Doris Yuen was taught to avoid MSG as a kid. “My parents always told me MSG is not good for me. It makes you really thirsty,” she said. She noticed the “No MSG” or “We don’t use MSG” signs at her favorite Chinese restaurants.

Then she grew up and discovered how commonplace MSG, or monosodium glutamate, is — not only in Chinese food but in snacks and pantry items such as ketchup, ranch dressing, chicken bouillon and even Doritos. When she met her now-husband, chef Kenneth Wan, he explained that MSG was as commonplace a restaurant seasoning as salt, pepper and garlic.

“That’s when I realized there’s a false narrative around MSG,” Yuen said. “No one would ever walk into an Italian restaurant or pizzeria and say, ‘Do you use MSG here?’”

In November, she and Wan opened their own Chinese restaurant, MAKfam, in Denver. There, the couple aren’t shy about sharing their use of MSG. It’s present in soy sauce, shrimp bouillon, mushrooms — ingredient after ingredient that they incorporate into family-inspired recipes.

“MSG is made through a fermentation process,” she said. “If we are fine eating yogurt and we’re fine drinking beer and using vinegar, why are we so afraid of MSG?”

Yuen and Wan are part of a new generation of restaurateurs and chefs who are posing that question publicly while working to destigmatize MSG.

Monosodium glutamate was discovered in 1908 by Japanese biochemist Kikunae Ikeda. He was trying to determine what infused dashi, a common Japanese stock, with a meaty flavor. The answer: glutamate. He isolated the compound from seaweed, bonded it with sodium and created MSG.

“MSG is umami (one of five basic tastes) in its purest form,” explained Tia M. Rains, vice president of customer engagement and strategic development for Ajinomoto Health & Nutrition North America. (Ajinomoto is the leading manufacturer of MSG and the only such manufacturer in the U.S.)

Today, MSG is more often made by fermenting starch, sugar cane or molasses, but the ingredient also is found naturally in products such as tomatoes, cheese and mushrooms. According to Rains, it contains about one-third of the amount of sodium as table salt.

In the U.S., MSG was added to soldiers’ rations during World War II to enhance flavor, and the ingredient became commonplace during the rise of processed food.

In 1968, as trust in those foods waned, Robert Ho Man Kwok, a Chinese-American doctor, sent a letter to the New England Journal Medicine stating that he felt “numbness” and “general weakness and palpitation” after eating at Chinese restaurants; it was published under the headline “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome,” and MSG became the scapegoat.

“Chinese cuisine was still somewhat new to U.S. consumers at this point in history so the phrase — and the stigma — took hold,” Rains said.

Chinese restaurant owners began posting signs in their windows and notes on their menus proclaiming “No MSG.” And now-debunked studies blaming MSG for health issues were published.

In recent years, there’s been a push to reverse that narrative.

Ajinomoto launched a “Know MSG” campaign in 2020 to correct misconceptions about the seasoning. The Japanese company also led a successful effort to have Merriam-Webster clarify its definition of “Chinese restaurant syndrome.”

The U.S. Food & Drug Administration considers MSG to be “generally recognized as safe,” and it’s used in restaurants across the country.

Umami Burger opened in Los Angeles in 2009, and its original burger is layered with natural glutamates, from the sauteed shiitake mushrooms and the Parmesan crisp to the “umami dust” shaken on top. Virginia’s Lucky Danger includes MSG in all of its dishes. Calvin Eng, chef-owner of Bonnie’s, a much-lauded Cantonese-American eatery in New York City, has “MSG” tattooed on his arm — and seasons much of his food with MSG, as well as serving an MSG martini.

Closer to home, Yuen and Wan proudly serve a dirty martini–like MSGin. It blends Barr Hill Gin, Shaoxing wine, Chinese plum wine and, yes, MSG.

“I really wanted to make a statement when we opened MAKfam,” Yuen, who calls herself an American-born Chinese (ABC) kid, said. “I’m hoping by being vocal, by being proud, by doing events where we highlight the usage of MSG, by continuing to talk about it, people who come across MAKfam, it’ll trigger them to do their own research.

“It’s been so unfair for Chinese restaurants for so long having to run their business in fear and not run it authentically and truthful to themselves.”

That’s part of the reason why she chose to adorn one wall of the eatery with Brenda Chi’s “MSG Girl,” a play on the classic Morton Salt logo.

Long Nguyen, chef-owner of Pho King Rapidos, a “Vietnamese-ish” food stall inside Denver’s popular Avanti Food & Beverage, feels similarly empowered.

“When people ask us what’s in our ingredients, we’re open about it,” he said.

Pho King uses MSG (in the form of chicken powder) in its pho broth and fried chicken batter to infuse a deeper flavor.

Nguyen recalls watching his mom add MSG to her cooking when he was younger, just as she did salt. “It’s always been in our pantry,” he said.

Nguyen remains frustrated by the negative stigma and the pushback the restaurant sometimes receives. Potential customers have called or walked up to the counter to ask about the eatery’s use of MSG.

“Do other cuisines have to deal with this? No. But they get to benefit,” he added. “It’s unintentionally a racist thing. An unconscious prejudice.”

Nguyen makes a condiment called tingly crisps — Pho King’s version of chili oil. The original version had MSG, but when he decided to jar it, he had to remove the ingredient: MSG was on the list of banned ingredients at a major supermarket chain.

“I remember thinking that’s crazy,” Nguyen said. “It tastes good, but we have to take it out because if we want it to be in this supermarket, it can’t be in the ingredients.”