In the summertime, I'm often near water, which makes me want to eat fish.
I have this strong association between summertime and delicious fish, but I'm not always near the water, and I often don't feel like cooking because it's too hot.
That's where Gorton's Seafood comes in.
For over 175 years, Gorton's has been serving up restaurant -quality seafood that's unbelievably easy to make and ready to eat in just a few minutes.
I love their crunchy breaded fish fillets, the coconut shrimp, the double -crunched shrimp, and any one of them is ready in a few minutes.
Visit Gorton's .com to learn more, find a store, and get recipe inspiration.
avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start Thumbtack knows homes so you don't have to don't know the difference between matte paint finish and satin or what that clunking sound from your dryer is with Thumbtack you don't have to be a home pro you just have to hire one you can hire top -rated pros see price estimates and read reviews all on the app download today it's Dan here and so we've been doing these reheats for a while and I always say hey do Do you have a request for a reheat?
And more and more of you are responding.
And I love these responses because sometimes you remind me of an episode that I haven't even thought about in a long time, and then I remember how much I liked that one.
This one we're going to reheat for you today was requested by a long -time listener.
Hi, Sporkful team. This is Ayushi from Memphis, Tennessee, and I would love to re -listen to the episode, This Podcast Contains MSG.
I love how it looked at cultural bias through the lens of food and science, and I'd love to hear it again.
in. Ayushi tells us she first heard this episode with her mom and sister when she was in eighth grade.
Now she's going into her senior year of college, which makes me feel a little bit old, although I kind of love, I'm hearing this more and more about like young people, young adults who have grown up listening to the Sporkful.
I actually really love it.
So Ayushi, we send this one out to you.
We're happy to dust off this episode from 2018 for you.
And as I said, be like Ayushi, request a reheat, send us an email or a voice memo to hello at sporkful .com.
Tell me your name, location, what episode you want to hear, and why.
Thanks so much and enjoy.
Well, if you've been listening to this program for the last few years and have been listening to very much about nutrition, you realize that you've been hearing about a silent killer.
It's a killer that's worse than alcohol, worse than nicotine, worse than drugs.
It's called monosodium glutamate last year Sam Kastic got so sick he had to be rushed to the hospital diagnosis reaction to MSG the range of reactions is amazing to these positions asthma heart palpitations headache dizziness it does in 1968 a doctor named Robert Kwok wrote a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine.
He said after he ate Chinese food, he often got a headache, felt feverish.
He suggested maybe it was the MSG in the food.
After that, tons of people came forward with similar complaints.
The letter coined the term Chinese restaurant syndrome, and the thing just snowballed.
There were studies done, but they were problematic.
They took enormous amounts of MSG and then injected it under the skin of mice to see if problems occurred.
And it did. But no one is suggesting that human beings should inject huge amounts of MSG under their skin.
Now, I don't want to alarm you, but there is glutamate in your body right now.
Don't worry, it's supposed to be there.
It's also in everything from tomatoes to breast milk.
People go to a pho shop and they write to me and they go, Andrea, that pho at my local pho shop is so good.
What do you think it is?
And I'm like, well, maybe it's a little MSG.
Let me get a little bit edgy here.
Chinese people never have a problem with MSG.
Today on The Sporkful, as we approach the 50th anniversary of Dr. Kwok's fateful letter, we're talking about monosodium glutamate, better known as MSG.
There are people who are like, I don't want any MSG in my food.
And then there are people who say pho is not pho without MSG.
We'll dig into the science and we'll ask, how did so many people become convinced that MSG is so bad?
I remember there being some sort of stigma when I started hanging around white people.
That's all coming up.
Stick around. This is The Sporkful.
It's not for foodies, it's for eaters.
I'm Dan Pashman. Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people.
All right, let's do this.
So, my name is Dan, and I cook with MSG.
All the time. I have a big bag of it in my spice rack.
I add it to my Thanksgiving turkey gravy, my tomato sauce, the braised chicken thighs I made the other night.
if you come to my house for dinner I'm probably going to feed you something with MSG in it and I'm probably not going to tell you about it because people freak out but it's umami that savory flavor that takes any food to another level MSG is essentially crystallized deliciousness later on we'll talk about how it's used in a variety of classic dishes and foods you find in the supermarket but first I want to lay out the science Dr. Aaron Carroll is a professor of pediatrics and associate dean at Indiana University School of Medicine.
