Monosodium glutamate: exactly how does it "enhance" flavor?!

The Japanese have a word for it: "umami". It's a "fifth taste", in addition to salt, sweet, sour, and bitter. It's roughly translated as "meatiness".

On your tongue, you've got special receptors for glutamate molecules, aka glutamic acid, an amino acid. Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins. What that means is that a taste for glutamic acid is a taste for proteins, most commonly found in meat. Just like your sugar receptors give you a sweet tooth, you could say that the glutamate receptors give you a "meat tooth".

MSG is a form of glutamate. Add it to food, and your food tastes meatier. So it's not going to enhance the taste of, say, a lollipop (unless you've found a chicken-flavored lolllipop), but adding MSG to almost any savory dish makes it taste better.

MSG is commonly associated with Chinese restaurants, which use it to "beef up" (pun intended) dishes. Traditional cooking actually uses little meat and lots of vegetables, and the MSG makes it more satisfyingly meaty. Traditional Chinese food didn't use MSG by itself, but used foods that were high in glutamine, such as mushrooms and certain kinds of seaweed. These days it's made in a factory.

But these days, meat is cheap, and there's plenty of it in American Chinese food. So they don't have to add MSG, and the food tastes fine without it. Which is just as well, because some people are sensitive to it, and there's a broad set of symptoms called "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome" that afflict sensitive people who eat too much MSG. It includes headache and even asthma.

You can actually get a shaker of MSG to put next to your salt shaker. It's called Accent, and it's marketed to people who want more flavor but need to cut down on salt. MSG has sodium, but not as much per gram as salt.

It makes you eat more as it stimaulates the hypothalmus. It over loads the brain cells with glutamate. People full of heavy metals may get diarrhea from MSG. It gave me 3 days of very bad diarrhea. I wish they would get rid of it. People think they are getting food poisoning at a Chinese restaurant and it is just MSG. The orignial stuff wasn't as bad as the synthetic stuff.

It works by stimulating the neurons in the appetite center of your brain. It is thought that this constant "firing" on the surface of the neurons can damage them in some people to the point of creating health problems like Lou Gehrig's disease which is progressive and fatal.

The reason extra MSG is added is to sell a product, either in a restaurant or most all of the processed foods that contain any amount of protein on the shelves in supermarkets today. It is called by several other names just to confuse consumers who are trying to avoid it, such names as hydrolyzed vegetable proteins. Fast food restaurants rely on it to get people hooked on their foods which may otherwise be considered bland or tasteless in comparison to authentic home cooking. The sodium content of MSG may be one reason people are suffering so much high blood pressure (My fingers swell up if I eat at KFC or Long John Silvers, and I have avoided both for many years along with other fast food places.) Greed is ruling the world at the expense of our health and well-being.

MSG is a substance your body needs essential or is not beneficial and in no way improve its health, but may deteriorate. MSG's flavor artificially good food.
MSG added to foods that are highly processed foods with more calories, more fat, a large amount of salt or sugar and little real nutritional value.
Foods that contain MSG are sold because they are often cheaper, convenient and easy to eat anywhere. However, you must ask yourself if it's worth eating highly processed products.
Long-term cost of a diet composed of alimete containing MSG could be very high, especially when you pay hospital bills.
It is a controversial additive that may cause: obesity, diabetes, retinal lesions, hypothalamic lesions and is involved in various neuropsychiatric disorders from anxiety to depression and Alzheimer's and Multiple Sclerosis.

When MSG is added to foods, the glutamate component enhances several specific flavor characteristics, including impact, body or fullness, mildness and complexity. It also harmonizes the wide range of flavors already present in foods, creating a well-rounded flavor.

The same thing occurs when you cook with foods that are naturally high in glutamate, such as mushrooms, tomatoes and Parmesan cheese. No wonder these foods have long been prized for their distinctive flavoring abilities!

http://www.msginfo.com/index.asp

This is such an interesting topic, and I read a lot about it last year when I was expanding my cooking repertoire. It turns out that there are 5 flavors the taste buds can taste: salt, sweet, bitter, sour, and umami (also called savory). Just as a touch of salt can enhance the sweetness of a dessert, umami can enhance the flavor of the others.

Umami flavor occurs naturally in many foods, such as Parmesan cheese, meats, some wines, seaweed, and tomatoes. When cooked, the umami flavors tend to concentrate, resulting in that "cooked all day flavor."

Monosodium Glutamate, discovered in Japan in 1907 by Prof. Ikeda, has a very strong umami flavor, and has the added benefit of a long shelf life without caking, making it as easy to add to food as good old Sodium Chloride. Alas, it causes severe problems for many people, and is not a very healthful way to get umami flavor, but it surely is convenient. (I don't actually use or promote the use of MSG, but I can appreciate the brilliance of the discovery and ability to bring it to market.)

So if you ever thought that spaghetti with rich tomato sauce and some fresh Parmesan was delightful, it was umami flavor that you were appreciating. Most people don't identify umami by itself, but experience it as an enhancement to other flavors.

http://www.umamiinfo.com/what_exactly_is…
http://www.glutamate.org/media/glutamate…

... and feel there is no healthy use for this chemical !!!

MSG is added to various foods to "enhance" the flavor. In Asian countries, historically, the additive became habit and that’s why it is most prominent in Chinese foods.
However, there are many people who have allergic reactions to even a small amount of this chemical.

By the 1960s, Accent, the leading brand of "meat tenderizer" and flavor enhancer with "monosodium glutamate," had become a household word. And as much as I try to avoid it, it still pops up unexpectedly. I've found it used in Mexican refried beans ... so have to be careful at fast food chains. I even found it (the hard way) in a roast beef sandwich delivered to my mother by Meals on Wheels. I only had a few bites of the sandwich but ended up with a headache, stomach upset, dry mouth and more. They obviously loaded it with Accent or something similar to make cheap beef edible for older people.

Here are sites with more information:

http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/617527
"MSG, a food additive, added to savoury prepared and processed foods. Or to make it simple, it is used to enhance taste of food. Some people are sensitive to it, and it may cause allergic reaction like headache, burning sensation in the back of the neck and forearms, thirst, chest pain and abdominal discomfort. Consuming too much MSG also have some effects on health, so cut down the amount when cooking.
And the most crucial information, it is NOT ALLOWED in baby foods. "



Here is a fairly militant website against MSG... so take this with a grain of salt:
http://www.truthinlabeling.org/