Even for non vegetarians, MSG (monosodium glutamate) is a pretty cool addition to the kitchen toolbox, just order some and start experimenting!

Do some controlled ones, for example split a portion into two, ask a 2nd person to sprinkle some onto one of them and try both of them and guess which one has MSG on it.

I can confirm that savory oatmeal is a great vegetarian way to start the day. It's counter-intuitive and surprisingly good. My favorite preparation involves mixing in cashew nut butter with a little tomato sauce.

While I don't think I'll ever get on board with savory oatmeal, I'd be perfectly happy with savory grits or savory polenta. But really — there's no reason not to have roasted veggies and brown rice for a savory breakfast.

I only know one person who dislikes my savory oatmeal, and he says it's because he has lots of unpleasant childhood memories of being force fed savory oatmeal by his mother, back in the holler.

I’m sorry but this sounds really unappealing to me. But it’s probably tasty.

I think the jury is still out on how (un)healthy extensive use of MSG is [0].

> In conclusion we would like to state that although MSG has proven its value as an enhancer of flavour, different studies have hinted at possible toxic effects related to this popular food-additive. These toxic effects include CNS disorder, obesity, disruptions in adipose tissue physiology, hepatic damage, CRS and reproductive malfunctions. These threats might have hitherto been underestimated. In the meantime, people keep using ever larger amounts of MSG unaware of the possible consequences. Further studies need to be undertaken in order to assess the connection between MSG and cardiovascular disorders, headache, and hypertension in human models. MSG is a controversial food-additive used in canned food, crackers, meat, salad dressings, frozen dinners and a myriad of other products. It is found in local supermarkets, restaurants and school cafeterias alike. While MSG probably has huge benefits to the food industry, the ubiquitous use of this food-additive could have negative consequences for public health. If more substantive evidence of MSG-toxicity would be provided, a total ban on the use of MSG as a flavour enhancer would not be unwise to consider.

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5938543/

Like every other study that purports to show the toxicity of MSG, this one cites wildly unrealistic dosages, dosages that would cause toxicity with salt as well. Just skimming the abstract I see an example with a dosage of 2 mg/g. Scaled up to human terms (assuming a 180 pound human like me), that's a dose of 160 grams, but personally, I'm a heavy MSG user and a 50 gram shaker of MSG lasts me for months. Also consider that my daily intake of sodium should be 3.4 grams. 160 grams of MSG has 19.2 grams of sodium alone! Almost everyone on earth eats less than 1/100th of that studied dose of MSG daily. The dose makes the poison; in my opinion this writeup is intellectually dishonest.

It is just sea weed extract, maybe they should rename it to that as everyone thinks sea weed is a health food. Sushi is full of natural MSG.

Here is a good article on how MSG got a bad wrap:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-msg-got-a-bad-rap-f...

That's...a huge branding error. Seriously, Organic Seaweed Salt (GF/V) would fly off the shelves at Whole Foods.

Someone should tell B&G Foods, given it is way past time for them to modernize the Accent brand anyway (people see it in my spice cabinet and wonder what's with the "weird 60s salt shaker").

https://www.accentflavor.com/product/flavor-enhancer

Arsenic is just a seed extract, doesn't mean it'll kill you in large enough quantities.

After seaweed the next product with the highest natural concentration of MSG is parmesan cheese...

It has lots of rebranding. I often see "natural glutamates" on menus at nice restaurants, and I have a bottle of liquid aminos from Whole Foods (ironically[0]) at home that is basically a soy sauce derivative with extra MSG; it's actually really good.

I kind of wish I got to taste 80s era American Chinese food in it's full MSG glory.

[0] https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/blog/whole-story/myths-and-...

> The short answer is that MSG, or monosodium glutamate, is an unacceptable ingredient at Whole Foods Market, thus not allowed in any of our products.

Adam Ragusea also has a timely video he posted a few days ago on MSG too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-POAKKH5IM

The takeaway I got from it was that the opposition to MSG has a racial component ('Chinese Restaurant Syndrome'), may have been started as a prank (letters to that particular publication often were - they didn't have 4chan back then), and studies showing harm used very unrealistic dosages. Allergy or sensitivity may exist but the chances of it being a poison and literally affecting every human body seems very unlikely.

