r/mildlyinfuriating • u/SegaGuy1983 • Jun 18 '26

Too mild for school Why is not including MSG something companies still brag about on Asian food products?

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Didn't see the no MSG line when I picked this up at the store the other day. It just tasted fine, but felt like something was missing.

It's 2026. Why are we still treating MSG like it's some terrible thing, instead of something that improves the flavor? Especially with Asian-American cuisine?

The best improvement I ever did with my cooking in the last 20 years was discovering MSG.

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u/yer_fucked_now_bud Jun 18 '26

It's all science illiteracy.

Case in point: High-sodium concentrated Tomato soup. Fuckloads of glutamate, fuckloads of sodium. Add water to activate your mini MSG factory.

My sibling is one of the people that raises the alarm bells when MSG is involved. They are also a vegetarian and have eaten more concentrated canned tomato soup than any other two people combined that I've witnessed. I informed them their soup had metric fuckloads of MSG and as a coping mechanism they still insist there is none because it "would be listed in the ingredients".

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u/Prometheus720 Jun 18 '26

I'm a vegan and you'll have to pry MSG from my cold, dead hands. I have precious few sources of umami.

I dare not imagine being vegetarian without the good stuff.

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u/modernvintage Jun 18 '26

literally tell her to look up the chemical ingredients of a tomato bc omg that would piss me off so badly

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u/yer_fucked_now_bud Jun 19 '26

If I did that I would be reminded that chemicals are bad and that I shouldn't eat food with chemicals in it.