He's the author of several books that debunk myths about food and health.
His new one is The Bad Food Bible, How and Why to Eat Sinfully.
And I should say, full disclosure, Aaron's publisher did buy an ad for his book on this podcast a few weeks back, but that has nothing to do with today's show.
Right now, Aaron is joining me because he's the perfect guy to start this discussion.
Hey, Aaron. How are you?
you. Doing well. So let's begin at the beginning.
What is MSG? It's monosodium glutamate.
It's basically taking a molecule of glutamic acid and popping a single sodium atom onto it.
And what is glutamic acid?
That is actually an amino acid that you must have to survive.
It is one of the 26 amino acids that comprise basically all proteins that exist in human life.
besides that glutamate free glutamate itself exists in various parts of your body and is necessary for a number of functions including some of your brain functions some of the ways that your kidney functions and other things as well so glutamate glutamic acid these are things your body absolutely needs to survive and where in nature do we find glutamate and glutamic acid outside of our bodies glutamic acid or free glutamate also exists in a number of different foods.
Things like tomatoes happen to be pretty high in it.
And of course, seaweed, which is where it was originally derived for the first time by a Japanese scientist who was able to purify it from seaweed.
And it's also why it seems to be so popular in certain cultures that use seaweed quite a bit in their cooking.
And am I right? It's also like the flavor that we know as umami is strongly correlated with glutamic acid.
Yes. So many foods that we would associate with umami are.
And if you ever have pure MSG and it is available to buy, it is pretty much pure umami flavor.
Just basically pure, earthy, savory flavor.
And am I right, glutamic acid is in breast milk as well?
Yes. In fact, it's, well, not only is it in breast milk, it's actually used to be in a lot of baby food as well, which is one of the reasons that scientists got, or not, I shouldn't say scientists, but advocates got so angry about it because they thought we were conditioning babies to want something with the chemical, but of course, it is in breast milk and other things, which is one of the reasons why babies like breast milk.
Human beings like umami flavor, and we like a lot of the things that are flavored with that taste as well as MSG.
And so what happens when you take glutamate or glutamic acid and then form MSG?
Why is that necessary?
What are you doing to it?
It's that sodium molecule.
I mean, purists or people who really don't like it will argue that there's a huge difference, that one is an unnatural chemical which is something that we create in a lab but the difference is is a sodium molecule i mean a sodium atom i should say onto the molecule it's really the only difference it's a way to make it into a salt because if you isolate glutamate or glutamic acid from food then it's it's not easily stored or transported it's not solid and it's it's a liquid and it's very hard but if you pop that sodium atom onto it it becomes a salt and it becomes something we can crystallize.
And that, of course, makes it much easier to make, produce, and also sell.
So how did it come to be that so many people think MSG is so bad for us?
As MSG gained popularity in the United States, it's around the same time that a lot of the backlash to artificial sweeteners and other chemicals were occurring in the United States.
And it got sort of swept up in the, we are afraid that these additives to our food are causing terrible disease.
Another theory, and one which is unfortunately not as nice, is that it might actually be bound up in a bit of racism or a bit of problems with immigration that was occurring in America, that it was associated with both Chinese culture and Chinese food.
That may be one of also the reasons that this took off.
But correct me if I'm wrong, Wrong.
There were some studies that confirmed that there was a problem with MSG.
Was there something wrong with those studies?
Well, okay, some of them were studies where they took enormous amounts of MSG and then injected it under the skin of mice to see if problems occurred.
And it did. But no one is suggesting that human beings should inject huge amounts of MSG under their skin.
Another problem with a lot of the early research, they told people, we are about to give you food with MSG in it.
So of course, people who are already convinced they had a problem with MSG felt like they had a bad reaction in those studies.
Dr. Carol says even many doctors underestimate the power of the placebo effect, or in this case, the nocebo effect, which is what you call it when you think you're getting something bad.
