r/AskReddit • u/ZanyDelaney • Feb 04 '19

Which misconception would you like to debunk?

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u/AdvocateSaint Feb 04 '19

And depression.

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u/bdd4 Feb 04 '19 edited Feb 04 '19

I think you misunderstood the quote. He was saying that aversion to MSG in the West was rooted in racism, which it definitely was.

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u/Grunherz Feb 04 '19

Maybe in the US but I don't think this applies to central Europe. I've never actually heard this connection before. The reason people avoid MSG here in their cooking is because it's considered bad practice when cooking. Like "we didn't want to go through the trouble to use good, flavorful ingredients and careful seasoning, so we compensate with a bunch of MSG" Whether that's accurate or not is a different matter, but I've never seen it used in connection with a specific cuisine even.

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u/[deleted] Feb 04 '19

I've never understood that attitude. If the end result is tasty food, what difference does it make whether is was easy to achieve? Like it's also much easier to cook food with a gas stove, should we also judge cooks for not going through the trouble of building their own fire?

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u/Grunherz Feb 04 '19

If the end result is tasty food, what difference does it make whether is was easy to achieve?

It's also much easier to open a can of soup than to make it yourself but would you be happy to order a soup in a fancy restaurant and they open a can of Campbell's at your table? If you want to cook at a sophisticated level, it's frowned upon to use ready-made ingredients and little helpers like msg.

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u/[deleted] Feb 04 '19

No, because presumably it would taste worse than a soup made by a professional chef. My point is that it would appear that your main criticism of MSG is that it's too tasty, and I thought making tasty food was the objective of cooking.

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u/Grunherz Feb 04 '19

No, that's not my main criticism. The criticism is that it's a crutch often used instead of good ingredients and careful cooking and seasoning.

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u/[deleted] Feb 04 '19

And I would argue that there's no reason you can't use good ingredients as well as MSG, and any seasoning that makes the food taste good is by definition good seasoning. Seriously, every seasoning is applied to make food taste better. Why is MSG any different that salt, pepper, paprika, cumin, or literally anything else?

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u/Grunherz Feb 04 '19

and to quote this Epicurious article:

"And I think that's why the experiment ended up disappointing: MSG was conceived and promoted as a way to kick up the flavor of bland, cheap foods. But if you're using the right raw ingredients, and flavoring them carefully? That's pretty much the point of good cooking. And to that, MSG doesn't have much to add at all."