MSG is…
MSG is a flavor enhancer, and that's about all I know about it.
My mom said it’s not healthy,
so we shouldn’t eat too much of it.
Isn’t MSG chicken essence?
It tastes kind of cheap and artificial.
MSG is a flavor enhancer
that no one can seem to decide if it’s bad for you or not.
where we uncover the stories
of the food we eat.
In this season, we’re going back to basics,
to the building blocks of Chinese flavor.
Let’s talk about MSG.
It looks like a white powder.
It was invented by Japanese scientist Kikunae Ikeda in 1908.
He was trying to recreate the taste of kelp broth.
He called that taste “umami.”
It means the “essence of deliciousness.”
This is Marshal Liu.
He studies chemical and biomolecular engineering.
Umami is one of the 5 basic tastes,
including bitter, sour, sweet, and salty.
It is a persistent and a lingering taste
which will give you a mouth-watering sensation.
Glutamic acid from kombu seaweed
is responsible for the umami taste.
Glutamic acid is an amino acid.
It exists in lots of food that contains protein,
like cheese and meat, and even mushrooms and tomatoes.
When we bite into the food,
this amino acid is released and dissolves
on the part of the tongue that picks up umami.
We sense the taste and it passes the signal to the brain.
It tells us this is something good because it means protein.
It is the basic and fundamental nutrients to our health.
Then our brain will tell, “Yeah, this is good. Keep eating them.”
So it's also called meatiness.
It’s the reason why mushrooms are also often used
to substitute meat in vegetarian dishes.
All people like umami.
If there is no umami, we won’t find our food tasty.
This is Qi Mingchun.
He makes food created by Pengzu,
one of China’s earliest famous chefs.
Pengzu’s cooking was all about umami
and creating nourishment.
One of his specialties was chicken soup.
The Chinese word for umami is xiān.
Its character is written as a combination of “fish” and “lamb.”
Steamed lamb with fish is a famous dish from Xuzhou.
It’s a typical Pengzu dish.
Lamb is steamed with an entire fish to amp up the umami.
Chef Qi also uses aromatics to enhance the dish’s flavor.
Garlic removes the unpleasant smells.
The gamey and fishy smell.
We also add ginger
and angelica dahurica, a Chinese herb.
We only add salt to this dish.
We have to measure the amount of seasoning we add carefully.
If we don't, the taste won’t be balanced.
Glutamic acid is released slowly as the food cooks.
We need to steam it for more than 20 minutes.
The best is if it’s over an hour.
That’s too long for most restaurants.
So many of them use a shortcut:
Adding a pinch of MSG.
MSG is a sodium salt of glutamic acid.
MSG itself has no strong flavor.
It enhances the flavor.
It creates a stronger umami taste.
Our body cannot tell the difference between
between the natural glutamic acid or the MSG.
Basically, they are the same thing.
So does MSG really make our food more delicious?
We did a taste test.
We prepared 2 types of scrambled eggs:
One with MSG, and one without.
Uh, you're too tall.
Down, down.
Okay.
So for me, the best one is this one.
It’s more flavorful, and it’s less eggy.
Yeah, it’s really more umami.
This machine used to make MSG is called a fermentor.
Here’s a mini version of the much bigger ones
they have in factories.
MSG is produced through the fermentation process,
so basically bacteria converts
starch or the sugar solution to the MSG.
In this fermentor, you see, this is a sugar solution,
and we put the bacteria in.
After the purification and crystallization, we get a solid MSG.
Loads of things we eat contain MSG:
Instant noodles, chips, and ketchup.
Some people said they are thirsty after eating food with MSG.
But the real reason may be attributed to high table salt inside.
Sodium ions are responsible for salty taste.
MSG contains around one-third of the sodium compared to salt.
Sometimes it’s labeled as E621 instead,
because people feel irked.
That’s because MSG’s bad rap started way back in the 1960s.
Asian chefs always get asked if their food has MSG,
even though another chef of a different culture like
a Western chef would never get asked that question.
Everytime you go to a Chinese restaurant,
you'll find a customer there saying
"No MSG."
This is Michelle Jaelin.
She’s a dietitian that debunks myths about MSG.
The FDA (United States Food and Drug Administration)
said MSG is safe.
This was back in 1958.
Remember Ikeda?
After his discovery, he co-founded a company called Ajinomoto.
It’s still one of the world’s top MSG producers.
In the 1930s,
they started selling MSG as a flavor enhancer
to food manufacturers in the US.
In North America, Campbell Soup Company, it's a canned soup,
started becoming a thing and they realized they can take MSG
and it can make canned soup taste a lot better.
It was used in canned soups.
Housewives at the time were all buying it,
using it in their cooking.
And then something begins to shift.
And there was that famous letter
that was written by Robert Ho Man Kwok
to the New England Journal of Medicine saying that
Chinese food causes all these problems.
Headaches, heart palpitations, migraines, nausea,
all these symptoms.
But it was all based on anecdotes.
It wasn't based on science and it got published as science.
The title of Dr. Ho’s letter was “Chinese restaurant syndrome.”
He suggested MSG in Chinese food
was one of the reasons he fell sick.
And he urged researchers to look into it.
The first few studies done on MSG were really poor studies.
What they did was they took MSG
and they would inject it into mice.
And so what happened was the mouse got sick, right?
But at the same time,
we don’t have the same DNA.
And a mouse is tiny.
And humans are not that tiny.
So, that's where they got the idea that
MSG was bad.
The American media picked up on the letter
and published stories demonizing MSG,
and Asian food.
The damage was done.
Even today, tons of people avoid MSG
because they think it’s bad for them.
It’s about time now we start debunking it
and people like myself who is a registered dietitian
to not be afraid to come forward and talk about it.
There's a lot of stigma against Asian food as not being healthy
or being bad for you.
And that's not a very culturally inclusive way of
talking about food,
saying that a whole culture of food is bad.
Myths are very hard to bust
and I do get people pushing back.
On a positive note is that
more people want to know, more people are curious,
more people want to talk about it.
And that to me
is the great benefit to,
to promoting it and to debunking the myths.
Up next,
We are going to show you the three infinity stones
you always find in a Chinese kitchen.
Stay tuned!