I grew up being afraid of the flavour enhancer monosodium glutamate, known more commonly as MSG. For years it was drilled into me that MSG was unhealthy, and that it could cause issues such as headaches and dizziness.
I remember my mum buying snacks from the supermarket that proudly claimed they were MSG free, and seeing news reports on TV about how people needed to avoid ingesting this mysterious powder.
Now, what’s wild here is that I’m Chinese. MSG is commonly found in our cuisine, yet both my mum and dad were duped by the myth that this could cause us harm. MSG’s only crime? Making food taste delicious.
What is MSG?
Monosodium glutamate naturally occurs in a bunch of food you probably eat often, such as mushrooms, tomatoes and parmesan cheese.
In the 1900s, a Japanese chemist Kikunae Ikeda managed to extract MSG from seaweed broth and declared it “the essence of taste”, describing the savoury flavour as “umami”. It’s now known as one of the five main flavours we can distinguish between — the others being bitter, salty, sweet and sour.
“MSG is a sodium salt of glutamic acid, one of the amino acids that make up proteins. It is used in cooking and food preparation to enhance the flavour,” Dr Evangeline Mantzioris, Program Director of Nutrition and Food Sciences at the University of South Australia, tells PEDESTRIAN.TV.
“The MSG that is naturally found in foods [such as] meat, garlic, mushrooms and tomatoes is the same. It appears that they both act the same way in our bodies.”
China embraced MSG after it was marketed to Buddhists, using it as a way of enhancing flavour for those on a vegetarian diet. It’s commonly found as a seasoning on many East Asian and Chinese dishes.
MSG’s bad reputation can be traced back to flawed science and racism
When MSG started gaining popularity, anti-Chinese sentiment had already been rampant in the Western world for many years. Laws aimed at restricting Chinese immigration were passed in countries such as Australia, New Zealand and the US in the 1880s, and weren’t repealed until the 1940s to 1960s.
In 1968, a doctor wrote a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine describing his symptoms after eating Chinese food, saying he felt weak, numb and had a racing heart. He narrowed it down to cooking wine, salt or MSG, and wondered if other doctors had any thoughts on the matter. His letter sparked responses from other doctors, who said they had experienced symptoms such as dizziness, fainting, sweating and more. This mysterious illness was termed “Chinese restaurant syndrome”, and quite tellingly, nobody’s symptoms were the same and tended to come on at different times after eating.
Scientific studies were carried out but were extremely flawed. Washington University psychiatrist Robert Olney claimed that MSG caused brain damage after experimenting on mice pups in 1969 with the seasoning.
However, Olney used doses of MSG that were up to 30 times larger than what a regular human adult would actually consume, and he has been criticised for his delivery method. Instead of feeding the mice food with MSG, he injected the mice pups directly, which doesn’t reflect how we consume MSG in everyday life.
Even though MSG is found in plenty of cuisines, Chinese restaurants were the only ones affected. Many Chinese restaurants started labelling their food as having no MSG added, or declaring themselves as “No MSG restaurants”.
“I think there was a general idea that Chinese food was unhealthy or even dangerous, and that did a lot of damage to the reputation and bottom line of many Asian-owned restaurants,” Registered Dietician Kristy Thomas tells PEDESTRIAN.TV.
Is MSG safe to eat?
Food Standards Australia New Zealand has deemed MSG safe to consume and says it “does not represent a health concern for the general population”.
Dr Mantzioris says that after the idea of “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome” took off, eating MSG was associated with a large range of negative health symptoms.
“However, an early randomised control trial showed no difference in these symptoms between people who were given MSG versus a placebo. This has since been confirmed in a review of many studies,” she says.
Plus, there’s actually a benefit to reaching for MSG rather than your regular salt shaker.
“You get the flavour enhancement without as much sodium, which is good for people who have high blood pressure. MSG contains about a third of the sodium that table salt has.”
Is MSG getting a rebrand?
MSG became a bit of a hot topic in 2024 when Logan Moffitt went viral for his cucumber salad recipes on TikTok. While his recipes change from video to video, one thing stays the same — his catchphrase of “MSG, obviously”.
It’s not lost on me that while East Asian chefs have been trying to put an end to the demonisation of MSG for a while now, it’s a Western TikToker who sparked conversation about this ingredient. Years of mistrust rooted in Sinophobia means that MSG seems to be acceptable when it’s used by the “right” people, in the “right” way.
While MSG is a fairly common ingredient in Italian cuisine and American processed foods, there’s a reason why Chinese food is unfairly singled out.
“[It] comes primarily from the racialised narrative that connected MSG specifically with Chinese food. It was never the ingredient itself that brought stigma, it was the cultural context of its use,” Thomas says.
So there you have it, folks! This myth that MSG is a “poison” or “chemical” you shouldn’t ingest is rooted in fear, politics and culture, rather than science. The only thing making me feel sick about MSG is the blatant racism that comes hand-in-hand with the otherwise delicious seasoning.
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