So, having said that if you have dinner at my place, I may poison you with MSG (and, if someone told me they were allergic, I’d never use it!) I have cooked some phenomenal dishes using MSG as a finishing spice to sauces and stews, in salad dressings and other things.

Do I need it? This question plagues me. I’m a great cook, and use great ingredients always. Let it stand on its own? Well, it tastes better sometimes with a little “Sweet Powder” in it. Is that bad? 3 billion people don’t think so. Are they wrong? If you read the history, it was a seaweed extract originally. Kombo. If I said my spaghetti sauce had Kombo in it would you put it back on the shelf? Probably. The thing is that really great ingredients trump MSG every time. And the other thing that is also true is that if you add a little MSG, and, if you add a lot it tastes like Chicken N A Biscuit, if you just add a little then it tastes better.

I’m a cook. I want my food to taste good. Real MSG allergics are rare. I guess I’m rationalizing using Accent. Ah, just blow me.

MSG is often abused in dishes by some cooks, where in used in large amounts, gets a bad rap. I know of many cooks out there that use ridiculous amounts of it (cup fulls), and I think that’s irresponsible and dangerous. I don’t think it’s necessary to use MSG in food, but do not think it deserves the bad rap that it gets. Just like all the sauces out there on the market, they’re used to flavor and when used moderately, can enhance foods, similar to MSG. Folks don’t realize it, but even though they avoid MSG, they eat those sauces that has tons of it, or some variation of MSG.

I personally do not cook with MSG, but grew up eating it for a short time in my parents cooking. Since all the MSG awareness years ago, my parents have completely eliminated MSG in their a long time ago for the health reasons. But that’s what they grew up cooking with in VietNam, with loads of MSG.

Slowly but surely, all the Viet cooks I know are avoiding it like the plague, although some of them still believe in sprinkling a little bit in as a light enhancer. But when I’m in VietNam, I see it used liberally. Again, slowly but surely, the news spreads and folks start to slowly eliminate it. My Aunt in VN avoids it all together, while my cousins still use it, cautiously.

I suppose I would say that I am indifferent because although I do not cook with it, I know MSG exists in so many of the processed/ junk foods that I eat! And I certainly do not give up on that! But I’ve had meals that has WAY too much of it and it makes me sick and bloated.

I would encourage cooks to not cook with it and try to use alternative, natural flavoring methods. But I would not be against eating food that someone fed me where they believed that a bit of it would make their cooking better. I’d still eat what they cook! As long as I don’t “taste” the MSG, I’m all good with their food.

Otherwise, it really makes no difference to me, taste or flavour wise. I would rather not have it though

When eating asian foods outside the home msg may be virtually unavoidable, but I find that I tend to avoid places where the food has a heavy artificial after taste or gives me headaches.

Yes this is a pretty extreme reaction, as I know most people have no reaction at all. Needless to say I avoid MSG at all costs!!