I mean, instead of investing so much effort to get glutamate into your food, why not use MSG directly? Sounds like much less hassle? Reminds me of the time when Big Food over here in Germany replaced MSG with "yeast extract" so they could claim that their foods contained no artificial flavor enhancers (although the yeast extract also contains a lot of glutamate).

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azath92 13 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Its also a common misconception that all glutamates are MSG (thats one salt of glutamate) and that all umami compounds are simple glutamate salts.

So while MSG is an excellent "neutral" umami ingredient, fermented products like this have a whole host of complex flavors that are often very desirable beyond just their glutamate salt.

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PetitPrince 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Because people like the fish flavor ?

Same reason we use tomato paste instead of a MSG + food coloring or parmesan instead of MSG + some protein I would say.

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pluralmonad 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Like labelling bacon nitrate free while also including celery seed something-or-another that is... Just nitrates.

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d-e-r-e-k 13 hours ago | parent | next [-]

While your comment is true, it is reductive. While celery seed does in fact contain nitrates which are turned into nitrites, it’s the next step that’s important. Unlike synthetic sodium nitrite, celery seeds contain vitamin C which acts as an antioxidant that converts the nitrites into harmless nitric oxide whereas the synthetic sodium nitrite is converted into harmful nitrosamines.

The subtle differences in how our bodies process synthetic vs natural ingredients significantly impacts our bodies and health.

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gruez 12 hours ago | parent [-]

>celery seeds contain vitamin C which acts as an antioxidant that converts the nitrites into harmless nitric oxide whereas the synthetic sodium nitrite is converted into harmful nitrosamines.

This just sounds like post hoc justification. There's hardly any vitamin C in celery seeds[1][2]. Broccoli has 5x the vitamin C per 100g, despite much of it being water. Moreover, if the point is that vitamin C protects against nitrates, why not add vitamin C directly, rather than doing it in a roundabout way by adding celery seeds which also happen to contain vitamin C?

[1] https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/food-details/170920/nutrients

[2] https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/food-details/170379/nutrients

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d-e-r-e-k 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I’m in no way implying or arguing celery seeds contain a great amount of vitamin C. There are of course many foods that contain more vitamin C than celery seeds. I’m stating that the naturally occurring vitamin C in celery seeds is the key difference between natural and synthetic nitrites.

I guess for me it just comes down to going back to basics. Why use multiple synthetic ingredients if a natural alternative exists. There are thousands of synthetic chemicals in the American food supply and we just don’t entirely know how they’re affecting our bodies.

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gruez 10 hours ago | parent [-]

>I’m stating that the naturally occurring vitamin C in celery seeds is the key difference between natural and synthetic nitrites

The original comment was about products being misleadingly labeled "nitrate free". The fact that celery seeds might have some mitigating vitamin C doesn't change this, any more than it would still be misleading to label with synthetic nitrates added as "nitrate free" if they also added vitamin C to it. Therefore I still think the tidbit about celery seeds containing vitamin C is post hoc justification. The rest of your comment also seems to confirm this, you think that celery seeds is intrinsically better than nitrates, because it's "natural".

	▲	d-e-r-e-k 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Ok

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willy_k 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Maybe because people still want to eat food. The culture of trying to re-engineer life is not it.

	▲	gruez 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		>The culture of trying to re-engineer life is not it. What does this even mean? Cured meats (via nitrates or celery seeds) is already an engineered product.

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8note 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

why have the bacon at all when you could just eat straight protein powder or soylent though?

if you get both the nitrates and vitamin c from the cellery seeds, why bother going through the industrial processes for making the nitrates and vitamic c separate, possibly also from celery seeds, only to put them back together at the end?

	▲	gruez 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It's almost certainly cheaper to synthesize nitrates and vitamin C separately than to farm celery seeds. >possibly also from celery seeds It's not. Like MSG (the white crystal kind), vitamin C is produced by microbes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monosodium_glutamate#Productio... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstein_process

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gruez 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

They can't actually label it "nitrate free", only a superficially sounding term like "no nitrates added", with the hope that people (like you) think it's the same as "nitrate free".

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amanaplanacanal 11 hours ago | parent [-]

I typically see it labeled "uncured."

	▲	t0mpr1c3 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		That's just the usual US marketing bollocks. Whether it is cured with nitrates or with celery extract, bacon is definitely cured. If it is not cured, it is not bacon. I am more sympathetic to the term "turkey bacon" than "uncured bacon".

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ratelimitsteve 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>I mean, instead of investing so much effort to get glutamate into your food, why not use MSG directly?

Because the various uammi sources also add other flavors. I like being able to choose between soy sauce, fish sauce, worcestershire sauce, soy bean paste, mushroom powder, anchovies, chicken powder, yeast extract, and, yes, msg (with 2% i&g) because each of them affects the recipe i'm working with differently. Is your diet nothing but chicken breast, raw flour and shortening because they're the simplest sources of protein, carbs and fat?

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plastic-enjoyer 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> I mean, instead of investing so much effort to get glutamate into your food, why not use MSG directly?

HN never disappoints when it comes to bizarre takes.

	▲	akoboldfrying an hour ago \| parent [-]
		It's a legitimate question. The answer seems to be that the anchovies have a variety of glutamate salts with enjoyably different flavours. If the only glutamate in the anchovies was MSG, or if all the glutamates in them had the same flavour and nutrition properties as MSG -- both of which were open possibilities to me before the discussion GP's question prompted -- then no, there wouldn't be much point using anchovies instead of MSG.