|
Q: I recently had a waitress at a Chinese
restaurant tell me that sushi is loaded with MSG? Tell me it's not true!!!
(But only if it isn't true.) My daughter suffers from migraines that are
triggered by MSG, and now she's sure she shouldn't eat sushi anymore. -
Sally L.
True, classic sushi should have absolutely *no* MSG in
it. It is made up of nothing but clean, fresh, fish, rice with seasonings
(vinegar & either mirin (which is a sweet cooking sake) or sugar for that
touch of sweetness, and seaweed (as a wrap for rolls). Other than what is
visible, the only 'unseen' additives are the vinegar and mirin. It is always
possible that some lower quality, so to speak, places may try to enhance
flavor with MSG, but I have never encountered it, or even heard of it. The
Chinese are particularly known for using MSG in dishes, and some Chinese
food restaurants are now serving sushi as well and you might want to ask the
waitress or sushi chef specifically if they do this if you suspect they
might, but again, I have never heard of this happening. There are other
dishes served at both Chinese and Japanese restaurants that *may* have MSG
in them (particularly Chinese restaurants which add MSG to many of their
cooked dishes) and you might want to ask about those, but the sushi and
sashimi should be safe for your daughter from my experience. You should
never be afraid to ask the wait staff, however, you are their customer and
have a right to know anything about the food you buy from them. Try the
tactic my brother uses, since he does not eat dairy, and tell them that she
is allergic to MSG and needs to know if the dish she ordered contains it.
They don't want a lawsuit and should certainly tell you.
Here's a great follow-up to this question from
reader Alex Stewart. He writes:
Good quality sushi should not have any MSG added to it, but the question
of whether it _contains_ MSG is a bit more fuzzy. This is because one of the
traditional components in many recipes for sushizu (the sushi vinegar
mixture) is konbu (kelp, often used for soup stocks and such in Japanese
cooking). One of the main things that konbu contributes to any recipe, in
addition to vitamins and flavor, is glutamic acid (which occurs naturally in
many forms of seaweed).
Now, glutamic acid is really exactly the same chemical as the "glutamate"
in monosodium glutamate (in fact, the first forms of MSG were created by
Japanese researchers by extracting it from konbu). Since sushizu recipes
also typically include some amount of salt (sodium) as well, the resulting
mixture actually has sodium and glutamate ions floating around in it. It
turns out that chemically, this is exactly the same result you get any time
you add commercial MSG to anything containing water (i.e. food).
So in effect, many sushizu mixtures contain "natural MSG" as a result of
this process. It should be noted, however, that this sort of "natural MSG"
also shows up in a bunch of other foods which most people eat all the time,
including tomatoes and asparagus, and you'd certainly find far more of it in
a slice of tomato than probably an entire meal of sushi, so if you don't
have problems with those sorts of foods, the konbu in sushi presumably
shouldn't be an issue either. To further complicate the question, however,
there are a large number of pre-made "sushi powder" mixes, which can be
added directly to rice instead of making up actual sushizu, to give it the
same flavor and consistency. Most if not all of these powders, being
mass-produced as cheaply as possible, actually emulate the effect of konbu
by just adding industrial MSG to the formula instead, and if you look at the
ingredients list on a packet it will actually say "monosodium glutamate" in
there. I don't actually know how common it is for restaurants to use these
powders (I've mostly seen them sold for home use), but I wouldn't be
surprised if at least some of the lower-quality establishments buy and use
something like that for cost and efficiency reasons.
All this having been said, it is important to point out that even though
some sushi may have forms of MSG in it, that's not necessarily the same
thing as being "loaded with it". One also needs to take a look at exactly
how much of it there is in any given piece of sushi. The sushizu mixture in
sushi is actually a fairly small portion of the total (generally about half
to 1 tablespoon per cup of cooked rice), and of that, the "MSG-like"
components are a fairly small portion of the sushizu mixture as well (maybe
(at most) half a teaspoon per cup of sushizu, and that's being generous).
What this comes out to is somewhere on the order of 1/32 of a teaspoon (or
less) per cup of sushi rice, or around 1/150 or 1/200 of a teaspoon per
piece of sushi. 1/150 of a teaspoon! (And that's the generous estimate. Odds
are it's a lot smaller for most sushi.)
So to sum up, traditionally-made sushi may have naturally-occurring
sodium and glutamates in it, which is equivalent to MSG, but probably isn't
a problem for most people with MSG allergies. Lower-quality sushi may also
be made with sushi powders which almost always have MSG added to them, but
in all sushi, the amount of "MSG-like" stuff is actually a very very small
part of the whole recipe anyway. My general recommendation is if you're
still concerned about such things, stick with higher-quality sushi
establishments, ask them whether they use MSG or konbu in their sushi
mixtures, and try it carefully and see whether you have a problem with it
before deciding whether to continue eating at a given establishment. But to
be honest, I really wouldn't worry about it too much.
Thanks Alex!
|
