What is your feeling on MSG?

[MrsWalton]

Just wondering.

It makes me feel ill, like a hangover the day fter i've eaten it. So I feel it's pants.

Poison!

It wakes me up in the night, wakes the DCs up, makes me also feel hungover.

In our town, there is only 1 take away that guarantees no MSG, that's the one I use.

I'm never too sure what it does? Does it thicken sauces?

MSG is a food additive added to food to give it a better flavour and is found in a lot of fast and snack foods ...

Personally, it is on the list with aspartame - to be avoided or at best limited ...

It's a flavour enhancer, used quite freely in much of Asia and added to processed foods here, especially those aimed at children. Eg. in my local supermarket, Pooh Bear crisps contained MSG whereas the normal adult plain ones didn't.

It also tends to create dependancy, hence the feeling of wanting to immediately consume another packet of prawn cocktail crisps as soon as you finish the first one.

Aah I see...that's why takeaway's are so moreish then?

Its banned in my house as far as possible, as is aspartame. Sends DS hyper. I make conscious effort to look at lables, occasionally something slips through. It would be good if the big name crisp manufacturers could take it out of their crisps cos we have supermarkets own brabd potato crisps here.

It makes me crazy thirsty in the middle of the night after a take away.
It's on the list of things to avoid when preg.

OOps sorry, i forgot i asked the question. I too think its a bit scary. But after eating 4 packets of a cheesy snack, i took a look at the ingredients to see what they contained.

After some googling, i discovered that MSG goes under a lot of different names. Hydrolyzed vegetable protein and yeast extract are just two of them.

So the much used Bovril, Marigold boullion powder and Lea and Perrins Woustershire (sp?) sauce all contain these same flavour enhancers.

So what is the alternative, if you try to avoid these kind of products in your cooking?

Um, yeast extract is marmite, not msg, although some food producers have been accused of masquerading one for the other in the past. Msg was originally derived from seaweed, nowadays it's derived from fermenting carbohydrates - starches or sugars. Hydrolised vegetable protein is usually soya based and nothing to do with msg, although pretty toxic in itself.

If you're in doubt, then avoid all stock cubes - make your own stock (boil/steam veg or boil up meat bones, flavour with a teaspoon of marmite, soy sauce or simply just salt) or else use miso. Avoid processed foods as much as possible and you should be able to limit your intake.

MSG makes me go mmmmmmmmmm. That's what it does. The local ethnic supermarket has it in bags, also named 'chinese salt'. I'm almost tempted to put some in a recipe to see if it tastes better than normal.

I've just looked up the yeast extract thing: yeast extract (Marmite or non-branded equivalent) naturally contains quite a lot of glutamate. It's not just an additive, it's a naturally-occurring thing. Parmesan has quite a lot too.