
- Gourmet Powder
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