MSG: It’s been hiding in our food for over 100 years!

MSG might have gotten a bad wrap from the “clean” food movement ^[1]. We’ve been getting a lot of news thrown in our faces recently about how industries are trying to kill us by engineering chemicals that will make short work of us and our families ^[2]. However, like most savvy business people know, you don’t make money when you kill your costumers…

10KGMSG. Dominik Schwind. License: CC BY 2.0. No changes made.

In the case of MSG (otherwise known as Monosodium Glutamate) there is the idea that the food seasoning is somehow an unnatural chemical cocktail ^[3] that only recently come into existence. 

Fortunately, MSG has been around with us for quite sometime. MSG was first discovered by Kikunae Ikeda in 1908 ^[4]. Kikunae found that dishes with a seaweed called Konbu added to them tasted better, and later pinpointed MSG for the distinct savory flavor people were experiencing. Kikunae then went on to find a way to make MSG so it could be used elsewhere in foods. 

Originally (1909) MSG was made using wheat gluten from flour and acids ^[5] which may have lead to its reputation as a scary industrial chemical. However, today MSG is made the same way yogurt and cheese is ^[6], through a process known as fermentation.

Oenococcus oeni. Wikipedia. License:Public Domain.

Fermentation works be having tiny little critters called microbes eat away at sugars, which leaves behind waste products we can use. In the case of MSG, sugar from sugar cane is fermented by a special microbe ^[7] to create something called glutamic acid ^[8]. This acid is then “neutralized”, like how baking soda is used to take away the acidity of vinegar ^[9], to leave behind MSG.  After this, the mix is filtered and dewatered to make MSG crystals. That’s it! 

Chinese Food. mroach. License: CC BY-SA 2.0. No Changes Made

There really isn’t much that goes into making MSG. The only real chemical process that goes on is similar to what happens in a science fair volcano. So, whether you like MSG or not, hopefully this makes it a little easier to chow down on your favorite Chinese takeout next time you order in knowing where the notorious seasoning, MSG, comes from.  

  

 

 

References

[1] What is clean eating? CNN. Retrieved Oct 30^th, 2017 from: http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/23/health/clean-eating/index.html

[2] The Globalists Are Killing You with Food. InfoWars. Retrieved Oct 30^th, 2017 from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Nqhf4wN-jY

[3] What Exactly is MSG? Retrieved Oct 11^th, 2017 from: http://www.msgtruth.org/whatisit.htm

[4] Kikunae Ikeda. Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved Oct 26^th, 2017 from:   https://www.britannica.com/biography/Kikunae-Ikeda

[5] L-Monosodium Glutamate (MSG). Tetsuya Kawakita. Kirk-Othmer Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology. Published Dec 4^th, 2000.

[6] Q and A on MSG. FDA. Retrieved Oct 25^th, 2017 from: https://www.fda.gov/Food/IngredientsPackagingLabeling/FoodAdditivesIngredients/ucm328728.htm

[7] Corynebacterium glutamicum. Jacob Roam. University of Missouri. Retrieved Oct 30^th, 2017 from: http://web.mst.edu/~microbio/BIO221_2007/C_glutamicum.htm

[8] L-glutamic acid info. PubChem. Retrieve Oct 25^th, 2017 from: https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/L-glutamic_acid#section=Top

[9] Baking soda and vinegar reaction: ThoughtCo. Retrieved Oct 25^th, 2017 from: https://www.thoughtco.com/equation-for-the-reaction-of-baking-soda-and-vinegar-604043