So there's no good science that confirms a widespread problem with MSG.
no and yet i'm sure aaron that you have heard from people as i have who insist that they have this issue with msg absolutely including my wife um you know in fact you know i've almost convinced her i think to eat msg at this point having gone through this for so many years but people swear by this they are sure of it but they've done really really good studies and those studies fail to detect a consistent and real pattern where people, even who claim that they are susceptible to MSG problems, will actually experience it when they're given it and they don't know.
And what does your wife say when you explain that to her?
She still doesn't believe it.
I've lost these kinds of battles with her.
Please. But Aaron, have you tried doing your own study at home?
Why don't you slip some MSG in your wife's food without telling her?
And then two hours later, when she doesn't have a reaction, then you say, ah -ha!
So there's one, I enjoy being married, so I'm not going to do that.
But more importantly, you'd be surprised how hard it is to do these kinds of studies because MSG, of course, has a very distinctive taste.
And so designing the placebo is not as easy as you might think.
Is it possible that there are some people out there, maybe a much smaller handful than think, who have a sensitivity to MSG?
I mean, like some people are sensitive to onions or grapefruits or anything.
I mean, is that possible?
possible? Can I absolutely say with 100 % certainty that there are no people in the world that would react to MSG?
Of course not. Like, you know, there could be some, but their numbers are very, very small.
And I'd be suspect about it because again, given the fact that we've done these well -designed studies, even with the people who say that they are sort of the most affected by MSG, it can't be detected.
Is there something else about American style Chinese takeout food, which is where people most associate MSG.
Is there something else about that food where eating a lot of it could make you feel like you have a headache or a pain in your neck or feel unpleasant in some other way?
Is there another explanation?
That's a great question.
There have been some people that have hypothesized that it might have to do with histamine.
Histamine, of course, is something that actually shows up in the pathways of allergies and allergic attacks.
That's why you often take an antihistamine like Benadryl if you're having hives or an allergic And there are some people that have shown that or some researchers, I should say, who have shown that different types of Chinese food can actually have different levels of histamine, which, of course, is well known to be part of a pathway where people might have an allergic reaction.
That could be part of it, but I don't think it's been well studied to the point where I can declare it one way or the other.
Well, I can tell you that I have served a number of people, MSG, unbeknownst to them in my home, people who insist that they have a reaction, and yet when they don't know, they don't have a reaction.
When I try to serve someone something with MSG in it, and I tell them in advance that it is MSG, and they say, oh, oh, sorry, no, I'm sensitive to MSG, I'll be like, no, no, that's not true.
There's been a million studies.
It's been disproven.
There's no connection.
People don't like when you say that to them.
People don't like when you tell them that what they feel is wrong.
Correct. So there's only so much you can do.
I completely agree.
They really don't get how much of what we perceive can be driven by what we believe.
Do you ever just get frustrated, Aaron?
Every day. So if I'm a regular person out there who just wants to try to eat healthy as best I can man, to a reasonable degree without any kind of super extreme diet.
And yet I see these headlines every other day.
This is bad for you.
That's bad for you.
This is going to give you cancer.
That's going to give you cancer.
In addition to reading your pieces in the New York Times and buying your book, like what else can I do to just to process these headlines and know what the hell I should be eating?
So first of all, any story that doesn't place any new study in context with every study that's come before i'd completely ignore um because to sort of decide that oh my gosh they just found out that that this is associated with cancer and it's a common food ingredient we would know already believe me there have been other studies done there are very few left so you know finding a new association doesn't mean that all of the research that came before is null and void and unless it says look there's a huge amount of evidence and this study is the latest piece in the puzzle i'd ignore it secondly
if it's a study of mice if it's a study in the lab if it's a study of like six people for two days i wouldn't put much stock in it final question aaron what's your favorite food to have with msg in it so there are these like um chips called takis and i can't even that's the name of the the brand i don't i think they're made in mexico but i could be wrong i cannot describe for you the burst of flavor when you eat these things and And MSG is one of the middle ingredients.
It's not like a small amount and you know, but my God, like your mouth explodes with flavor when you eat these things.
They're amazing. And I wouldn't say I eat them all the time, but they are so good.
That's Dr. Aaron Carroll.
His latest book is The Bad Food Bible, How and Why to Eat Sinfully.
By the way, takis, that's spelled T -A -K -I -S.
It's a play on taquitos because the shape is sort of like a hollow rolled cylinder, like a mini taquito.
