"No MSG" might be the most successful label claim in the grocery store, and also the most misunderstood. It sounds like a promise that a food is free of the savory compound people worry about. This audit checks that promise the direct way: it takes products that advertise "No MSG" or "No added MSG" and compares each claim, word for word, with the same product's ingredient list. What follows is what the regulator says the claim may cover, and what 497 ingredient lists actually show.

By Travis Leleu. Published October 24, 2026. Updated October 28, 2026: rewritten on the claims database described below.

Scope first: what this page counts

Read this before any finding below. This page reports a database of 497 products that advertise "No MSG" or "No added MSG" and compares each product's claim (verbatim) with its ingredient list (verbatim). It counts claims and ingredients in a specific dataset, not the whole market. Open Food Facts, the source of 479 of the 497 records, is crowd-sourced and can lag reformulations, so a record can describe an older label than the one on shelves today. Absence from the database means nothing about a product: most products were never checked, and a product not listed here has not been cleared or condemned by anything on this page.

How the claim works, according to the regulator

When a manufacturer adds MSG directly, US rules require the ingredient list to say "monosodium glutamate," and a food containing added MSG cannot carry a "No MSG" claim. The regulator's position goes further than that. The FDA's Questions and Answers on Monosodium glutamate (MSG) states, verbatim:

Foods with ingredients naturally containing free glutamate, such as hydrolyzed vegetable protein, autolyzed yeast, hydrolyzed yeast, yeast extract, soy extracts, and protein isolate, cannot claim “No MSG” or “No added MSG” on their packaging.

That stated position is the premise this page now uses. An earlier version of this page stated the rule the other way around. That was wrong, and it has been removed. The honest finding, framed against the regulator's stated position, is this: the flavor is delivered at scale under other ingredient names, and where "No MSG"-style marketing persists around such products it does so against the regulator's stated position. Enforcement practice on shelves may differ from the stated position. This page documents the stated position and the label data, not enforcement outcomes.

None of this is fraud, and nothing on this page accuses any brand of anything. The claim, the ingredient list, and the regulator's words are all quoted so readers can see each one for themselves.

The count: ingredients beside the claim

Each of the 497 products was sorted by what its ingredient list shows beside its claim. The buckets keep three genuinely different situations separate:

The finding is about ingredients, not about intentions: in 143 of these 497 records, the ingredient list names a free-glutamate source ingredient alongside the claim, and in 2 records it names monosodium glutamate itself. In 260 records, the claim reads as straightforwardly accurate on the evidence available. By market, the 497 break down as: United States 236, United Kingdom 106, Australia 63, Ireland 43, Canada 21, Singapore 9, India 7, New Zealand 6, South Africa 6.

The ingredient names counted in Bucket 2

Bucket 2 counts this complete list of free-glutamate source ingredient names, including close spelling variants and the French equivalent: yeast extract; autolyzed yeast, including autolyzed yeast extract; hydrolyzed soy protein; hydrolyzed corn protein; hydrolyzed wheat protein; hydrolyzed vegetable protein; combined hydrolyzed proteins, as in "hydrolyzed soy, corn and wheat proteins"; torula yeast; the French "extrait de levure" (yeast extract); and the UK spelling "autolysed yeast." Yeast food is not one of the alias ingredients counted here. Glutamate-rich ingredients are not MSG, and the two categories stay separate everywhere in this database: Bucket 2 never calls these ingredients MSG, it only records that they are sources of free glutamate. This list is the database's own term list: it includes torula yeast, which the FDA sentence does not name, while the FDA sentence's soy extracts and protein isolate occur in none of these 497 records, and protein isolate stays held for a decision, the same hold as on the Hidden MSG Index. Bucket 3's whole ingredients are a different list again: tomato, cheese, mushroom, seaweed, soy sauce as an ingredient, miso, and anchovy or fish sauce. Nothing about a Bucket 3 claim is remarkable; those are whole foods that are naturally rich in glutamate.

A methods finding: why Bucket 1 is 2, not 63

A naive text match for "msg" over these records produces 63 apparent Bucket 1 products. 61 of them are false. Their ingredient text contains the word only inside the claim itself, restated: Open Food Facts ingredient fields often sweep in the marketing lines printed near the list ("No Added MSG. No Artificial Colours or Flavours."), and some ingredient notes carry the claim too ("natural flavor (derived from corn, no msg, no alcohol, no gluten)"). One ramen's ingredient field even carries the footnote "*no added msg, contains small amounts of naturally occurring glutamates" (Chef Woo Roasted Chicken Flavor Ramen, barcode 0810037810714, Bucket 2 on yeast extract, autolyzed yeast, and torula yeast). Every candidate was therefore re-checked with negation-aware matching before Bucket 1 assignment, and the 61 re-bucketed rows carry a repair note saying exactly this. Without that step, Bucket 1 is mostly an artifact.

