Inflammatory headlines and book titles followed: “Chinese food make you crazy? MSG is No. “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome” was born.Įarly on, researchers reported an association between consuming MSG and the symptoms cited in the New England Journal of Medicine. Reader responses poured in with similar complaints, and scientists jumped to research the phenomenon. He mused that cooking wine, MSG or excessive salt might be to blame. In 1968, the New England Journal of Medicine published a letter from a doctor complaining about radiating pain in his arms, weakness and heart palpitations after eating at Chinese restaurants. After the publication of Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” and federal bans on sweeteners that the Food and Drug Administration deemed carcinogenic, 3 consumers began to worry about chemical additives in their food. (Sand said in his 2005 paper that his 1953 edition of “The Joy of Cooking” referred to monosodium glutamate as “the mysterious ‘white powder’ of the Orient … ‘m.s.g.,’ as it is nicknamed by its devotees.”) Soon, though, MSG’s chemical nature would turn against it.
In China, it was touted to Buddhists, who periodically abstained from eating meat, as a vegetarian way to improve flavor.īy the 1950s, MSG was found in packaged food across the U.S., from snacks to baby food. The fine, white powder was first sold in slender bottles meant to attract bourgeois housewives who were embracing science in the kitchen because it suggested hygiene and modernity, according to research by Jordan Sand, a professor of Japanese history at Georgetown University. but is often called by the name Ikeda first gave it - “Aji no Moto,” or Essence of Taste - in other parts of the world. Today, the crystallized seasoning, frequently made from beets and corn, is known as MSG in the U.S. Ikeda patented the finished product, and it became one of Japanese food science’s greatest commercial successes.
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He then figured out how to synthesize the molecule by extracting glutamate from seaweed and mixing it with water and table salt to stabilize the compound. He determined that glutamate, the ionic form of glutamic acid, was responsible for umami. Kikunae Ikeda, a Japanese chemist, discovered the compound in 1907 while investigating a common quality he’d noticed in foods like asparagus, tomatoes and the soup broth his wife made with seaweed. When added to foods, it increases umami, which has been considered the fifth taste since the early 2000s (alongside sweet, sour, salty and bitter 1) and varyingly translates from Japanese as “tasty,” “scrumptiousness,” “deliciousness” or “savory.” Umami is the full-bodied, savory taste found in a wide variety of foods, such as parmesan and mushrooms, as well as in most meat. Since its discovery in the early 1900s, MSG has been synonymous with delicious. Or here, here, here, here and here.) Still, Yelp reviews of Chinese restaurants tell tales of racing hearts, sleepless nights and tingling limbs from dishes “ laden with MSG.” Even when the science is clear, it takes a lot to overwrite a stigma, especially when that stigma is about more than just food.
News stories are written regularly about the lack of evidence tying MSG to negative health effects. That MSG isn’t the poison we’ve made it out to be has been well-established.
But at the time, avoiding those three letters brought me comfort and let me think I’d be eating some sort of sacredly pure meal made with food, not chemicals. Now I know that the recurring headaches that plague me have little to do with what I eat. After all, I was sluggish and had headaches and achy limbs whenever I ate a big meal in Chinatown. Like many people, I thought MSG - monosodium glutamate, a chemical compound used to enhance the flavor of food - was bad for me, and I was sure I felt terrible every time I ate it. But if I was eating Chinese, I added one more: no MSG.
My requisites were pretty straightforward: delicious, cheap and served in bulk. As a college student in New York City, I marveled that the city let me eat poached eggs with halloumi cheese and Moroccan spiced pita for breakfast, a spicy-sweet minced meat salad from northern Thailand for lunch, and Singaporean nasi lemak for dinner.
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