Pinoy home-cooked meals are no longer free from MSG

We generally don't use any MSG when cooking at home. Our family is very much aware that every time we eat out, we probably get a lot of MSG from the cooked food we buy. We do make a conscious effort to avoid using MSG, so we worry a little less about health risks associated with it.


I do find a little disturbing this current trend of openly promoting the use of MSG. In past months I hardly ever paid attention to the advertising, but now that I stop to think about it, I do recall that Ajinomoto has been aggressively promoting the umami-taste concept that glutamates deliver, Maggi has been encouraging consumers to sprinkle Magic Sarap on fried egg and rice, and Knorr has been trying to create the impression that its Real Sarap product brings a “real” goodness to food owing to some real herbs and spices in its mix. The first brand tries to persuade you with science, the second brand with an unapologetic approach that simply extends to the home what is already happening in tapsilogans everywhere, and the third brand pitching “real” deliciousness even though the primary source of such deliciousness is still the MSG (i.e., if you remove the MSG and left only the “real herbs and spices,” will the improvement in taste still be significant or marginal?). At least the first two do not have any pretensions of being something they're not.


With products like these, who needs skills in the kitchen, right?


Kidding aside, this home invasion of MSG is not a good thing. It's the lazy way to make your family like your cooking. It's too much of a shortcut in trying to make your kids eat more. It certainly won't make you a better cook, parent or spouse.

Monosodium glutamate or MSG is a flavor enhancer that has caused adverse reactions known as MSG symptom complex on some individuals who have some degree of sensitivity to its presence in food. Throbbing headaches, a burning sensation at the back of the neck, even chest pain have been reported to follow the ingestion of MSG-laden foods. Though many people don't show any adverse reactions of this sort, concern over any risks MSG may pose on health still prevails partly because large doses have indeed been found to destroy brain cells in developing mice – the very reason why MSG is kept out of foods for babies.


The home is the only place left where today's children could avoid MSG and be healthier for it. Learn to cook better for them if you really love them.

(By the way, remember that post I wrote about the list of product ingredients telling you that there is more of the first ingredient than the second, there is more of the second than the third, there's more of the third than the fourth, and so on? Well, both Maggi Magic Sarap and Knorr Real Sarap have MSG second only to salt on the list out of many ingredients. So whatever herbs and spices are supposedly in these mixes, there's less of them than there is MSG.)

Napurnadang Sinangag, MSG, and Unsolicited Advice

I was looking at liquid seasonings in the supermarket and saw that they all have monosodium glutamate or MSG plus some other flavor enhancer or spices. Despite my having looked forward to buying a bottle to use on my breakfast sinangag, I hesitated, and finished shopping without buying any liquid seasoning. I already get more than my fair share of MSG when I eat out with family and friends.

Thanks to the internet there is now a greater public awareness of possible health risks associated with MSG consumption. Though I won't tackle the details of such health risks now on this post, I do have a little advice for those who figure they should avoid MSG as well.

When avoiding products with MSG, check the label. The law requires that the presence of MSG be indicated on the ingredients panel of the product label, so see if you'll find it there.

If for some reason, MSG is just unavoidable, here's an invaluable tip: The earlier an ingredient is mentioned on the ingredients panel of a product label (specifically on standard English language labels that read left to right), the greater the quantity of that ingredient by weight compared to the ingredients that follow it.

This means if you have four ingredients mentioned, say, water, salt, soy sauce, and monosodium glutamate, shown in that order, then for that product there's more water than salt, there's more salt than soy sauce, there's more soy sauce than monosodium glutamate.

So when looking at two competing products that have similar ingredients, you'll want to pick the product that places MSG as close to the last as possible.

BTW, this confirms my earlier suspicion that Knorr seasoning has MSG. And to think when I was a kid I used to consume bottles of it like it was some kind of beverage.