Some quizzes sort you into a Hogwarts house. This one sorts you into a cheese, then tells you exactly how much free glutamate that cheese carries. Free glutamate is the savory compound that makes MSG taste like MSG, and aged cheese is quietly full of it. The flavor you have loved your whole life has been glutamate all along.

Six questions. Nine possible cheeses, from a two-year-aged Italian king to a Spanish blue with mold you can see from across the room. Answer honestly, meet your cheese, and get its number: real lab measurements published by the Umami Information Center, the same data behind our Glutamate Atlas.

Question 1 of 6

Intermission

Halfway there. Breathe.

That is a fondue drip, cheese in its final and most honest form. Three questions stand between you and your number.

Back to the questions

Your cheese is

mg of free glutamate per 100 g

Copy my result Take it again

Copied. Go spread the word.

Why a cheese quiz ends with an MSG fact

Because it is the friendliest way we know to make the site's whole argument. The savory depth people love in aged cheese is free glutamate, the same compound, made by time and microbes instead of a fermentation tank. Parmesan lovers are simply the people who love it most, at 1,200 to 1,680 mg per 100 g. If that is you, take it as an invitation: the flavor is not a guilty pleasure, it is chemistry with a long and delicious history, and you can read the full evidence on our MSG Evidence Tracker or start seasoning with it on purpose with Super Salt.

Cheese values from the Umami Information Center published cheese analyses (Japan Food Research Laboratories), with Camembert from Giacometti (1979) via the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Roquefort note: an older compilation lists 1,280 mg per 100 g; we publish the modern direct measurement. Quiz results are final and legally binding in the court of snacks.