201101481 Jean Park/ MSG, the Best Ingredient/ Thurs56

MSG, the Best Ingredient        Have you ever thought about why homemade dishes are always less delicious and tasteful compare to the ones sold by the restaurant? Most of the people may have assumed the secret of those restaurant dishes; it's an artificial flavor enhancer, which we often call it 'MSG'. The MSG has an intolerable attractiveness but it's also known for unhealthy ingredient that makes people fat and sick. However, it has scientifically approved that MSG has nothing do with fretting people's health and the actual effects of the MSG is unknown, thus the truth will be discussed below.      First of all, MSG is not the artificial flavor enhancer but in fact, it came from natural food ingredients. MSG is the abbreviation form of Monosodium L - Glutamate and it is made from the sugarcane. The glutamate and sodium got mixed together to make both sweet and salty tastes that eventually made the food with savory tastes. In addition, people have neglected the fact that actually lots of vegetables and meats contain MSG. For example, tomatoes, green beans, corns and Farmasan cheese contains more than 1,000 ppm of MSG but we eat these food ingredients every day in our life.      Another misconception of MSG is it's fatal to men's health. However, it was denied by the Food and Drugs Administration but this misinformation got widely known because the Chinese Restaurant Syndrome was reported in 1968. At that time, many customers felt sick and wamble after eating Chinese dishes and researchers concluded that it's because of the MSG. From that time, most of companies advertised their products as 'free MSG' and that made consumers to think that MSG is harmful the human body.      Finally, there are researches proved avoiding the use of MSG affects people to put more salts to make pungent flavors. This means there are chances that people can eat more salty dishes and eventually it will cause negative effects on their body. According to the scientific studies, salt has higher lethal dose than the MSG and even less than the Vitamin 12 and Vitamin C. Although overuse should be allowed, an adequate amount of MSG can bring a great taste. Without all these scientific facts, why not use the MSG when it makes our food just as same as some old and popular restaurants.      To conclude, despite the fact that MSG does not affect to our health, still many people hesitate to use the ingredient. But the truth is MSG is made up from natural sources and it does exist in many food ingredients. It's just that wrong information and cognition made people prejudiced and refused to use in homemade cooks. Since it came out that MSG is not harmful, at least we don't have to worry about ingest MSG thinking as artificial ingredients and enjoy the meal!