MSG

Dined alone in the food court of the shopping mall besides the convention center before I was back home. I had a dish of simple Malaysia fried rice noodle.

It was surprisingly good - dry, ingredients well mixed, tasty, spicy but not too hot. But, in a few hours I knew why: the dish was heavily seasoned with MSG. I woke up in the middle of the night, intensely thirsty. (As a traditional Chinese brought up with salted fish and pickled fofu [腐乳], I can eat any salty dish without a drop of water, but neurons in my thirst center are no doubt using glutamine as their stimulatory transmitter.)

But I am never against MSG. To the contrary I enjoy a small bit of it in my dish. We have special receptors on our taste buds for glutamine - an evolutionary adaption to guide us for food with high protein. Soy sauce and soup are, alas, two ingenious strategies to fool our tongue and, to their credit, provide the bare minimum of protein intake for a large number of people from limited resource.