The Plague of MSG

I don't have a new dish today. I've been busy with work and life and everything else so I haven't really been eating much in the way of dinner lately. Today though I wanted to talk a bit about one of the most unfortunate things about Chinese food. On the surface Chinese food is great, lots of vegetables, little bits of meat, great variety, but under the surface a nasty little devil lurks in the form of MSG.

MSG has been used naturally in Chinese food for hundreds or even thousands of years as a flavor enhancer. It wasn't until the 20th century that it was isolated and reproduced in a lab leading to its widespread proliferation in food.

The taste of MSG is called umami which is technically one of the five basic tastes (the other four being sweet, sour, salty and bitter). I personally think umami tastes very similar to salt and in a lot of ways I think MSG is used to replace salt in Chinese food.

There is a lot of controversy about the safety of MSG but after doing a bit of research on the net it appears as though most of that is just hype. There is an MSG effect for some people who are hypersensitive to it. I sometimes think I get headaches caused by MSG after eating particularly bad Chinese food. But in general the FDA and just about everybody else considers MSG totally safe, even for babies. There's a few indications that MSG may eat your brain, but nothing is proven yet so no harm done.

Frankly at this point MSG is in just about all our food. Basically every prepackaged snack food in the US is loaded with the stuff. So there ain't a whole lot you can do about MSG, though if you go to a restaurant in China you can ask them to skip the MSG and they are more than willing.