"Kswck" > wrote in message
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> Not true. 650 million Chinese do not use MSG. It IS used in Chinese
> restaurants in the USA.

This is from Jeffrey Steingarten's "It Must Have Been Something I Ate"

"Just as we were finishing off a full and happy liunch at the famous old Mei
Long Zhen restaurant in the city of Shanghai, I sensed that somewhere inside
me was taking place a deep and blinding thought. We visited the kitchen.
Each chef stood before a wide black wok set into a ceramic counter over a
fierce fire. Next to each was a table holding a dozen or so bowls of
condiments and flavorings into which he dipped the edge of broad, shallow
ladle as he prepared each dish; light and dark soy, salt and sugar, hot
chili oil and ground dried red pepper, broth and cooking oil, white and
black pepper, finely chopped garlic and ginger and scallions, cornstarch,
and, finally, a bowl of white Gourmet Powder - the Chinese name for MSG,
monosodium glutamate. There was not a kitchen we saw in all of China that
lacked an ample supply of Gourmet Powder."