Why you shouldn’t fear MSG, an unfairly maligned and worthwhile seasoning

As Tia Rains, vice president of customer engagement and strategic development for Ajinomoto, explained it, when you add MSG to a liquid, its two components separate. “So then you just have free sodium floating around and then free glutamate, which is why the glutamate that’s naturally present in tomatoes, Parmesan cheese, asparagus, corn, you name it, is the same as the glutamate that’s coming from the MSG,” she said. “It just gets added to the pool. The chemical structure is identical. It’s like saying that the water that’s coming from your iced tea is somehow different from the water that’s coming from your coffee.”