Gao Wa
Zhongqing Online News: "My family never puts monosodium glutamate in cooking, and that thing doesn't taste good." "Yes, me too, and I don't know how bad it is, but everyone says so, and I believe it. Although I don't put monosodium glutamate, the taste of the food is a little worse, but for the sake of health, I still put up with it ... "Does anyone around you say that about monosodium glutamate? Or are you an advocate of this view yourself?
Then, in case of class reunion, the boss treats you or colleagues have dinner, do you want to go to a restaurant with friends? Do you drool when you see fresh and delicious food? When you are busy with work and need to work overtime, will you come to a bucket of instant noodles to satisfy your hunger and add some sausages as a reward? When you go home and cook with your own hands, will you use soy sauce, sauce, chicken essence and mushroom essence to make the dishes delicious?
Now, would you be surprised if I told you that you were exposed to monosodium glutamate in these most common life scenes? In fact, the scientific name of monosodium glutamate is sodium glutamate. If you pay attention, you will find that it appears in the ingredient list of many foods and condiments, and the name "monosodium glutamate" appears in front of everyone as an end consumer product. Noodles, convenience food and compound condiment enterprises at home and abroad are all downstream customers of monosodium glutamate. Monosodium glutamate production enterprises provide nearly one million tons of products to catering industry and food processing industry every year.
Having said that, you may have questions: Since monosodium glutamate has been applied to so many fields and products, is it safe or not? Can we eat safely?
Let's first analyze the source and composition of monosodium glutamate. Monosodium glutamate, that is, sodium glutamate, as the name implies, is the sodium salt of glutamic acid. Glutamate accounts for nearly 20% of protein in human body, and it is one of more than 20 amino acids that constitute the protein of life, among which free glutamic acid has refreshing effect. In the production of monosodium glutamate in China, corn, rice, wheat and other food crops are mostly used as raw materials. By converting starch in grain into glucose, glutamic acid was produced by glutamic acid-producing bacteria as a fermentation tool, and finally neutralized into sodium glutamate. Each step is catalyzed by enzyme, which has obvious biological characteristics, high efficiency and specificity, mild and controllable reaction conditions, and the whole process will not produce substances harmful to bacteria themselves and human beings.
In fact, we think vegetables and meat are delicious because these fruits and vegetables, meat, poultry, eggs and milk all contain glutamic acid, and the earliest umami comes from kelp. For example, tomatoes contain a variety of amino acids, of which glutamic acid has the highest content. Every 65,438+000 grams of ripe tomatoes contain more than 250 mg of glutamic acid, so tomatoes are often used as flavoring agents for food processing, and we often eat ketchup. In addition, milk, human milk, chicken, pork, spinach, mushrooms, lobsters and abalone all contain glutamic acid to varying degrees. These foods are decomposed into some free glutamic acid after cooking, which is why they are particularly delicious after cooking.
More interestingly, sometimes we even unconsciously make sodium glutamate in cooking. For example, adding salt to cooked chicken soup often tastes more delicious. It is because the glutamic acid decomposed by protein in chicken combines with sodium ions in salt to produce sodium glutamate, which improves the umami taste of chicken soup. That is to say, even if you refuse to eat monosodium glutamate, or all foods containing monosodium glutamate, your body will produce sodium glutamate by ingesting other foods, because it is an indispensable substance in life metabolism, which exists in large quantities in the human body and plays an important role.
These are all phenomena that often occur in our daily life, but are easily overlooked. Many times, people are attracted by the exquisite packaging and gorgeous advertisements of composite products, forget the suppliers behind these products, and even have misunderstandings. In this era of developed network, information asymmetry is obvious. Therefore, let the ubiquitous sodium glutamate surface and be gradually recognized by consumers, and we should know monosodium glutamate more objectively, rationally and correctly. (Gao Wa)