MSG is Beneficial in a Reduced Sodium Diet

MSG is not a salt substitute per se, but it is a substitute for salt when you want less salt. Since MSG still contains some sodium, think of it as an ingredient to lower sodium/salt, but not as a salt substitute necessarily. In fact, for people who need to reduce sodium in their diet, if you replace some or all of the salt with MSG the flavor of the dish will be boosted and sodium will be reduced.

MSG is mistakenly thought of as being high in sodium. However, MSG has two-thirds less sodium than table salt (MSG contains about 12 percent sodium while table salt contains 39 percent sodium, per the USDA nutrient database). Moreover, MSG represents a minor contribution to the overall sodium level of a typical diet. Considering all sources of dietary sodium (natural sodium content of foods, table salt, sodium-containing ingredients in processed foods, drinking water and pharmaceuticals), typical use of MSG contributes about 1 to 2 percent of the total sodium contained in the average daily American diet.

MSG acts as a flavor enhancer, and is the purest form of the umami or savory taste. To draw a comparison, it’s the equivalent of choosing between sugar and honey to sweeten something. If honey is used, you get the sweetness plus additional flavor profiles that may or may not be desirable in a given recipe. The same with umami. For example, if you add soy sauce to a recipe, you would be altering the taste with additional flavor profiles. Instead, by using MSG, you are simply putting in that pure umami sensation.

Bottom line: The next time you decide to forego the salt shaker with thoughts of improving your health, consider sprinkling on some MSG instead. The end result will be a flavorful food with less sodium than if you had used table salt.

In this study, glutamate substitution in accordance with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s food codes was modeled by conservatively altering estimates of sodium intake reductions derived from the published, peer-reviewed literature.

The researchers concluded:
“Current sodium intakes in the United States remain high and unchanged from previous NHANES cycles, exceeding public health recommendations. The addition of glutamates to certain savory food categories has the potential to help reduce the population’s intake of sodium by approximately 3.0%, and to reduce the intake by 7.3% among consumers of the product categories in which sodium chloride could be substituted for by glutamates. While reducing the amount of sodium among certain food groups may show modest effects on intakes across the adult population, it may have a large effect on those who consume those types of products.”

Source: Nutrients 2019, 11(11), 2691; https://doi.org/10.3390/nu11112691

“Sodium chloride (NaCl) is the most commonly used ingredient to provide salty taste to foods. However, excess sodium in the bloodstream has been associated with the development of several chronic noncommunicable diseases. In order to limit sodium intake to levels considered safe, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends for adults a daily intake of not more than 5 g of NaCl (less than 2 g of sodium). One of the strategic actions recommended by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) to reduce sodium intake is reformulation of processed foods. This recommendation indicates there is an urgent need to find salt substitutes, and umami compounds have been pointed as an alternative strategy. Like salty, umami is also a basic taste and the major compound associated to umami is monosodium L‐glutamate (MSG).

“In this paper, an overview about salty and umami taste physiology, the potential applications of MSG use to reduce sodium content in specific industrialized foods and safety aspects of MSG as food additive are presented.”

Source: Food Sci Nutr. 2017 Nov; 5(6): 1039–1048. Published online 2017 Jul 13. doi: 10.1002/fsn3.499

A recent study¹, on the role herbs and spices could play in enhancing consumer liking of low salt soup, shows how difficult it is to reformulate established food products. As with other studies of this nature, the results show that reducing the salt levels (in a tomato soup) leads to an immediate decline in consumer liking for the soup. The study showed that even with careful selection of herbs and spices, to increase the seasoning and perceived saltiness, it took repeated consumption of the reformulated ‘new’ soup to increase people’s taste for it. The unseasoned, low salt variant did not become liked even after repeated tastings.

In contrast, seasoning with MSG (monosodium glutamate) can facilitate low salt foods with significantly lower sodium levels, while not reducing the palatability and pleasantness of the food. And for those who fret about so-called “clean” labeling (or using chemicals or artificial additives) in their food – they will be pleased to learn that the glutamate in the seasoning is exactly the same as that in tomatoes; and that MSG seasoning has just 40% of the sodium in an equivalent amount of table salt.

1. Ghawi, Rowland & Methven: Enhancing consumer liking of low salt tomato soup over repeated exposure by herb and spice seasonings. Appetite 81, 20-29, 2014