Takis are not the only snack food with MSG.
Doritos have it, as do a lot of canned soups, sauces, and other foods you find in the supermarket.
Although it's fewer today thanks to those anti -MSG crusaders.
Coming up, we'll tell you how to use MSG to make the best Bloody Mary you've ever tasted.
And we'll talk about how it's used in a variety of other dishes.
There's this scallion ginger sauce that like a lot of Cantonese folks love on their noodles.
And the secret to that is just MSG.
Plus, we'll delve more into the role that race and class have played in spreading misconceptions about MSG.
There's a part of me that goes back to this idea of people seeing Asian people as the yellow peril.
Stick around. and now a delicious word from our sponsors it's very good we're all busy right sometimes you need something in a pinch and you need it quickly okay we've all been in this situation like maybe you just came home from a vacation and you got a whole bunch of dirty laundry you got to get it washed and you realize you didn't know you're out of detergent.
You're about to go to the beach in a couple hours and you need sunscreen, but you're out of sunscreen.
Maybe you're hosting a bunch of people for a barbecue and you're out of paper plates or dishwashing detergent.
It happens to all of us.
Well, I have a solution for you.
Did you know that Walmart has express delivery?
It is a total game changer for those need it now moments.
And let's be honest, those want it now moments too.
Walmart express delivery gets your order to you in as fast as an hour.
Baby wipes, check. Pet food, got it.
Cereal dough for the kids breakfast yes you can handle everything straight from the app quick easy and saves you time for well you know everything else going on in your very busy life try express delivery today and get free delivery with promo code express that's code express promotion valid for first express delivery order 50 minimum subject to availability restrictions apply i've told you a lot about the behind the scenes of the making of my cookbook anything's possible But I think there's one detail I left out, and that is that I tested every single recipe in that book on my Samsung range.
I have had a Samsung range for more than 10 years, and it is high quality and reliable.
That thing is a workhorse, and I count on it day after day, whether I'm developing recipes for a cookbook or just getting dinner on the table for my family.
But recently, I got my first look at a whole new line of Samsung Bespoke appliances.
appliances. They have the Bespoke AI induction range.
Okay, we've talked about induction on this show.
This thing heated a pot of water.
I've never seen water boil so fast. The oven has a built -in smart oven camera so you can monitor your meal from your phone.
And like I said, I love my Samsung range and oven.
That's probably why Samsung is number one in customer satisfaction.
Visit Samsung .com slash Bespoke to learn more.
Features available through SmartThings app, available on Android and iOS devices, a Wi -Fi connection, and Samsung account are required.
Number one, customer satisfaction based on most customer satisfaction awards, home appliance surveys, leading consumer research organization 2020 to 2024.
I'm very excited to tell you that this spring, I'm going to be taking a visit to Myrtle Beach. I have heard how nice it is.
I have heard how beautiful it is, how fun it is, how good the food is, and I can't wait to get there.
There's a lot of beaches out there, but there's only one that people call the beach. Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
It's made up of 14 coastal communities and 60 miles of sunny beaches.
It sounds like paradise.
And you know what they say at Myrtle Beach, you've heard of wining and dining?
Down there, they shine and dine in a foodie haven with oceanfront patios, fresh seafood, low country classics and Southern favorites.
I want to sit at a table with my feet in the sand and drink a beer and have some shellfish.
they have a ferris wheel they have a ton of fun things to do keep the whole family happy and having fun with over a thousand attractions to choose from you belong at The Beach Myrtle Beach, South Carolina plan your trip to The Beach at visitmyrtlebeach .com in the summertime I'm often near water which makes me want to eat fish so I have this strong association between summertime and delicious fish but I'm not always near the water and I often don't feel like cooking because it's too hot that's where Gorton's Seafood comes in For over 175 years, Gorton's has been serving up restaurant -quality seafood
that's unbelievably easy to make and ready to eat in just a few minutes.
I love their crunchy breaded fish fillets, the coconut shrimp, the double crunch shrimp, and any one of them is ready in a few minutes.
Visit Gorton's .com to learn more, find a store, and get recipe inspiration.
inspiration. Welcome back to another Sporkful Reheat.
