MSG is the most misunderstood ingredient of the century. That’s finally changing

MSG’s fortunes began to go downhill in 1968 when a US doctor wrote a letter to a medical journal titled “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome.”

In the document, he described symptoms like “numbness in the back of the neck,” “general weakness” and “palpitations.” He suspected MSG, along with other ingredients like cooking wine and high amounts of sodium, may have caused these symptoms.

MSG took the biggest hit, with the effects of that letter rippling on throughout the decades, all over the world.

The etymology is traced to a 1968 letter that appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine claiming that Chinese food brought forth ailments. The letter was uncovered to be a hoax, but the myth remains. The US Food and Drug Administration has long approved MSG for consumption, and studies have failed to show that the chemical causes the alleged “syndrome”.

Restaurants publicly swore off MSG. Food and beverage publicists begged not to be asked about it. Diners experiencing discomfort after a meal blamed it on MSG.

MSG in Chinese food isn’t unhealthy – you’re just racist, activists say

“Many didn’t know that MSG is plant-derived,” says Tia Rains, a Chicago-based nutrition scientist and Ajinomoto’s vice president of customer engagement and strategic development.

“Our process [of making MSG] is by fermentation, which is very similar to how beer is brewed or how yogurt is made.”

MSG is the most misunderstood ingredient of the century. That’s finally changing | CNN

A number of celebrated chefs are now openly embracing MSG – some even going so far as to promote it on their menus. Here’s a look at the history behind this complicated flavor enhancer and how it got such a bad rap.

Reference: https://news.colgate.edu/magazine/2019/02/06/the-strange-case-of-dr-ho-man-kwok/

This Tiny Country Feeds the World

Almost two decades ago, the Dutch made a national commitment to sustainable agriculture under the rallying cry “Twice as much food using half as many resources.” Since 2000, van den Borne and many of his fellow farmers have reduced dependence on water for key crops by as much as 90 percent. They’ve almost completely eliminated the use of chemical pesticides on plants in greenhouses, and since 2009 Dutch poultry and livestock producers have cut their use of antibiotics by as much as 60 percent.

One more reason to marvel: The Netherlands is a small, densely populated country, with more than 1,300 inhabitants per square mile. It’s bereft of almost every resource long thought to be necessary for large-scale agriculture. Yet it’s the globe’s number two exporter of food as measured by value, second only to the United States, which has 270 times its landmass. How on Earth have the Dutch done it?

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/09/holland-agriculture-sustainable-farming/

The Range Episode 01: Beans

In our inaugural episode, we use the humble and ubiquitous bean to explore historical and current topics in Texas food. Beans here tell stories of belonging, from a 19th-century border dispute to a recent trip to Terlingua.

Beans | Foodways Texas

Welcome to The Range, where you’ll find unexpected stories about Texas foods and cultures. The Range explores the rich variety of Texas foods: from old traditions to new innovations, you’ll hear from a diverse set of Texans who are in the thick of growing, cooking, distributing, and eating food.

Best Dang Smokerless Smoked Brisket Ever

Best Dang Smokerless Smoked Brisket Ever

Best Damn Smokerless Smoked BrisketBrisket is a pitmaster’s mainstay. But let’s face it, even at the best places, it’s often the least interesting option on the menu—dry, bland, blah. Tired of the ho-hum stuff (and never willing to shy away from a challenge), our kitchen crew set out to make a better brisket, with juicy, smoky meat and a sticky, satisfying bark. Just to up the ante, they decided to develop it without the aid of a smoker, instead testing recipes indoors and using liquid smoke and nitrites to evoke a smoky flavor and signature pink ring at the edge of the meat—both hallmarks of first-rate ’cue.

This recipe calls for one of our favorite secret ingredients, Bragg’s Liquid Aminos, a gluten-free, non-GMO certified soy sauce alternative.. Liquid Aminos 16 oz. 16 Ounces

The upshot for you, hungry meat fiends: the best dang barbecue brisket you’ll ever make. What’s more, you can make it in the climate-controlled comfort of your own kitchen. You don’t need a smoker, and you don’t need a lot of space. Heck, you don’t even have to have any prior barbecuing experience to make this thing happen. What you do need: a few easy-to-find ingredients and a big ol’ hunk of meat. Grab some carnivorous buddies—you’re gonna want to show this one off.

Get the recipe at chefsteps.com

https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/smokerless-smoked-brisket

The sugar conspiracy

Robert Lustig is a paediatric endocrinologist at the University of California who specialises in the treatment of childhood obesity. A 90-minute talk he gave in 2009, titled Sugar: The Bitter Truth, has now been viewed more than six million times on YouTube. In it, Lustig argues forcefully that fructose, a form of sugar ubiquitous in modern diets, is a “poison” culpable for America’s obesity epidemic.

A year or so before the video was posted, Lustig gave a similar talk to a conference of biochemists in Adelaide, Australia. Afterwards, a scientist in the audience approached him. Surely, the man said, you’ve read Yudkin. Lustig shook his head. John Yudkin, said the scientist, was a British professor of nutrition who had sounded the alarm on sugar back in 1972, in a book called Pure, White, and Deadly.

“If only a small fraction of what we know about the effects of sugar were to be revealed in relation to any other material used as a food additive,” wrote Yudkin, “that material would promptly be banned.” The book did well, but Yudkin paid a high price for it. Prominent nutritionists combined with the food industry to destroy his reputation, and his career never recovered. He died, in 1995, a disappointed, largely forgotten man.

But it was not impossible to foresee that the vilification of fat might be an error. Energy from food comes to us in three forms: fat, carbohydrate, and protein. Since the proportion of energy we get from protein tends to stay stable, whatever our diet, a low-fat diet effectively means a high-carbohydrate diet. The most versatile and palatable carbohydrate is sugar, which John Yudkin had already circled in red. In 1974, the UK medical journal, the Lancet, sounded a warning about the possible consequences of recommending reductions in dietary fat: “The cure should not be worse than the disease.”

In 1980, after long consultation with some of America’s most senior nutrition scientists, the US government issued its first Dietary Guidelines. The guidelines shaped the diets of hundreds of millions of people. Doctors base their advice on them, food companies develop products to comply with them. Their influence extends beyond the US. In 1983, the UK government issued advice that closely followed the American example.

The most prominent recommendation of both governments was to cut back on saturated fats and cholesterol (this was the first time that the public had been advised to eat less of something, rather than enough of everything). Consumers dutifully obeyed. We replaced steak and sausages with pasta and rice, butter with margarine and vegetable oils, eggs with muesli, and milk with low-fat milk or orange juice. But instead of becoming healthier, we grew fatter and sicker.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/apr/07/the-sugar-conspiracy-robert-lustig-john-yudkin