MSG and Umami

[Applause] thank you guys um it's an honor being back it's true I played golf but that was not supposed to be part of today's uh Symposium um uh really glad to be back um talking about MSG and Umami um the slide behind me says delicious or evil and I can think of no other food ingredient or additive at least in the western culture that is as vilified and as basically a pariah as much as monosodium glutamate is anyone in here allergic to MSG anybody raise your hand sir there do you mind do you want to taste something for me please can I put you on the spot um the reality is there are a lot of people that hate Asian food there are a lot of people that hate our food at momu fuku there recently was a guest that came in about a couple months ago and was complaining to the staff that we were adding MSG to our food at Noodle Bar she was angry she was so angry she was saying she had headaches she was sweating heart pilations basically Chinese restaurant syndrome she was allergic to MSG um I wanted to the next day say on the menu if you think you're allergic to MSG please assume that we do put our put MSG in our food because uh all evidence suggests that MSG is not harmful to you you would think otherwise um because everywhere you go it says we don't add MSG but no one ask the question is MSG actually bad for you in fact this this whole Symposium is about appetite MSG is something that helps you think something is more delicious it is in so many fast food items it's in Doritos uh in actuality I'll get into the structure of it a little bit later um glutamic acid is in everything it's in your brain we have a glutamic uh receptor in our stomach it's one of the few things that when we eat food we can actually our stom stomach can detect glutamic acid um obviously our brain it's in our brain without glutamic acid we cannot function as humans um and of course recently it's been more well known as and documented as Umami the fifth taste on our taste buds salt sweet sour bitter and Umami that savoriness that meatiness that we all look after we all we all are trying to create in our own kitchens at home trying to make something delicious and reverse engineered from their and this this this molecule the strand of amino acid glutamic acid um what we know is right here it's just a salt it's a salt one sodium molecule attached to a GL glutamic acid and that's what we get that's why people assume that MSG salty well it is it's a salt and more importantly it's a delicious salt and if we were make if I was demoing I was going to make you a Dashi and we reduced it down to crystallized form you know what we'd have we'd have this it'd be the same thing uh our bodies if if I had you guys eat this and I thought about doing this which is basically just pure MSG or some of these fermented products that the kitchen uh the Nordic Food Lab by uh created by Lars here um you know fermented foods is one of the food groups High very high in uh glutamic acid and if high in in Umami our bodies would process it the same so if I gave you a teaspoon of MSG and I gave you the same amount of glutamic acid equivalent of in miso your body would process it the same way yet everyone in here probably wouldn't have a problem eating MSG I mean uh miso or they wouldn't have no problem with soy sauce but there is a group of diners that tend to not eat Asian food so I'm not saying anyone's wrong here I'm just saying I'm attaching this to culture American culture and there seems to be uh uh this Urban myth this this idea that I can't eat Asian food because I'm going to get a headache it's just going to make me feel bad um it's gonna you know Chinese restaurant syndrome and the funny thing is is um in the late 60s an Asian doctor not an Asian doctor an Asian man wrote to the New England Journal of Medicine saying that he found a pattern every time he eats Chinese food with him uh W with his friends he he got these these terrible sort of conditions and it was in the you know a editorial letter and nobody questioned it it just became part of American food culture that MSG is bad for you and and we're now 50 years later going back to uh this lady at Momo fuku and uh the reason why I'm talking about MSG and Umami so much is my own staff was hesitant and reluctant to say that you know confidently we're not adding MSG but it was such a taboo topic nobody really wanted to discuss it or or educate the customer or even educate themselves about it because it was just a assume that it's a terrible thing there can you think of any other ingredient that is assumed to be bad you wouldn't add it to your food you know I can't think of any other food ingredient everyone assumes it's bad let's assume that it's bad why ask the question why is it bad for you you know find me some evidence that proves that it's bad for you the evidence is overwhelmingly against you that all data suggests that MSG is not harmful to you in fact people consume it on in large amounts so the same people and I'm talking about friends some friends that are here some friends that are not chefs people that say they uh are allergic to MSG will happily dip their Sushi and soy sauce and eat a miso soup and you know what like two of the highest things that have two food ingredients that are extraordinarily high in MSG are Marmite and Vite um people are slathering their toast with Marmite in the mornings you know that's just a healthy dose of umami so for me the way I'm looking at Umami it's the same way as I look at MSG and it's one and the same and you know at the restaurant obviously we don't add MSG we naturally harness it and I think everyone here is familiar with ways you can harness it parmesan is high in MSG Tomatoes foods that are naturally high in amino acids amino acid uh MSG is a non-essential amino acid but I think it is an essential amino acid for cooks and chefs um we make stocks we we we we added a you know KOMU uh seaweed is actually you cannot find a food group that has higher with natural glutamic acid which is why you see it in Dashi which is why we build most of our stocks with kuu