I'm Dan Pashman. Want to watch me walking my dog while ranting about some food -related issues that's on my mind?
Want to see what I'm cooking?
Want to see what I'm eating?
The best way to do that is to follow me on Instagram.
My kids make occasional appearances.
There's a lot of fun to be had, so please follow me on Instagram at thesporkful.
Again, that's at thesporkful.
Thanks. Now back to this week's reheat.
One of my favorite ways to consume MSG is in something called Maggi sauce.
My kids love it too.
They call it magic sauce.
Maggi was invented in Switzerland in the 1880s.
Julius Maggi was one of the first people to sell bouillon cubes and Maggi seasoning sauce.
It was originally a concentrated liquid bouillon.
The Maggie Company was bought by Nestle in 1947.
Now the sauce is all over the world in various forms. It's made by a process similar to soy sauce, except with fermented wheat protein, so it's rich and full -bodied.
The guy who introduced me to Maggie sauce is my friend Kevin Pang.
You've heard him here on the show before, back when he was a food writer for the Chicago Tribune.
He also came on to talk about his award -winning documentary, For Grace, about the Chicago chef Curtis Duffy.
And he's back now wearing a new hat.
He's the the man behind The Takeout, which is a new food and pop culture site from The Onion.
Kevin joins me now from Chicago.
Hey, Kevin. Hey, Dan.
What's up? So, Kevin, the first time that you introduced me to Maggi sauce was when you took me for pierogies in Chicago.
That's right. We went to Potolanka.
That's right. Yeah, in the Noble Square neighborhood.
And I told you, hey, man, you got to dip this in this like magical sauce.
And when Maggie's seasoning hits your palate, there's something just immensely beefy and rich and savory with all the greatness of soy sauce and all the great traits of that sauce, but multiplied in much more satisfying, rich, complex ways.
And you had it, and it was like, I remember your eyes just started glowing, and it was as if the first time Paul McCartney picked up the guitar and realized it's like infinite potentials.
But it was for you.
It was about umami and MSG and savory.
And I think from that day on, I remember you went back to New York and you texted me, and you said, hey, I went and bought a bottle of this, and now I can't stop putting this on anything and everything.
everything i think i'm your north star for msg right like i'm your guiding light and yeah so i i went back home and there's a like an old school german butcher shop all these old guys behind the counter all wear those old school white paper hats oh yeah and they had this huge bottle of maggie sauce and then i got more i that was the one that was made in germany and then i also got the one that was made in china which is very different i mean there's a real noticeable difference that was a bit of a mind blower for me because growing up in hong kong i always always associated Maggie's seasoning
as something that was Cantonese.
I didn't realize until I think the last five, 10 years that there are many variants of Maggie's seasoning all around the world.
There's one from Mexico.
There's one from Germany.
Like there's one of the Philippines.
It's all around the world.
The one from Mexico is actually a lot thicker.
You know, when I was at the Chicago Tribune, I actually taste tested a number of different Maggie's seasonings.
And I I found that the German one was probably the best tasting, the most sophisticated, if you will, of the Maggie seasonings.
The one that I grew up with is obviously the one that you can find in any Chinatown supermarket.
When my parents were using soy sauce, they actually did not use soy sauce.
They used Maggie seasoning instead.
So my perception of what soy sauce was growing up was Maggie seasoning.
And as I became a more sophisticated cook and sophisticated eater, I found myself putting Maggi in tamales.
I put it on scrambled eggs.
I put it on noodles.
I put it in spaghetti sauce.
I put it in Bloody Marys.
It's absolutely fantastic in a Bloody Mary.
Yes. I do the same thing.
When I put my Maggi sauce in a Bloody Mary, I call it a Maggi Mary.
Sometimes I feel like I want to call it the MSG Mary, but I'm afraid that I'll scare people away.
Oh, yeah. Let me get a little bit edgy here.
Chinese people never have a problem with MSG.
I don't know if you ever buy that Ajinomoto, the powdered white stuff that you can buy at, like, Japanese grocery stores.
I put that on everything.
There's this scallion ginger sauce that, like, a lot of Cantonese folks love on their noodles.
And what you do is you take scallions and you take minced ginger and you take hot oil and you pour it over it.
