MSG in Australia — The Flavour We Were Told to Fear
I was raised to think MSG was evil.
Not questionable. Not “maybe in moderation.” Full-blown, cancer-causing, brain-damaging, soul-stealing evil. Especially MSG in Australia — where it became shorthand for food that was foreign, suspicious, or “too cheap to be trusted.”
My mum didn’t know what MSG stood for. Neither did anyone in our cul-de-sac. But they all knew it was bad. That it gave you headaches. That it was hidden in takeaway. That they used it. They, meaning Chinese restaurants, Thai joints, Vietnamese pho shops with steam-clouded windows and menus laminated to death.
You know the code.
I didn’t question it. Not back then.
The Night I Licked the Spoon
I was twenty-three and broke, working grill in a pub that still deep-fried everything twice and served steaks with peppercorn sauce made from stock that came in foil pouches.
One night, a new chef rocked up. Greying ponytail, hands like old leather, voice like he’d gargled Scotch for breakfast. His food didn’t give a fuck about your diet. It tasted like something your body remembered from when it still trusted you.
He had this silver tin near the salt. No label.
“What’s this?”
“MSG,” he said. “Proper stuff. You want the chicken to taste like chicken, or not?”
Later that night, after service, I dipped a spoon into the pan juice. Just one taste. And it hit me — that sharp back-of-the-jaw zing, the warm slide of umami that coats your throat and makes your gums buzz. It didn’t lie. It just made things more. I licked the spoon clean.
No headache. No seizure. Just shame.
Because I knew then I’d been fed bullshit my whole life.
MSG in Australia — The White Lie That Stuck
MSG in Australia didn’t get banned. It got scapegoated. Pushed out of pantries by fear, not fact. It was never about health. It was about race. About which cuisines got to be seen as “natural” and which ones were quietly labelled as chemical-laced crap.
MSG got caught in a smear campaign wearing a lab coat. Shoddy studies. Lazy journalism. TV hosts who couldn’t pronounce pho but were sure it caused migraines. Whole communities got flattened by this fear. Restaurants were shamed into taking down signs in their own language and putting up “No MSG” stickers to please white customers who didn’t know what they were asking for.
Meanwhile, the same people were smashing BBQ Shapes, chicken-flavoured Twisties, and mass-produced gravy filled with the same thing — just renamed.
The Reckoning at the Grocer
I was standing in a Vietnamese grocery in Springvale when it hit me again. A giant red bag of Ajinomoto, right there on the shelf. No warning, no shame. Just flavour. Pure, honest, unapologetic flavour.
MSG in Australia has always been there. We just chose not to see it unless it came from a white packet in a Coles aisle.
Now I use it. Not to mimic Asian food. Just to make food taste good. Simple as that. It’s seasoning, not sorcery.
The real poison wasn’t MSG. It was the way we were trained to fear it. The way we let flavour become political. The way we made some kitchens justify their worth, while others got away with tasteless shit because it was familiar.
MSG didn’t need a redemption arc.
We did.