What it looks like in the database

Bucket 1 holds two verified products, both United States records from Open Food Facts, each double-verified on a fresh re-read of its record. Nissin "Cup noodles," barcode 0070662035023, claims "No added MSG," and the same record's ingredient list includes, in its "contains less than 2%" segment: "...dried green onion, dried shrimp, dry soy sauce (wheat, soybeans, salt), egg white, garlic powder, hydrolyzed corn gluten, hydrolyzed corn soy and wheat protein, lactose, maltodextrin, monosodium glutamate, natural and artificial flavor, onion powder..." Nissin Foods (USA) "Ramen Noodle Soup," barcode 0070662060018, claims "No added MSG," with the ingredient list: "...dried leek flake, garlic powder, hydrolyzed soy protein, maltodextrin, monosodium glutamate, onion powder, potassium carbonate, sodium alginate..." The standing caveat applies to both: crowd-sourced records can lag a reformulation, and sibling Cup Noodles variants in this same database (Chicken Flavor 0070662030035, Beef Flavor 0070662130018, Top Ramen Chicken 0070662055038) carry the same "No added MSG" claim with source ingredients only, landing them in Bucket 2. The two Bucket 1 rows document what their records state.

Bucket 2 is led by food-service flavor bases. The Minor's and Stouffer's base lines account for 12 of the 18 USDA-sourced rows in the database, nearly all Bucket 2: bases are concentrated flavor, and yeast extracts and hydrolyzed proteins are how that flavor is built without adding MSG itself. Minor's Beef Base, "No Added MSG," 1 Lb Cup, barcode 00074826329119, lists: "ROASTED BEEF AND CONCENTRATED BEEF STOCK, SALT, HYDROLYZED SOY, CORN AND WHEAT PROTEINS, MALTODEXTRIN, PALM OIL, SUGAR, AUTOLYZED YEAST EXTRACT, CARAMEL COLOR, ONION POWDER, 2% OR LESS OF VEGETABLE OIL (CORN AND/OR CANOLA OIL), MODIFIED CORNSTARCH, DISODIUM INOSINATE, DISODIUM GUANYLATE, NATURAL FLAVORS, LACTIC ACID." Nongshim Shin Black Premium Noodle Soup, barcode 0031146022205, claims "No added MSG" with four source ingredients: yeast extract, hydrolyzed soy protein, hydrolyzed corn protein, and hydrolyzed wheat protein.

For contrast, Bucket 3 and Bucket 0 show the claim with nothing to argue about. Heinz Cream of Tomato Cup Soup, barcode 5000157074829, claims "No MSG" with tomatoes, 67%, as its first ingredient. Tyrrells Lightly Sea Salted Crisps, barcode 5060042641000, claims "No MSG" with an ingredient list of potatoes, vegetable oils, and sea salt. For the wider ingredient picture, see the Hidden MSG Index.

Why we are not mad about it

Here is the part most "audit" pages skip. We like these ingredients. Yeast extract is a perfectly good way to put free glutamate into food, and food makers reach for it because it works. The flinch is the problem, not the yeast. Decades of careful research, summed up on our MSG Evidence Tracker, keep finding that MSG itself is safe at the amounts people ordinarily eat, and the FDA considers added MSG generally recognized as safe. The same record carries a nuance worth stating in this section, not only on the Tracker page: EFSA, the European regulator, set a group acceptable daily intake of 30 mg per kilogram of body weight per day and noted that high consumers, especially young children, may exceed it, while FDA and JECFA impose no numerical limit. Both positions are presented here as stated by their authors. The "No MSG" claim exists to soothe a worry the evidence, on the whole, does not support.

So read the claim alongside the ingredient list: a true statement about what the package advertises, checked against the ingredients the package itself names. If you love these foods, and most people do, then you already love what glutamate does in a dish. The only new idea here is doing it on purpose, with the name right on the shaker. That is the whole idea behind Super Salt.

Method and coverage limits

• Sources: Open Food Facts, via its API search over "No MSG" label tags (479 records), and USDA Branded Foods, scanned for claim phrases in product names (49 listings, deduplicating to 18 USDA-sourced rows). Barcode joins between the two let USDA ingredient text fill in where an Open Food Facts record carries a claim but no ingredient list. Every row evidences both sides from a retrievable record; nothing is inferred. Deduplication is on normalized barcode. French-language Canadian records were classified with French term patterns, noted per row.
• The search found 1,101 unique claim-tagged products worldwide, of which 561 sit in the United States or another English-language market and 497 had both a retrievable claim and retrievable ingredient text. The exclusions are counted, not silent: 540 tagged products were excluded as non-English-market or unknown-market, and 82 of the 561 English-language records were excluded because neither source yielded ingredient text, leaving 479 from Open Food Facts; the 18 USDA-sourced rows bring the total to 497.
• Open Food Facts is crowd-sourced and incomplete, especially for the US: only 255 of the 1,101 claim-tagged products list the US among their markets, and label tags depend on a contributor having transcribed the package. Absence from this database means nothing about a product.
• The USDA name scan only sees claims that made it into the product name. Most "No MSG" claims live on packaging artwork, not in names, so that source has heavy false negatives by construction; it is a supplement, not a census. USDA reuses barcodes across historical listings, so a stale listing can misstate a current formulation in either direction, and ingredient texts can be stale, variant-mixed, or, rarely, OCR-corrupted.
• Glutamate-rich ingredients are not MSG, and we never count them as MSG. The two categories stay separate everywhere in this database.
• Presence is not dose. A bucket assignment means an ingredient appears on the label, not how much of it the recipe uses. Shares describe this database, not today's shelf: the database is historical and listing-weighted, and it counts package sizes and variants as separate records.