Thursday, June 19, 2025

Yum: MSG (or let's hear it for seaweed)

MSG is a flavor enhancer: so where did it come from? Seaweed...

from Wikipedia:

MSG is found naturally in some foods including tomatoes and cheese in this glutamic acid form. MSG is used in cooking as a flavor enhancer with a savory taste that intensifies the umami flavor of food, as naturally occurring glutamate does in foods such as stews and meat soups.  MSG was first prepared in 1908 by Japanese biochemist Kikunae Ikeda, who tried to isolate and duplicate the savory taste of kombu, an edible seaweed used as a broth (dashi) for Japanese cuisine.
MSG balances, blends, and rounds the perception of other tastes.


awhile back, there was a bit of hysteria about "Chinese Restaurant syndrome", which is dizzyness and headache occurred after eating Chinese food that contains MSG as a flavor enhancer.

which is now seen as a racist term of course.

The etymology is traced to a 1968 letter that appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine claiming that Chinese food brought forth ailments. The letter was uncovered to be a hoax, but the myth remains. The US Food and Drug Administration has long approved MSG for consumption, and studies have failed to show that the chemical causes the alleged "syndrome".

the chemical is found in a lot of foods and the letter that started the hysteria was probably a hoax or joke.

but MSG as an additive is now commonly used in western foods too.

This fermented MSG is now used to flavor lots of different foods like stews or chicken stock. It’s so widely used because it taps into our fifth basic taste: umami (pronounced oo-maa-mee). Umami is less well known than the other tastes like saltiness or sweetness, but it’s everywhere – it’s the complex, savory taste you find in mushrooms or Parmesan cheese.

It makes food taste better, and is widely used all over Asia as Mikey Bustos notes:


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