A Tale of MSG and "Chinese" Food

What do you think of when I say MSG? Chemicals? Chinese food? Health violation? Food additive? Madison Square Garden?

MSG or Monosodium Glutamate or Ajinomoto or whatever it is called in your neck of the woods has the same cultural connotation everywhere: it's bad for you. This ingredient has managed to garner enough bad reputation to get one of India's most popular food products, "Maggi" to be taken off the shelves due to its high presence in it. (these claims were proved false later)

Ajinomoto (Japanese MSG Brand)

Chemical composition of MSG

Why should we talk about this? Everywhere we see, it seems to be discouraged enough by healthcare professionals and organizations to be used in our daily food. So, it might be true. Maybe you are thinking, "It's mostly added in that Chinese food that people keep eating on the street". Well, that's just the tip of the iceberg. MSG has been misunderstood widely and I want to talk about the myths and misconceptions of consuming it.

MSG is a glutamic acid that is attached to a salt. It exists naturally and is also made in a laboratory. It is one of the most widely produced food additives in the world. According to ChemWatch and ScienceDirect, there exists no scientific proof that our body can tell the difference between MSG which occurs naturally, and one that is made in a laboratory. It is popularly assumed that MSG is widely used in Chinese restaurants but most of the MSG produced gets used by the food processing industry. People often say that they get headaches, dizziness, numbing feeling in their jaw, etc. due to consuming foods that are high in MSG. Some early studies conducted on this "disease", addressed it as "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome". It wasn't called "MSG Syndrome".

Why does MSG have such a bad reputation associated with Chinese food?

Image via Flickr by Chans_9665

Well, according to Healthline, Robert Ho Man Kwok, a Chinese American doctor in the 1960s, wrote a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine explaining that he got sick after consuming Chinese food. This led to a series of false informative studies and articles with insufficient scientific evidence, promoting the "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome". These studies spread and became even more popular due to biases towards Chinese and Chinese Americans. It's just racist assumptions held on a pretty large scale that made people believe them without questioning them. Although, if you don't like to use MSG that doesn't necessarily make you a racist, that just means you have been misinformed about its effects or you don't like to use it because you might actually feel the side-effects.

Listen.........I am gonna reference the Netflix food docu-series, "Ugly Delicious", one more time, and by this point, you should understand how much I am urging you to watch it. I cannot stress that enough. In the episode titled "Fried Rice", Chef David Chang along with a food historian, Ian Mosby, conduct a sort of survey and a discussion with a group of Non-Asians regarding MSG. They ask them about MSG and any effects that they experience after consuming it in food. They explain some bad experiences that they had in the past and almost all of them mention eating Chinese food or other Asian foods. Then they hand them out snacks such as chips and ask them to eat them and explain how they feel. The focus group starts to enjoy them, and later they reveal that almost all of the snacks contain MSG and ask them if they feel any side effects. They are surprised by it and then they continue to have a thought-provoking conversation about it.

Image via Flickr by No MSG Here

In the episode, during one of the conversations Chef Chang has with his friends about MSG, Serena Dai, who is a writer and current Digital Editor for Bon Appetit, says "People often think that Chinese or Asian foods make them more sick than European foods" to which Chang says, "No one ever says Doritos made them sick. Look on the package, there is MSG", which by the way, after some research, I found out these are some of the products which food processing industries sneak off as MSG in their products (legally, of course) without raising people's eyebrows: ahem......calcium glutamate, glutamic acid, autolyzed yeast, hydrolyzed corn, soy sauce, vegetable extract, natural flavors, yeast extract, textured protein, soy protein, etc. Look out for these the next time you buy a snack.

MSG itself is not as harmful as it is perceived to be, there are many scientific studies that support or reject the use of MSG. (you can do your own research to decide whether to use it or not) I think people in general think that MSG is a food additive that is made synthetically and are not aware that it occurs naturally in most of our foods. This causes them to place it on the same level as a harmful food additive. Although it isn't necessarily healthy, it has the same level of health concerns associated with it as using too much salt, too much fat, too much.......well, anything. There is nothing wrong with using a little bit of MSG in food as a bit of personal preference and it definitely doesn't deserve the amount of hate it is getting today, and frankly, some of that hatred is directed towards Chinese people and Chinese food.

My question to you is Would you use it if you aren't already using it, knowing all this information? If not, Why? What could be your reasons? I would love to know your thoughts and you could comment them down below. That's it for this time.

See you next week!