I put MSG powder. I put some fish sauce and I put some like dried mushroom powder into it.
It's the most like savory umami sauce and I put it on poached chicken.
I put it on noodles.
It's like my new favorite all -purpose sauce and the secret to that is just MSG.
And do you remember when you first became aware that there was this stigma around MSG?
I remember there being some sort of stigma when I started hanging around white people.
Can I say that? Yeah, that's cool.
Because like, I grew up with obviously all Chinese folks, right?
And then when I went to my friend's house, you know, growing up in high school, growing up in a somewhat farming community outside Seattle, and you know, a lot of my friends were white.
And I remember their parents telling me how when they go to Chinese restaurants, they can't have, they request for no MSG.
And then I remember going to those restaurants and seeing that one of the things that they advertised themselves and they market themselves is that we are proudly don't serve MSG.
Having grown up with it such an integral part of the food in your home, how did it make you feel to see those signs?
MSG is not one of those things that we take pride in.
It's just in our food.
Like it's wallpaper to us, right?
Right. So there wasn't any undertow of like discrimination or like xenophobia, nothing at all like that.
All I thought was, gee, that's kind of stupid.
That's Kevin Pang. He's the man behind The Takeout, which is a really great new food and pop culture site from The Onion.
One quick note to add, there are nine varieties of Maggie's Sauce throughout the world today.
The American and Mexican versions are the only ones that don't have MSG in them, because consumers in those countries are more anti -MSG.
So you've got to order online or go to a specialty store to get one of the international brands with the good stuff in it.
Andrea Nguyen was born in Vietnam in 1969, in the middle of the Vietnam War.
Her family fled the country when she was six, settled in California.
For years, food was a hobby for Andrea, but over time, it became her career.
Today, she's the author of five cookbooks and she teaches cooking classes focusing on Vietnamese and Asian cuisine.
In her writing, she tries to debunk misconceptions about MSG while still offering people alternatives.
But before food became her work, she believed it too.
There were times when I ate a little bit too much dim sum when I went out.
Then I downed a bunch of tea and I was driving home with my husband and we got into fights and blamed it all on the Chinese restaurant syndrome.
MSG, just like everybody else did.
And it wasn't until I really delved deeply into how the flavors of things like Chinese food and dumplings were constructed that I was like, oh, that's just my body being sent into overload.
With sugar and salt and fat and carbs and everything.
Caffeine. Right. But when you were having those experiences with your husband, meanwhile, your mom is at the house you grew up in in Southern California cooking with MSG.
Yeah. So she still does.
Right. But so in that time where you were convinced that you had a sensitivity to MSG while your mom was cooking with it, did you guys ever talk about that?
No, we didn't, to tell you the truth.
Because you know what?
When I'm in my mother's house and everyone should remember this, you eat what your mother gives you to eat.
Right. But those times where you would eat your mom's home cooking back when you thought you had a sensitivity to MSG, did you ever have a reaction or perceived reaction to your mom's food?
No, I never had a reaction to my mother's food because as a home cook, she's really old school, man.
And, you know, even at 82 now, she still hand chops a lot of things.
And her use of MSG is very careful and measured.
To liberally use something like MSG is just bad, thoughtless cooking.
And my mom always added it to her pho broth.
She finished it always with a little fish sauce and MSG just to get the flavor she wanted.
it what role do you do you think it has played in this mythology that's been built up around msg especially in the u .s that it is perceived as an ingredient coming from asia there's a lot of mystery about asian food how do they get those flavors it's so exotic i don't understand the ingredients and techniques and yet at the same time no one's questioning say um italian food that employs Parmesan cheese and tomato, foods that are very high in glutamic acid.
You know, what makes pizzas taste so damn good?
Doritos, KFC, Pringles.
They have MSG in them.
So what do you think it says about people's perceptions of Asian people that this myth around MSG caught on so readily?
There's a part of me that goes back to this idea of people not understanding Asia, seeing Asian people as the yellow peril.
There are a lot of first generation immigrants to America who open up Asian restaurants because that's what they know how to do.
And they're looking at flavors that they're used to culturally.
And if there's MSG in it, there's MSG in it.
But there are a lot of other ingredients that are fermented, fermented soy products, kombu that the Japanese would use.
That's hard to explain sometimes.
