Hacker News Reader

Comment by matthewfcarlson | Hacker News Reader

It’s cool but I was hoping it would talk about how to make your own MSG.

According to Wikipedia, modern industrial production is actually mainly by bacterial fermentation (perhaps because the earlier method produced hydrogen chloride), and it sounds probably doable: https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jgam1955/3/3/3_3_193/_p...

Hard if you want to optimise yield (as you would industrially), but seems not so hard to happen across a yeast strain that will produce some glutamate.

Yup, I'm sad that this won't further my dream of selling artisan MSG at farmer's markets. I could do a coarse "kosher" MSG, but that might taste terrible.

Just sell kombu salt like everyone else

An MSG grinder! Burr mill of course.

ugh - grinding things that do not contain essential oils (like peppercorns = essential oils!) is worthless, annoying and bordering on pretentious.

Powdered sugar is produced by grinding, as is table salt... So, add trying to achieve a specific texture, or melting property to things with essential oils and you're fine (Though I cannot help but smirk at the idea of using a sugar grinder for your tea)

Op means grinding fresh. You can buy salt in a plastic spice grinder, for example. It's cute, but doesn't improve the salt like grinding does for spices.

You can buy in bulk at chinese store and add some smoke flavour or paprika and wham! New Product! (Oh No!) :)

Probably not what you were looking for, but you can use yeast extract as a source of MSG. If I'm not mistaken some companies like McDonald's use this as a work-around.

Edit - apparently it is not banned in the US, though it is limited to 10g/kg of food in the EU. Sorry for the mistake, I could've swore I saw it banned somewhere.

Edit 2 - I think I was thinking about Sodium Cyclamte instead, a sweetener in the Non-US Sweet n Low variants amongst other uses.

What? MSG is very commonly used in popular American snack foods, like Doritos, no need for a workaround and there's no ban on it.

Fun fact - MSG is completely banned in the US for use in food

Where did you read that? It would be all over the news if it was.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monosodium_glutamate

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has given MSG its generally recognized as safe (GRAS) designation

Thanks, I've corrected it. I don't know why I remember reading that because I used to wonder what might have caused such a reaction from the FDA. I suppose I'm misremembering with some other compound.

Edit: I think it's Sodium Cyclamte I was thinking about, a sweetener in the Non-US Sweet n Low variants amongst other uses.

I feel like this is a reenactment of how MSG got a bad name in the first place. Someone mistook it for a different compound and here we are decades later.

It might be. There's also the thing that MSG's effects are "magical" and feel addicting which might make people a bit concerned about the "mystery substance" (instead of testing it in a lab to determine if it's actually safe or not).

Agreed. Keep in mind: MSG is used in Doritos. It's not exactly uncommon.

Yeah, as others have pointed out, that's not the case at all. It would be very surprising to hear, given the horrifying list of chemical additives I read on the ingredients of imported American food products.

(I've corrected the comment) I know, which is exactly why this thing stood out to me. I don't know which substance or process I'm misremembering but I'm pretty sure there was something/some context where the US had stricter laws than the EU.

I think it's Sodium Cyclamte, a sweetener in the Non-US Sweet n Low variants (I'm guessing because I had researched sweeteners pretty thoroughly at one point too).

Stevia was banned in the States (as in the EU) for a long time after it was allowed for consumption in other domains across the globe. I know I looked into importing some from Japan many (many) moons ago (purely out of idle interest) before getting bored and not bothering. Glad I didn't, because it's just as piss-poor as all the other artificial sweeteners..!

Stevia was never banned in the US, but it is still not "generally recognized as safe" by the FDA, so it cannot be sold as food. It does get sold as a "dietary supplement", though. Rebaudioside A, which is a Stevia extract and the basis for the "Stevia" sweeteners on the market, is recognized by the FDA.

Sorry, I meant 'banned for use in food' - I'm not American, so my terminology's likely inadequate.

> MSG is completely banned in the US for use in food

Can you expand on this? I’m looking at a bag of Doritos in my pantry that has MSG as its 12th ingredient.

Sorry I've corrected my comment above.

Oh, yeah cyclamate. Similar to that, Borax is banned in the US, but allowed as an additive in the EU. Found this out when trying to make pho meatballs.

> Borax is banned in the US

Borax is available at major retailers nationwide for purchase in-store.

In the context of this conversation we are discussing food additives.

Nutritional yeast is basically the same thing if you need a powder. If you don't there are lots of common liquid options.

edit: if for some reason you just don't want to buy a shaker of MSG.

Nutritional yeast tastes completely different, though. There’s a reason it is used by vegans for cheesy dishes.

Completely different is an exaggeration. I use both, and sub in nutritional yeast whenever I'm out of MSG. MSG isn't cheesy by itself, but certainly amplifies any cheesiness.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com