USP-NF: Monosodium Glutamate

Quality Control Assays of a Common Food Additive: Monosodium Glutamate (2024)

Check out this application note to see how you can use benchtop quantitative NMR spectroscopy to assay a food additive commonly used to add umami flavors to dishes: monosodium glutamate.

Monosodium glutamate, often colloquially referred to simply as MSG, is a commonly used cooking additive capable of imparting umami flavors into a variety of dishes. MSG is synthetically mass-produced but also occurs naturally in its glutamic acid form in many different foods, such as seaweed, tomatoes, cheese, and anchovies, among many others. In this application note, we demonstrate equivalency to the current USP-NF monograph assay method, which requires the use of titration with perchloric acid as a titrant. This is done using benchtop quantitative nuclear magnetic resonance (qNMR) spectroscopy.