almost all of our Foods were actually trying to find that appetizing delicious factor that is Umami but we still don't add MSG to our food and I'm not saying I'm an expert on MSG I'm not you know just like most of you I did poorly in school I slept through chemistry I have no idea really what I'm talking about but you know I I I I'm lucky enough to have a lot of friends that are smarter that are doctorates in chemistry in microbiology and I ask and there's only one person that says that uh you know there is potentially a way that people are allergic not allergic to MSG but they have a tolerance issue to it you know our all of our bodies have uh not M but glutamic acid a level of glutamate and it's possible that eating Umami heavy Foods May throw that out of balance but again that that is until until I have some data out there until I can see it on paper and it's fact or you know that it's overwhelming evidence I'm not going to change my opinion I'm not going to base it on some cultural myth I'm not going to serve my I'm not going to serve food to uh you know my customers without it being properly researched and at least having an understanding of food and you know a simple drawing but our bodies consume MSG and Umami in the same way you know uh I again some people don't like vitamins all that much but when you consume a vitamin C tablet your body processes it in the same way that when you drink orange juice no one I mean yes there are a small group of people that are against supplements and stuff like that but I'm sure I could come up with a better uh analogy but it's it's something I mean Lars even said that I don't know if it's uh I I couldn't find the study but I think this one was actually most significant was uh human breast milk is was I think it's 10 times 10 times as high I actually had like a when we talking about this uh yesterday we had sort of this uh Umami trivia um Q off and one of the things we're talking about is that human breast milk has 10 times more uh Umami or glutamic acids than uh cow's milk and I think that's a really great um indicator of why we sort of seek these flavors out in our food I mean we are actually metabolized to processes in a really fundamental way and we seek them out it's part of like why we cook why we uh became smarter as humans because we were able to cook and it's why this is one of the major things that we seek for right and so from an early age literally we're nurtured on glutamic acid we that's what we find is delicious you eat a bag of Doritos you know why it's delicious not the cheesy flavor it's because because it's coded in MSG and that's why we're trying to make Dashi that's why everyone's so enamored with sort of Asian products because it has that sort of punch that we just don't find in other food groups and it's it's what literally is appetizing it is something that is mindboggling to me that is still there's so much literally uh push back from uh Western culture um especially since seems like we're nurtured on it we have evolved to have a receptor for it in our stomach and our brains can't function without it and it is one of the fifth taste buds um you know so you have to ask yourself these questions all right like is MSG really bad for you I I always use the dry age beef analogy exactly I mean who if you have a piece of uh sort of raw ham and then you can be compare airo or Parma to it it's there such a such a difference and that's what we're talking about and that's this Umami flavor that's MSG basically encapsulated that you you take a very simple but elegant processes in terms of enhancing the MSG and things and you basically get this Beaker of salt right you're dry when we dry Edge beef when we eat that beautiful beautiful Iberico ham when we eat a wheel of Parmesan when we eat soy sauce when we uh are eating uh like reconstituting dried mushrooms these are all food groups that are extraordinarily high in natural Umami um you we're drying that piece of beef not just to make it a little bit more tender but to have an enzymatic reaction where the proteins are going to turn into an amino acid that amino acid is glutamate the reason where we find it more delicious is because it is higher in glutamic acid than it was in its previous state that's why it's so delicious right and other reasons OB viously cured meats which is why you can inoculate it with microbes to to create that to to further help that process of uh uh microbial entic reaction um because I it's just so hard for me to explain to people uh or at least to my own staff uh something that's an analogy for them to understand that okay wait I I like dry almost Everyone likes dry H beef why do I like it more so uh the question I have is not really that you should go back to your kitchens and and dump MSG and everything but the question really is is twofold one is OB obviously um you know we need to know more about it two is uh there's this strange placebo effect with Chinese restaurant syndrome I mean people think that they're eating I mean there a lot of studies that have been done for this actually where you think that you're eating MSG but you're not and obviously the placebo effect is they think they have the symptoms and they don't so um you know yet all of this is still based on cultural uh beliefs food myths and if anything the past 20 some odd years since Harold McGee since fan since hon all these great chefs started cooking almost everything that we've held to be true culturally about food have proven to be wrong right we've only done that because we've questioned we've asked why is something a certain way yet we've done that with techniques and everything almost every ingredient yet we are stopping with probably the biggest outlier of them all which is MSG and Umami there is such little understanding of it on a natural level and it's so vilified on an artificial level that I find that it is um it's it should be a microcosm of of where we need to be and it's why we're all here today because we need to continually question and to get better and to further our education and being more