MSG

One slight surprise for the several meals that I had during my little trip to the other universe was there was very little MSG in the food.

Yes, I do mean monosodium glutamate, which add to the taste of umami (鮮味) in our food.

Oh, I'm not against the use of MSG - quite the contrary indeed. As Chinese, most of us would expect some scientific additives in the food serve in any restaurant. If it does enhance the flavor, why should we worry about an amino acid?

Many gourmets and food critics are, however, against artificial substance, not because it may be unsafe, but for the very phenomenon that MSG would mask the flavor of other natural ingredients in the dish. Well, scientifically, that's entirely sound. To begin with, it is now known that, in addition to the four primary tastes (salty, sour, sweet, and bitter) and umami, there are other non-traditional tastes - notably for purines and long chain fatty acids. An excessive stimulation of the glutamate receptor would obviously make one be less aware of signals from other pathways. Orthodox neurology teaching actually states that a substantial part of taste does not come from the tongue, but, rather, the nose. It is therefore silly to stimulate just one kind of taste bud and forget about the more important part.

PS. When you swallow, a negative pressure is generated in the nasopharynx, so that volatile ingredients of the food could fill up those tiny air chambers and stimulate the olfactory nerve. That's why we could tell so many kinds of taste despite there are only limited types of taste receptors on our tongue -  we have about 400 types of smell receptors.