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Comment by acchow | Hacker News Reader

I tried the Impossible Meats burger - it was nowhere near as tasty as a beef burger. I think it could be improved drastically by just adding a little MSG tho.

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Most burgers are improved with MSG, it is a miracle salt.

And msg is generally considered safe these days?

It's never not been safe.

wrong, this is what they used to synthesise MSG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrylonitrile

I believe some MSG is still made with this and causes migraines and other heart issues, it's mostly phased out though, and can cause mixed reactions as the type of MSG isn't labelled, let alone MSG.

Your link has no mention of the subject being directly used to manufacture MSG, and only mention a link to glutamic acid being used for syntheses of it. This is not adequate evidence that Acrylonitrile was ever present in commercial MSG.

there are two known methods, acrylonitrile and bacteria as per this article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monosodium_glutamate#Productio...

>this and causes migraines and other heart issues

Until you can provide a shred of evidence for that I will assume you're just adding a layer of legitimate-sounding abstraction to the same superstition. Toxic precursors =/= toxic end products. This is chemistry, not alchemy.

It's probably not harmful

http://theconversation.com/mondays-medical-myth-msg-is-a-dan...

http://www.businessinsider.com/is-msg-sodium-in-chinese-food...

Pretty much.

Is MSG safe to eat?

FDA considers the addition of MSG to foods to be “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS).

https://www.fda.gov/food/ingredientspackaginglabeling/foodad...

I think of it like gluten, or lactose, for most people its fine, but some people definately don't tolerate it and only they need to avoid it. If you have the enzymes required to process it then you're fine, if your genetics are missing something required for processing it then you'll have problems.

just like people with Phenylketonuria and aspartame. Aspartame contains Phenylalanine and can cause issues for some, and it varies from product to product (quality standards). I used to have issues from drinking cheap diet cola.

It's ben heavily studied for decades and the whole msg scare has no science to back it up. It's possible that some people have a sensitivity to MSG, but for >99.99÷ of the population, it's completely safe.

I buy shakers of it, it can be delicious in some meals.

MSG is Monosodium Glutamate, the sodium salt of glutamate. Glutamate is an amino acid common in food, I assure you you eat tons of glutamate on a daily basis. There's nothing inherently unsafe about it, and your body knows exactly what to do with it. In fact, your body is literally made with it.

That said glutamate is a neurotransmitter, so yeah you probably shouldn't inject large quantities or anything.

MSG itself is not a problem. Actually, it is so good, you can use lowest quality products, add some MSG and still get tasty meals. I avoid MSG precisely for this reason - I try to eat quality food and you may never know what's behind it when MSG is used.

Do you also avoid salt,because literally the exact same reasoning could be used for salt or any spices

If food in a restaurant is too salty or spicy, I accept that as a signal that chef might be trying to hide something. Contrary to the salt and spices, the problem with MSG that it's hard to tell how much of it was used just by tasting, that's why I try to avoid it at all. I do use salt and spices when I cook at home, but then I rarely have to question the quality of products used. For example, when I cook burger from quality beef, a pinch of salt and black pepper is all I need, then why do you think McDonald's etc. use MSG by the handfuls?

I also had the Impossible burger and was not impressed - to me, it was too greasy, and didn't have any real flavor of its own. I would not order it again for pretty much any reason - I actively disliked eating it.

I just want to point out that there are lots of ways to get umami. MSG is just one of them (and not really a great way IMHO).

I cooked vegan at home for a long time (I'm not actually an ethical vegan, I just like vegan food). Konbu dashi will give you similar glutamate profiles, but tomatoes, fermented products like shoyu and miso, etc are simple ways to boost the umami as well. Usually the biggest trick in good vegan food is to understand how to balance all of the flavours. Meat based cooking has so many savoury flavours, and if you simply cut out the meat, you end up with overly sweet/sour dishes. They lack depth. If you're designing a dish and you are waiting until the end to figure out how to get the umami in (for example, by adding MSG), then you're really not going to succeed most of the time IMHO. If I want a savoury dish, umami is where I start.

Having said that, I've never made a vegan burger style dish that I've thought was particularly good. I've had some excellent vegan dishes like that at restaurants and I've always wondered how they did it. Since MSG triggers migraines in me, I'm pretty sure it wasn't MSG :-)

MSG consumption has never been linked to physical symptoms in a double blind test.[0] It's an abundantly occurring natural amino acid. Kombu dashi is one of the foods where the flavor of MSG was originally identified as umami because it contains MSG.

[0]http://www.fda.gov/food/ingredientspackaginglabeling/foodadd...

MSG can be made using toxic chemicals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrylonitrile

I make a black bean / brown rice / sweet potato with cumin vege burger that tastes pretty good

Most of the things you list as MSG alternatives actually contain MSG; like tomatoes, konbu dashi, and many fermented products.

Yeah, a lot of times you'll see MSG in ingredients lists as "hydrolysed vegetable protein", or "hydrolysed soy protein". And that's exactly what you're getting in soy sauce, or tomatoes, or konbu dashi -- naturally produced MSG.

One is L-shaped (artificial and flavour enhancing) the other is natural.

http://science.jrank.org/pages/4433/Monosodium-Glutamate-MSG...

Since when is "natural vs artificial" evidence of relative healthiness, or even a logical basis for comparison at all? You have numerous comments in this thread all drawing on the same fallacy that some MSG can be "good" and some can be "bad" when that is inherently impossible.

Producing a URL with the word "science" in it ending in .org is not sufficient evidence. Find a single empirical datapoint or published study, otherwise stop spreading fearmongering speculation. Do you concern yourself with which table salt to buy because it may be "bad NaCl"?

Surely the flavour enhancing one must be the natural one, or else meat wouldn't have the umami taste, or am I missing something?

it's all about the quality of the MSG and the manufacturing standards. if you added MSG to foods yourself, you'd know which brands to use or avoid.

A friend in LA got my brother and I to try impossible burgers (he's pescatarian, I'm vegawarian): we agreed it was not that great.

What does vegawarian mean?

A shibboleth

I assumed it was a typo, but apparently its an actual term. Basically vegetarian-friendly. Sounds a bit buzzword-y, but I like the concept.

https://www.greenprophet.com/2009/01/vegewarianism/

I'm aware vegetables are better.

Time to bust out that jar of msg then, or just eat it with seaweed instead of lettuce or something.

I'm thinking a black and blu burger. Most of the flavor comes from the Cajun spice and the blue cheese so all it has to do is get the mouth feel right. It's the burger Turing test.

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