Contrary to what you’ll hear from industry (which includes the majority of Internet and news stories as well as YouTube videos), monosodium glutamate (a.k.a. MSG) isn’t made from natural products like sugar cane and tapioca, corn starch, sugar beets or molasses. That’s not how Ajinomoto – the world’s largest producer of MSG – has been making it in the U.S. since 1957. For over 60 years MSG has been produced using carefully selected genetically modified bacteria that excrete glutamic acid through their cell walls.
And, contrary to Glute propaganda, that’s not how wine, beer, vinegar and yogurt are made.
Glutamic acid (a.k.a. glutamate) is the active ingredient in MSG. It’s glutamate that triggers glutamate receptors in the mouth and on the tongue, causing them to swell, so to speak, giving the food with which the MSG is ingested a bigger, more robust, taste, than it would have without it.
There’s nothing natural about MSG. It’s manufactured.
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