And so when people don't understand something and also when the people who present that food may not be totally fluent in English and the social mores of Americans, all of a sudden it It becomes exotic, mysterious and easy to attack.
So I do think that there is this notion of, you know, there's a slight racist edge to it.
Let's just put it that way.
And I wish that people would get over it.
So Andrea grew up with MSG and she says in Vietnam, sometimes if you order that noodle soup pho, when you get your chilies and limes on the side, you also get a side of MSG.
Some places offer their own spice blend with salt and sugar and pepper and MSG and more all mixed together.
And even in some Asian restaurants in the U .S., you will find MSG on the table.
But that doesn't mean people in Vietnam are immune to misinformation.
Back in the 70s, when Andrea was a child there, she remembers people saying MSG will give you brain damage.
Many authentic Vietnamese recipes get that umami flavor from other sources of glutamate, like mushroom seasoning.
So it would be an oversimplification to say that everyone in Asia eats MSG all the time and loves it and everyone in America is clueless and or racist. As Andrea and I kept talking, it became clear that there's also a class dynamic in both places.
My cousin, who's my age, when I met her in, like, I don't know, 2010, she's a very sophisticated person who lives in Hanoi, was educated in the Soviet Union, and is very well off, very savvy culturally.
She said, I don't use MSG in my food.
As the country becomes wealthier, there is this notion of like, I don't want to have these additives in my food.
I think that sometimes we think of people in other countries, especially a developing country like Vietnam, as being fixed in their traditions.
You know, people aren't there squatting in rice paddies and wearing conical hats.
They're on the internet with their smartphones.
And, you know, they're aware of what's going on in the outside world and they're looking out for their health.
But isn't it interesting, Andrea, as I think about this, you know, I'm just kind of thinking out loud now.
Yeah. But but you're the connection between education and affluence and the rejection of an ingredient like MSG.
Forget whether you're in Vietnam or America.
In either case, you would think that if you were going to educate yourself about MSG, then you would find out that there's nothing wrong with it.
And yet people almost adopt it as a sign, as a status symbol of look at how educated and affluent I am, that I can eschew this ingredient.
Yes, that I can be better than to use MSG as a way to create spectacular flavor.
There is, you know, this thing of like, I have evolved to the point where I do not.
I'm totally living clean and pure.
It becomes about status and identity more so than food.
food? It does. You know, here's the other thing, too, is I oftentimes think that when people condemn others for using MSG, a lot of Asian food is considered cheap food.
And to get the kind of flavors that you want, sometimes there are little things that are used, condiments with, you know, high glutamic acid, a little MSG.
And, you know, that's like affordable food for people.
and so I think that there is like this thing of putting down people who may not be as well off as you do because there may be some MSG in that food so there are a lot of levels of discrimination that I sense when you know someone's going to go to a Chinese takeout joint and be hounding them with with questions about msg it's like you want the cheap chinese food or not that's andrea nguyen her latest cookbook is the pho cookbook and if you want to take one of her cooking classes wherever you are they're available on craftsy you buy andrea's class online you get the video you learn to make dumplings or pho
or whatever and then you own the class last forever.
You can use it as a resource.
All that info is at Andrea's website, vietworldkitchen .com.
If you want to experiment with MSG at home, the easiest way to get it is to look for Accent Seasoning in the spice section of your local supermarket.
Accent is MSG. You can also find Asian brands in specialty stores or online.
This show is produced by Anne Sani and me, editing help from Margaret Kelly, music help from Black Label Music.
This work was a production of Stitcher.
Our executive producers are Chris Bannon and Jenny Radelet.
Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.
Hi, this is Mark Pashan from Winston -Salem, North Carolina, reminding you to eat more, eat better and eat more better.
We'll be right back.
You can listen to The Sporkful on the SiriusXM app.
Yes, the SiriusXM app, it has all your favorite podcasts, plus over 200 ad -free music channels curated by genre and era, plus live sports coverage.
Does your podcasting app have that?
Then there's interviews with A -list stars and so much more.
It's everything you want in a podcast app and music app all rolled into one.
Right now, Sporkful listeners can get three months free of the SiriusXM app by going to SiriusXM .com slash Sporkful.
Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.
Thank you.
