The bean salad on the left has msg added, the salad on the right has none.
Is msg (monosodium glutamate) good or bad? Lots of discussion on this topic. There was a restaurant in Hell’s Kitchen that would say good. They specialized in dishes featuring MSG (including a soup which had it dissolved in hot water as the broth) and the walls were plastered with newspaper clippings, in both Chinese and English, about the health benefits of the flavoring. During a long stay at the Pickwick Hotel in the late 90s I ate there multiple times with no ill effects. Gone now, but likely a victim of gentrification rather than poor choices.
Which brings us to the bean salad experiment pictured above. I had made a tub of The Colonel’s KFC Bean Salad for a picnic and certainly would not add MSG for a general audience without announcing it. But there was a bit left over so I divided it into a pair of 8 oz containers and added ¼ t of msg to one. (Almost certainly too much; 1/8 t or even a pinch would have sufficed.)
Angel or devil?
Taste testers immediately noticed a difference. The doctored batch had an amped-up flavor that was salty without being exactly salty, just more intense. One taster said she preferred it because the flavor was “sharper”. I found that when you taste the msg first, the other version seemed too bland. But when you taste the non-msg first it seems perfectly balanced, and the subsequent spoonful of msg-dosed salad seems a bit over the top. My guess is that if I had used less msg that version would have a subtle improvement which would have been preferred across the board.
Do you think msg is good or bad? If you say bad and you dip your celery and carrot sticks in Hidden Valley Ranch dressing to go with your wings, you should know that dressing is riddled with the stuff. (As is our copycat Mystery Creek Ranch Dressing.) The population of Buffalo does not seem to be adversely affected. Of course many of those folks are using bleu cheese dressing instead, as they should, but that’s a topic for another day.
MSG and the arsenic in rice is why Asians are extinct!
That’s right! Just don’t tell the billons who think they are thriving there!
Seriously…. I do use MSG when I think a dish needs more salt, (or really umami?) but there already plenty of salt in it. From your link, the original troll said: “… he believed his symptoms could have resulted from consuming either alcohol, sodium, or MSG….” Yep, musta been the MSG. Similarly when I have have aftereffects from gin and tonic, it must be the quinine.
I keep a shaker of Accent on hand. I use it sparingly and usually throw out 90% of it after time. I think I may be cursed as a super-taster. I don’t enjoy being hit in the face with flavor for more than one bite. I can savor an unseasoned, boiled b/s chicken breast.
Does it go bad? I still use a shaker of a Japanese salt/msg blend that I “borrowed” from my former mother in law in the 1980s I think.