Sugar and MSG

Sugar and MSG

An association of sugar factories has placed a half-page
advertisement in Kompas on Nov. 28, page 21, to promote its
product with the slogan: "Tasty thanks to my sugar and healthy
without monosodium glutamate (MSG)". This insinuates that eating
sugar is healthier than eating MSG.

The advertisement features a well-known cook telling us about
the ingredients for "sweetened gurame-fish with vinegar."

Fortunately, this is not true that sugar can make the food
tasty. The recipe calls for 70 grams of sugar, but also contains
tomato sauce, salt, soya, a large yellow onion and 500 grams of
fish-sauce. According to The Journal of Nutrition, the Japanese
made fish-sauce contains 1.38 percent acid glutamate. So the
above mentioned ingredient has 6.2 grams of acid glutamate, which
is equal to 7 grams of MSG.

To conclude, the delicious cooking is not caused by sugar, but
because it contains salt, tomato sauce, fish sauce and an onion,
which, together contain glutamate. And the fish itself contains
2.4 grams of glutamate per kilogram.

SUNARTO PRAWIROSUJANTO

Jakarta