The Hidden Additives That Keep Processed Foods on Your Mind

MSG gets most of the attention when people talk about flavor additives engineered to keep snacks craveable, but it rarely works entirely alone. Two lesser known compounds usually ride alongside it, quietly amplifying the exact same effect.

These additives carry no flavor of their own, which is part of why almost nobody notices them sitting on an ingredient label. Their entire job is to make everything else on that label taste more intense.

None of it involves anything illegal or particularly exotic. Here are the hidden additives working alongside MSG to keep processed foods lodged in people’s minds.

Two Compounds Working Alongside MSG, Not Instead Of It

Disodium inosinate and disodium guanylate, often abbreviated together as I+G, are nucleotide compounds originally isolated from dried bonito fish and mushrooms. Neither one tastes like much of anything eaten on its own, showing genuinely dramatic power only when paired with glutamate, the same compound found in MSG.

Disodium guanylate specifically carries roughly twice the flavor enhancing strength of disodium inosinate, based on food industry testing comparing the two compounds directly. That difference is part of why manufacturers rarely use just one, blending both together for the strongest possible effect.

The Combination Is Stronger Than Either One Alone

“Actually food companies can use one of them, either disodium inosinate or disodium guanylate,” a manufacturer’s quality assurance manager told researchers, noting they usually use both together for a bigger effect. That combination lets manufacturers reduce a food’s sodium chloride content while still delivering an equally, or more, savory result.

The scientific term for this kind of flavor boosting is synergism, where two compounds together produce an effect far stronger than simply adding their individual strengths. Umami researchers have studied this exact synergy since shortly after MSG itself was first isolated in Japan in the early 1900s.

They Show Up In Far More Snacks Than People Realize

The combined additive, sometimes labeled simply I+G or by the E number E635, shows up regularly in flavored instant noodles, snack chips, crackers, sauces and fast food. It is almost always used specifically alongside foods that already contain natural or added glutamate, rather than as a standalone ingredient.

Regulators including the FDA and European Food Safety Authority have both approved the additive as safe at typical usage levels. That regulatory approval, though, says nothing about how effectively the combination works at making a snack difficult to put down once opened.

None of this means a bag of chips is secretly dangerous, the additives themselves have a long safety record behind them. It just means the intense, hard to place savory flavor keeping people reaching for more is often not one ingredient working alone, it is a carefully engineered team effort hiding in plain sight on the label.