knowledgeable is never a bad thing that's something that Wy defra has always taught me and I've always learned is uh uh myself as well right um if we know I mean that's I'll just leave it at this if if MSG is so bad for us can we explain why is it bad for us and I don't think anyone in this room can really tell me that and uh that that's all I want people to do is to to to start questioning the things that we take for granted you know we've gotten so far in the food world and food has improved so much and unless we start questioning and asking why certain things are the way they are I don't think we're going to match that Improvement and continue to improve so uh thank you much guys okay okay we've got uh we've got some time for questions so hands in the air over here we got some questions hi um I'm wondering it's it's a very bold thing that you've come and talked about uh this morning and I I really applaud that it's very interesting now how much work in the Nordic food lab and in in in top kitchens all around the the world are basically experimenting with different versions of the Umami flavor using all sorts of different ingredients um the underlying assumption on the part of all the chefs involved in those experiments is that uh some naturally synthesized version of umami something that comes from a clever combination or reduction of ingredients in a kitchen is ultimately more exciting on the human pallet than the bolt-on reduced form of of uh synthetic MSG so would you would you be of the view that even if artificially synthesized MSG is not bad for us it's still likely to be less interesting gastronomically than the kind of umami that we all strive in our kitchens to create through creativity um it's a heavy question and I'm going to give you maybe an indirect response if if that's the case where it's not as delicious per se as using natural MSG then why would you're going to you're presuming that when you make a a dish you're going to use salt right Florida cell Malden variet something to season your food my question to you is why wouldn't we season that with MSG it is a salt in itself as well right most of the most of the salt you used is is is not natural it's it's denatured in itself so it's it's a it's a question it it literally makes food more delicious why would I not add it you know you use salt so you can actually you know flavor it as well you have two things in one so that's why I I I don't I don't have the perfect answer but um certainly I'm not in my own kitchens obviously I'm not going to say hey dump this can of MSG in the stock it's going to make it better obviously that's true but the reason we're here is we want to take the slow approach we want to make food the right way but I want to be able to tell my cook the reason we're not adding MSG to this dish is because of this this and this and I want those answers as well yeah I mean I think that uh one of the one of what David is saying is like we don't ever want to use crutches in the kitchen we're always looking for inventive ways of pursuing flavor um and using sort of fermentation techniques to have the primary metabolic pathways which is this Umami flavor but then the the secondary and tertiary flavonoids which are produced in those metabolic pathways are what creates a really interesting flavor and I think what we're always searching for but I mean there's nothing wrong with it but we certainly don't ever pursue crutches okay we have a question here hang on for the microphone s MSG is a very simple molecule uh and it is synthetic MSG is identical chemically to what natural MSG we know I work on how people react to Natural people think Natural Things taste better if they're told it's natural they'll say it tastes better even if it isn't natural so there is absolutely no reason to believe that in this particular case that synthetic MSG is any different from natural MSG but people will respond to it differently if they believe it's natural absolutely thank you uh okay no no it's funny how things are marketed to you and it's funny if you look at say like Time Life magazine and the 1930s and 40s like Wrigley's chewing gum it's just a regular chewing gum in America I don't know if it's available outside of America but they're advertising that it's flavored with artificial flavors it was the cool new thing in 1930 and 40s right please eat this gum because it's got fake flavor all right now it's all about hey it's natural flavors it's funny how things work out but if we continue to not question the status quo especially the culinary status quo all of which we're in we're never going to progress so uh it certainly helps when experts can voice it because it is such a taboo subject people don't really want to talk about it okay it's a guy here who's had his hand up for quite a while if we can get the microphone there hif Sor sorry for the question but what do you think about biodynamics biodynamics yeah I I know nothing about buy n okay that's the shortest answer we're going to get today uh maybe another question from this kind of area here in the front David please how you describe the feeling uh the sensation we feel tasting Foods heavy inami well the the Dimitri asked what is it about food that makes it taste Umami uh I think it's something that you crave it it actually is so fitting for the title for this Symposium appetite it literally is what the food that you want to eat and um you know Italians eat it all the time when they eat pasta with tomato sauce and Parmesan that is one of the highest Umami bombs you could eat um so people tend to think that it's salty but you know that's because usually it's in a dried fermented food product if you eat anything that's fermented whether it's fish sauce or uh a fermented miso from the Nordic Food Lab that's naturally going to be salty because that's how you create it so it's sort of one and the same so there's a salty meaty flavor um uh you know Dashi is another simple thing how can something so light have as much body as like a ve stock you know it's it's it's very fascinating to me thanks guys w