Chef Nouveau

Monosodium Glutamate (aka - MSG)  
   

According to the FDA monosodium glutamate, msg from here on in, is used as a "flavor enhancer"??? What the hell is a flavor enhancer? Since when was there not enough flavor in food? What did people use before the advent of MSG? Obviously they used regular salt and about a bazillion other spices. So why the heck did msg make such a massive appearance onto the scene some 50 years ago?

It's got to be money. I know, that's kind of a lame statement as money is the reason behind 99 percent of everything… Seriously though…, I think it must just be cheap salt, (as if salt wasn't cheap enough), or some other means to reduce costs of flavouring foods. I guess thats where the 'flavor enhancer' term comes from. Why else would you add that junk to foods. I mean food already tasted fine. I think it is just another way for big business to squeeze more out of each dollar at the expense of anyone and anything.

There seems to be a lot of evidence that msg is not the healthiest substance and pretty much everyone I know looks for the "no msg" foods when ever possible. Check out this FDA page on msg for more on it's side effects and studies done by the US government. (the US government… boy, I bet that instills a lot of confidence in you…). It seems weird to me that I can buy a bag of chips with no msg and they taste just as good or better than the msg ones. This got me thinking and I started noticing that all the 'cheap' foods are the ones with lots of msg and all the more costly ones have just salt and more wholesome ingredients. I think there must be some sort of formula that shows the inverse relationship between cost of foods and the length and complexity of their ingredients list. Say, 1 over X is equal to the x - y divided by the crappy food factor minus the total ingredients, blah blah blah… So a 5 cent bag of chips is basically deep fried msg and the 6 buck organic bag is potatoes, oil and salt. nice.

Did you know that some of the food labels hide the msg using sneaky, dishonest and evil like the devil techniques?  Read this website and this one. If you are sensitive to msg you probably already know this, but if you are new to the scene then it is worth checking out.

Anyway, thats my rant for today. Not much of rant I know but hey… The funny thing is I'm not even effected that much by msg in foods, or at least I don't think I am. I seem to be able to eat any chemical cocktale foods without any side effects. Hell, I could probably eat VX gas if it was in a candy wrapper.