I also have a bag in my kitchen and came to the same conclusion regarding taste that he did. Adding more does not do much to dishes with that component already (meat, mushroom, etc). But it does change dishes that lack it.

> It is just sea weed extract

This seems unrelated to the claims I quoted/linked. Cocaine is "just a plant extract". But this statement doesn't say much about how wise it is to ingest it. [0] You might as well put this on a pack of cigarettes.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_poisonous_plants#Other...

My point is that people will hail MSG as the devil and then happily consume sushi wrapped in sea weed and have no ill effect. I have a friend she swears she is allergic to MSG but she eats sushi at least twice a week with no reaction. I don't have the heart to tell her that the very wrapping she is eating is where they get the MSG from.

That being said, there are people that legitimately have a glutamate allergy and they do have reactions when they eat sea weed.

> there are people that legitimately have a glutamate allergy

Glutamate is an amino aid and a neurotransmitter, your body produces it. Per [1], "It is used by every major excitatory function in the vertebrate brain, accounting in total for well over 90% of the synaptic connections in the human brain." Per [2], "Glutamate itself is ubiquitous in biological life."

I don't legitimately see how someone can have an allergy to it. It seems to be a basic building block of biological life. It's like saying you are allergic to DNA.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glutamic_acid [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glutamate_(neurotransmitter) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glutamate_flavoring#Natural_oc...

My throat burns when I eat more than just a dash. I wasn't diagnosed with an allergy though. So YMMV.

Just because the human body produces small quantities of it at a time doesn't mean that you can flood the digestive tract with orders of magnitude more and expect no ill effect.

An amino acid is a building block for proteins. It isn't something you produce small quantities of, it's a basic component of how organic life is made.

I say that to say you make a lot of them. And you eat a lot of them whenever you eat organic matter.

And to your point, even water can be deadly if you drink too much too fast. That doesn't mean you have a water allergy.

Monosodium glutamate is a salt not an amino acid. It does not disassociate perfectly (or instantly) in the gut and uptake through the digestive system is slow [1].

There are several steps before your metabolic system can turn MSG into amino acids and surprise, surprise: until then it behaves like a different chemical.

[1] https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Monosodium-glutama...

The first sentence in Section 10.2 (Absorption, Distribution and Excretion): "Glutamate is absorbed from the gut by an active transport system specific for amino acids."

I'm not convinced you read what you just cited.

Those same people usually have no problem with dry ramon noodle packets, either. It seems nobody even questions how a dry powder can make broth taste like it has some actual meat in it, when meat isn't even in the ingredients.

I, too, think fears of MSG are silly, but so is this argument.

You can extract formaldehyde and arsenic out of an apple, but that doesn’t make chugging the extract as safe as eating an apple.

The difference is MSG has been heavily studies and the evidence suggest it does not have long term health effects. There are some people that have an allergy to it but the gap between those that truly do and those that claim they do is wide and a lot of that has to do with belief of misinformation. The difference with arsenic in apple seeds is that most people are not eating the seeds, while sea weed is regularly consumed and everyone has a reaction to arsenic whereas only a minority of people have a reaction to the consumption of sea weed.

> The difference is MSG has been heavily studies and the evidence suggest it does not have long term health effects.

And that's a perfectly good argument.

"It comes from seaweed and you eat seaweed just fine" is not. You've singled out arsenic in your response, but I also mentioned formaldehyde, which is throughout the apple's flesh. Would you drink a bottle of it because of that?

The logic isn't "it comes from seaweed so it's not harmful" it's "you wouldn't really give a second thought as to whether seaweed salt was safe to consume if you saw it on the shelf but are naturally skeptical of MSG because it's a scary chemical name."

It’s as if you’re actively trying to miss my point.

The reports of MSG being called “the devil“ were greatly exaggerated. Your personal interpretation of what I said:

> The jury is still out on how (un)healthy MSG is

Was:

> people will hail MSG as the devil

The fact that it’s a seaweed extract, or that some people eat it and are ok are orthogonal to what I said. I said one should be careful about excessive use of anything that hasn’t been studied to the point where any reasonable shadow of doubt was removed. The fact that multiple published studies came up with these potential links and there’s no definitive one to contradict them at the very least warrants caution. Which is what I suggested. It’s sensible advice to not do anything excessively, even more so if you have any doubt.

