COLUMBIA — Monosodium glutamate, known as MSG, is a savory ingredient — with a history of unsavory treatment. Discovered and popularized across East Asia, but now an internationally recognized flavor enhancer, MSG's crystalized form can be mixed into ground beef, stirred into sauces and tossed into stir fries. But across South Carolina, "NO MSG" signs are plastered across restaurant windows and websites.
The cause of this ingredient aversion, history suggests, stems from an anti-Asian racist myth that dates back to the 1960s. Japanese chemist Kikunae Ikeda discovered MSG when he became curious about what gave kombu, a species of edible kelp, its distinctive savory flavor, according to CNN . He boiled it down and extracted the component, glutamate, and added sodium to form MSG as we know it today.
"It makes food taste more like itself, and enhances the flavors that are naturally there," said Kay MacInnis, a registered dietitian at Lexington Medical Center. A year after Ikeda's initial experiment, Ikeda's MSG was on its way to becoming a household name. But just over 60 years later, an under-400-word blurb published in the April 1968 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine would tarnish MSG's reputation for decades to come.
Former trustee Howard Steel wrote a letter to the Journal under the pseudonym "Dr. Ho Man Kwok," in which he described suffering from a laundry list of physical ailments after eating at a Chinese restaurant, according to Colgate Magazine . He refe.
