MSG is America’s Most Misunderstood Seasoning

From its Japanese origins to the rise of “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome”, this is how MSG became a controversial seasoning across the United States. For decades, MSG has always had a controversial reputation in the United States. Diners have blamed it for everything related to feeling sick after eating Chinese food, eventually even leading to the term “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome”. Across the country, restaurants have signs advertising "No MSG”, but what exactly is it, why did it become so closely associated with Asian food, and is it actually bad for you? MSG stands for monosodium glutamate, which is made up of sodium, a salt component, and glutamate, an amino acid that is naturally found in tomatoes, meat, and cheese. MSG is an FDA safe food additive that brings a savory umami taste to a dish and its story begins in Japan. In 1908, Kikunae Ikeda, a Japanese chemist and a professor at Tokyo Imperial University, became fascinated by the savory flavor of kombu dashi, a traditional Japanese broth made from kelp. Ikeda isolated glutamic acid from kombu and determined that it was responsible for a taste that didn't fit into the established categories of sweet, sour, salty, or bitter. He named the taste umami, derived from the Japanese word umai, meaning delicious or savory. Ikeda came up with a method of combining glutamate with sodium to create a seasoning that could easily be added to food and that following year, businessman, Saburosuke Suzuki II, began commercially producing the seasoning, introducing MSG into Japanese kitchens. Today, MSG is produced through the fermentation of sugar cane, sugar beets, starch, or molasses. Despite its widespread use, MSG developed a very different reputation in the United States. The controversy can be traced to 1968, when a letter published in The New England Journal of Medicine described symptoms the writer said he experienced after eating at Chinese restaurants. The letter proposed several possible explanations, one of them being high MSG content in the food and from there the collection of supposed symptoms became widely known as "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome”. Scientific research, however, has struggled to prove the reputation MSG acquired to be true. Even though it is associated with Chinese cuisine, MSG is also found in many processed foods, restaurant dishes, and seasonings. Its negative reputation over the years was simply fueled by cultural stereotypes rather than scientific evidence, and when consumed in normal amounts, MSG is considered safe for most people.