Some people excessively drank alcohol, smoked, ate red meat, etc. (all plant based or at least natural) all their life and were just fine. But it’s still not an argument for doing the same.

And the link I gave didn’t come from personal opinion (these are strong on HN), or some random blog but nih.gov. And their advice is just as sensible: we need to study more (yeah, guess they weren’t told on HN that MSG was super extensively tested and we have the definitive results) and advised caution. That’s it.

From what I've heard, it's a bit like wheat - harmless to most people, but a minority has allergic reactions of varying severity.

Except glutamic acid is found in nearly everything we eat and our bodies produce lots of it because we need it to function. It's unlikely anyone has an allergic reaction to it, considering it's basically impossible to avoid eating.

interesting, there is already a review citing this article giving an opposing view:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6952072/

edit: also a single amino acid salt being harmful really requires some solid evidence, which seems to be not there.

> Further studies need to be undertaken in order to assess the connection between MSG and [...]

As I said, jury is still out. I would personally not go overboard with adding it to everything I et until I know more. I'll take less flavor for now over the potential risks until more reliable data is published.

Like most things, I'm sure the dose makes the poison. There are some who are sensitive to MSG and react poorly to even small doses. All this creates a lot of confusion in regards to whether it's healthy or not. if it gives you headaches, don't eat it.

I react poorly to tomatoes, but it doesn't mean tomatoes are bad for everyone.

I learned MSG was purchasable from a friend who swore by their MSG Shaker. You don't need a lot and it adds a different flavour than just straight up salt. I liked it, i've never actually used it myself in cooking though. I kind of just forgot about it until your comment.

Thank you! I am going to try that this morning. I don’t think we have MSG powder, but if I add some seaweed (at home we say ‘sea vegetables’) like Arame, Wakame, and Kombu, I think that will have the same effect. Miso paste sounds like a good addition also.

MSG was heavily discussed in Sweden 10-15 years ago, especially the addition to potato chips. The Swedish National Food Agency said that it was safe to eat, but that some people may be hypersensitive.

I read a couple of articles now, and it seems from interviews like the people behind some of the organizations protesting its use was hypersensitive themselves. It makes sense that if they have bad reactions, they assume that the substance itself is bad in general, even if that hasn't been shown in medical trials. The Food Agency also said that since the symptoms were limited in time and severity, even if hypersensitive (blurred vision, headache, and so on) it wasn't necessary to warn the general public to stop consumption.

I read an article saying that MSG is not allowed in baby food and is cautioned against for pregnant women. The baby food claim may be true, but the Food Agency says that small children process MSG as efficiently as adults, that there's no difference of glutamate blood concentration between fetus and mother when pregnant, and that MSG is not considered a risk for the fetus. They also say that it's not probable that it's transferred to the baby in breast milk, if consumption is kept at recommended daily intake.

When I was in elementary school in the 80s and 90s, people would eat knäckebröd [1] with butter covered with Aromat [2]. We didn't know it then, but it contained MSG which was probably why it tasted so good.

Aromat contains lactose, and a vegan alternative is Vegeta [3]. I don't sprinkle it directly onto food, even if I could, but use it more like powdered broth and add it to sauces and soups. It's pretty salty, so I use it instead of salt.

Another vegan product I'd like to mention for its umami flavor is Engevita [4] nutritional yeast flakes. I sprinkle that on top of food which gives it a more deep, nutty, or cheesy flavor. Instead of monosodium glutamate, where a sodium atom is bound to the glutamate amino acid, the glutamate is bound (according to an article I read that was light on details) to other amino acids, but still performs its umami duties. This is natural occurring glutamate in the yeast, and not an additive.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crispbread

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aromat

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podravka#Consumer_brands

[4] http://marigoldhealthfoods.co.uk/products/engevita/engevita-...

Have you discovered truffle salt?

>> or shy away from it because of nonsensical urban myths.

I shy away from it because it gives me migraine headaches. Not everyone is like you, and that doesnt mean those others are being nonsensical.