Calvin Eng, the owner of New York-based Cantonese-American restaurant Bonnie\u2019s, isn\u2019t shy about his love for monosodium glutamate. Case in point \u2013 he has the letters MSG tattooed on his arm, and his restaurant\u2019s menu includes a signature drink called the MSG Martini. Things just taste better with MSG, whether it\u2019s Western food or Cantonese food, the chef tells CNN. We use it in drinks. We use it in desserts. We use it in savory food. It\u2019s in almost everything. Salt, sugar and MSG \u2013 I always joke that they\u2019re the Chinese Trinity of seasonings. Openly admitting to using MSG \u2013 once a surefire way to keep your restaurant empty \u2013 certainly hasn\u2019t undermined Bonnie\u2019s success. It\u2019s become one of the hottest tables in New York since opening in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in late 2021, winning numerous Best New Restaurant awards from multiple media outlets. Eng himself was named one of the best new chefs of 2022 by Food and Wine Magazine and was included on the 2023 Forbes 30 under 30 list, just to name a few of his recent achievements.<\/p>\n
Many didn\u2019t know that MSG is plant-derived, says Tia Rains, a Chicago-based nutrition scientist and Ajinomoto\u2019s vice president of customer engagement and strategic development. Our process [of making MSG] is by fermentation, which is very similar to how beer is brewed or how yogurt is made. First, plants with sugar \u2013 like sugarcanes or corn \u2013 are fermented with microbes to create glutamate, an amino acid found in food that\u2019s also produced in our body and acts as a neurotransmitter. Then, sodium is added and the glutamate is crystalized to become the salt-like MSG we see in supermarkets and kitchens now. I\u2019m a scientist by training. I think how MSG works is one of the coolest scientific things, says Rains. We have different receptors on our tongue for different tastes. Our receptor for umami looks almost like a Venus Flytrap under a microscope, she adds, mimicking a C with her hand.<\/p>\n
Sounds complicated? You\u2019ve probably been playing with glutamate, inosinate and guanylate in your own cooking without even realizing it. Carrots and onions (high in glutamate), for example, boost the umami-ness in beef (high in inosinate). Bonito fish (inosinate) and seaweed kombu (glutamate) also combine to create a powerful umami flavor. Foods like tomatoes and cheese even have natural glutamate in them. When people tell me that they ate at a Chinese food restaurant and they had trouble breathing and tightness in their chest, I get worried \u2013 and I\u2019d say, \u2018you need to follow up on that because MSG is not an allergen. It\u2019s not going to cause an allergic response. Our bodies make glutamate, so it would not be possible to have an allergy to glutamate\u2019,\u201d says Rains. Despite continued claims of negative reactions to MSG from diners, decades of scientific trials have failed to prove the existence of MSG sensitivity. Government organizations around the world have listed MSG as safe to eat. This includes the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which lists MSG as \u201cgenerally recognized as safe\u201d (GRAS).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Calvin Eng, the owner of New York-based Cantonese-American restaurant Bonnie\u2019s, isn\u2019t shy about his love for monosodium glutamate. Case in point \u2013 he has the letters MSG tattooed on his arm, and his restaurant\u2019s menu includes a signature drink called…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":596,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[74],"tags":[77],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=595"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":597,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595\/revisions\/597"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}