Is this the MSG comeback summary
- MSG faced decades of stigma sparked by 1960s claims
- Chefs and researchers are driving renewed consumer openness towards MSG
- Honest Umami promotes transparent MSG use with convenient foodie‑focused seasonings
- Supermarket resistance and trademark disputes create early hurdles for growth
- Rising comfort with Asian cuisine supports mainstream potential for MSG
When a letter appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1968 claiming that consumption of MSG could be to blame for the spread of what the author dubbed “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome”, it sparked an international backlash against the ingredient.
Until that point MSG – or Monosodium Glutamate – had been widely embraced as a flavour enhancer in the US and Europe, used in both commercial and domestic kitchens.
But, with both rising anti-Asian rhetoric as a result of the Vietnam War and steadily growing concern around the use of what were perceived as chemicals in food, the letter’s publication lit a spark in public sentiment, explains Rob Miller, co-founder at Honest Umami. “It’s something that was already there,” he says. “The idea that this chemical found in Asian food is poisonous for you was something that lots of people in America were prepared to believe.”
It was a belief that quickly spread to European countries too. In the 1970s, both restaurants and manufacturers slowly began to remove the ingredient or conceal its use. By the 1980s supermarkets had even introduced bans on its use in own brand lines.
Five decades on, MSG remains much-maligned and rarely referred to on the ingredient decks of modern products.
Now is the time to challenge those unsubstantiated concerns, insists Miller – and get the ingredient back on supermarket shelves.
Time for a reappraisal of MSG
MSG is the sodium salt of glutamic acid. It can be found naturally in many foods, such as mushrooms, tomatoes and cheese, as well as made by fermenting other foods, such as sugar cane. The ingredient increases taste perception, in particular amplifying the savoury or umami taste flavour of foods.
Miller began experimenting with it at home, he says. “It was this amazing thing that made food taste better, but it had this stigma against it.” It was also difficult to get hold of, he recalls, typically sold in Chinese supermarkets in large, foodservice-style bags that “live in your cupboard and always fall over and spill.”
Digging a little deeper, he realised a wider reappraisal of the ingredient was already starting to trickle through. The molecular gastronomy movement popularised by the likes of Heston Blumenthal in the early 2000s had openly advocated for the use MSG. Later, contemporary chefs like David Chang joined the dialogue. In 2012, Chang spoke to attendees at MAD Symposium in Denmark about the anti-Asian bias underpinning attitudes toward MSG, with claims of allergies a cultural construct. This is already filtering out to a wider consumer base, says Miller. The brand’s own research suggests around 45% of consumers now support the use of MSG in foods.
Which is why, last year, he and his co-founders launched Honest Umami, a range of MSG-based seasonings sold in pinch pot style formats, in a bid to build on growing pro-MSG momentum.
Rather than use terms like yeast extract or Hydrolysed Vegetable Protein (a significant component of which is MSG) the brand is purposively transparent about its hero ingredient, explains Miller. “We’re ‘honest’ about the fact that all umami flavour in every food essentially comes from MSG. Don’t hide, don’t pretend it’s not MSG.
“The second thing is, make it desirable. To use the language of foodies and to create a thing that looks alluring and that takes away the risk. That makes it understandable, and explains what MSG is and why it’s great.”
A third brand pillar is convenience, he adds, which drove the decision to sell the range via handy pinch pots “that live by the hob and that you can just use easily as you’re cooking.”
To begin with, the brand sees its penetration growing among more adventurous foodies. “MSG has been the domain of innovators for a long time, people who are prepared to look off the beaten path for ingredients and try new things,” says Miller. “So, our initial audience is still someone who’s a bit adventurous, who is a bit of a foodie and willing to try new things. It’s probably an audience that really values flavour above all else.”
But in the longer-term, the ambition is to be well and truly mainstream. “The MSG category should be as big as salt or sugar categories are in a British supermarket. Ultimately, the audience for MSG should be everyone.”
Challenges ahead for MSG
To achieve that scale, Miller is clear that the brand will need to achieve distribution in a mainstream supermarket.
But though the range is already sold via Ocado, that’s proving challenging thus far, he admits. “It’s extremely difficult,” he says. “We’ve discovered that as supermarkets spent 10 or 15 years getting rid of MSG, they don’t want to admit that was wrong or a waste of time, effort and money. Even if you say, look, you’re selling hundreds and hundreds of products that have MSG as an ingredients, they don’t want to stick their head above the parapet so it’s currently impossible to get through to supermarkets. We’re on a long journey.”
Distribution isn’t its only challenge either. The brand is also facing a trademark dispute with restaurant chain Honest Burger, which is objecting to its use of the word ‘Honest’. “There’s enough going on as a start-up, there’s enough hurdles to get over without having some extra ones, but it is what it is,” says Miller.
For now, the team is focused on building up its presence in the thousands of independent food retailers dotted across the UK.
“There are loads of amazing stores out there. Even in tough times, our independent food retail sector is amazing and it’s quite hard to reach them all, which is what makes them charming and interesting and unique.
“I’m very confident that there are at least 2,000 stores that are perfect for Honest Umami. And we’re in hundreds of them rather than thousands of them now.”
He’s also confident that now is the right time to reintroduce MSG to a European audience. “In a post-Wagamama, post-Hakkasan world of fine dining Asian cuisine, there’s been this reappraisal of Asian cooking and people are much more comfortable with it and familiar with it.
“When you speak to people, they never have some coherent argument against MSG. If you do have to give them a nudge them at all, it’s so small because it’s [the initial pushback was] so far away and so distant in time. It’s an easy shift to get them to try it out.”
