Product Description
Monosodium glutamate, also known as sodium glutamate and MSG, is a sodium salt of the non-essential amino acid glutamic acid. It is used as a food additive and is commonly marketed as a flavour enhancer. It has the HS code 29224220 and the E number E621. Trade names of monosodium glutamate include Vetsin, and Accent.
Pure MSG is not reported to have a highly pleasant taste until it is combined with a savory odor.[Manuf. 8] The basic sensory function of MSG is attributed to its ability to enhance the presence of savoury taste-active compounds when included at the right concentration.
The optimum concentration varies with the type of food; in clear soup, the pleasantness score rapidly falls with more than 1 g of MSG per 100 ml.There is also an interaction between MSG and salt (sodium chloride), and other umami substances such as nucleotides.
With these properties, MSG can be used to reduce salt intake (sodium), which predisposes to hypertension, heart diseases and stroke.By adding MSG appropriately, salt can be reduced by 30 to 40 percent without a perceived reduction in saltiness.
The sodium content (in mass percent) of MSG is roughly a third of the amount (12%) than in sodium chloride (39%). Other salts of glutamate have been used in low-salt soups, but with a lower palatability than MSG.
MSG was classified by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as generally recognized as safe (GRAS) and by the European Union as a food additive. MSG has the HS code 29224220 and the E number E621.
The L-glutamate form of MSG confers the same umami taste of free L-glutamate naturally found in foods.[1] Industrial food manufacturers market and use MSG as a flavor enhancer because it balances, blends and rounds the total perception of other tastes.
MSG has been used for more than 100 years to season food. During this period, many studies have been conducted on the safety of MSG. At this point, international and national bodies for the safety of food additives consider MSG safe for human consumption as a flavor enhancer. The "MSG symptom complex" was originally termed the "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome" when Robert Ho Man Kwok anecdotally reported the symptoms he felt after an American-Chinese meal. Kwok suggested multiple reasons behind the symptoms, including alcohol from cooking with wine, the sodium content, or the MSG seasoning. But MSG became the focus and the symptoms have been associated with MSG ever since. The effect of wine or salt content was not studied. With the years, the list of non-specific symptoms has grown on anecdotal grounds. In normal conditions, humans have the ability to metabolize glutamate that has a very low acute toxicity. The oral lethal dose to 50% of subjects (LD50) is between 15 to 18 g/kg body weight in rats and mice respectively, five times greater than the LD50 of salt (3 g/kg in rats). Therefore, the intake of MSG as a food additive and the natural level of glutamic acid in foods do not represent a toxicological concern in humans.
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