MSG – a vegan pantry essential – makes a comeback

Restaurants felt the need to put these labels on their menus because of one letter published in the “New England Journal of Medicine” in 1968. Dr. Robert Ho Man Kwok, a Chinese American living in Maryland, wrote in to complain of the numbness, palpitations and general ill-feeling he experienced upon eating at Chinese restaurants in the United States. The publication made the decision to run it under the heading “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome,” and a diagnosis as well as a stigma were born. It would take decades to restore the reputation of powdered MSG as a cooking ingredient and dissipate the xenophobic connotations that plagued it.

Chef Calvin Eng of Brooklyn’s Cantonese American restaurant Bonnie’s is taking that reclamation effort to the next level with his new book: “Salt, Sugar, MSG: Recipes and Stories from a Cantonese American Home.” “As a lover and user of MSG on a massive scale, I choose to proudly advertise my use of it not only in the dishes on my menu at Bonnie’s but also in a heart-shaped tattoo on the back of my arm,” he writes in the introduction. “It just makes food taste good.”

That MSG had ever been considered unnatural and even detrimental to human health is fascinating given its utterly natural and innocuous origin: sea kelp. In 1908, Japanese chemist Ikeda Kikunae, who had trained in the field of organic chemistry in Germany, isolated the ingredient from kelp that provided the deep, unique flavor to kombu dashi, a very common Japanese broth. Through this development, he eventually coined the term “umami,” which has come to be overused and misunderstood. While it’s a notoriously difficult word to translate into English, it is widely characterized as a rich savoriness.

Indeed, umami’s essence is the very effect MSG has on food. The places where it occurs naturally — such as Parmesan, tomatoes, soy sauce, anchovies, beef and cured meats — are utterly unique. When one is trying to eat more plant-based, MSG can deliver the umami one might otherwise get from animal products, thus making meatless dishes more satisfying. MSG’s unique ability to impart umami to many types of dishes is what makes it such a singular ingredient — and a star of vegan recipe development. Glutamic acid, the amino acid of which MSG is the powdered salt version, is what gives nutritional yeast its cheesy flavor. As anyone who’s made vegan recipes knows, nutritional yeast — affectionately referred to as “nooch” — is one of the first new ingredients that gets added to the pantry. It’s used in place of Parmesan in pestos and to flavor cashew-based “cheese” sauces. Nooch’s popularity might help explain why MSG is increasingly embraced as an easy staple in vegan kitchens: Shaad D’Souza, writing for “Bon Appétit” in 2021, chronicled how a shake or two would make otherwise simple dishes like dal and scrambled tofu sing.

In 2024, a cucumber salad went viral on TikTok. Creator Logan Moffitt became known as the “cucumber guy” for his simple way of making the common vegetable delicious. Moffitt had people buying mandolines just for this dish — and he also made very matter-of-fact use of the once-maligned MSG in the ingredients among the soy sauce, sugar, sesame oil, scallion and sesame seeds. This viral moment and Eng’s forthcoming book suggest that MSG’s reputation is finally coming full circle, and vegans are undoubtedly beneficiaries.