Monosodium glutamate, or MSG, was in just about everything at the Chinese restaurants I went to growing up. The idea of MSG is that it enhances, or is supposed to, the flavors already present in the dishes being prepared. A Japanese scientist named Ikeda Kikunae discovered MSG more than a century ago. He was trying to figure out the chemistry behind how a kind of seaweed used to make the broth, or dashi, used as a roux in Japanese cooking brings out what is called “umami,” or savoriness, in various ingredients. The whole point of adding MSG to anything is that underlying goodness is meant to be bolded and underlined.

MSG, in my philistine opinion, is nothing at all like dashi. Just as I wince at chemical sweeteners in cokes and chemical lemon juice in iced tea, MSG makes me pull weird faces and push plates of Chinese food away. I appreciate the effort and the intention, but MSG is altogether too much amplification. I prefer the real thing, even if “the real thing” is already laced with fat, salt, and other things not exactly occupying the penthouse real estate of the healthy foods hierarchy. The basic premise, though, is sound, even if the effects are questionable. MSG is not meant to be a substitute for goodness. MSG exists because people recognize that goodness exists prior to human meddling.

MSG has been in the news lately, but not for anything having to do with General Tso’s Chicken. It is rumored that one Taylor Swift, of pop fame, and her beau, the beefcake football star Travis Kelce, are getting hitched at Madison Square Garden (MSG) in New York City. My news feed is filled with stories about this purported event. Preparations are proceeding apace, we are told. Trucks are delivering stage equipment, fancy foods, and all manner of decorations and other such accoutrements. Forklift crews are working overtime to get the joint set up for the big night. Guest lists are being leaked to the gawking media. Hollywood starlets, Kelce’s fellow jocks, Swift’s fellow crooners, and various and sundry other celebrities (celebrated mainly by themselves, but anyway) are to descend on MSG and turn it into a huge party centered on the Kelce-Swift nuptials. A big shindig is aborning. A soiree is in the works to put every other New York City event of the season to shame.

But how different this MSG is from the MSG in egg drop soup. The Chinese restaurant MSG brings out underlying goodness, goodness that no human being created. Sure, the line cook in the back of Szechuan Palace tossed everything into the wok and stirred it into a #37 or a #52. But he didn’t invent broccoli or rice or snap peas. He worked with what God gave him. MSG is the silly human flourish, the chemical flex, that points to the abundance of God’s creation. Without natural ingredients, no restaurant would exist, Chinese or otherwise. That’s the backdrop to wonton and eggroll MSG.

The Swiftian-Kelcian MSG is completely different. The two young lovebirds will be married there (if the rumors being peddled by the fake news media are to be believed — you never know) and not in a church. Probably it will be some kind of civil ceremony. Maybe a specimen of pastor will be on stage to round out the performance. Given Swift’s LGBTQIIA+++ bona fides, I am guessing the officiant will be spectacularly gay. At any rate, what will take place will almost certainly not be a real marriage. It will be a secular sham, a mockery of grace. The people at MSG will be celebrating, besides themselves, nothing but the humongous egos of the bride and groom and the destruction of marriage as a whole. MSG, in this case, will enhance precisely nothing of substance, nothing good. There is no there there. MSG of the Swift-Kelce variety is an exclamation point at the end of a non-existent sentence, at the bottom right corner of a blank piece of paper.

The two are also getting married not, it would seem, with any intention to honor or love one another for the rest of their lives. Already the lawyers are busy with the prenup, the media report. Swift and Kelce will go into their wedding the way that parachutists go into an airplane, ripcord at the ready. MSG brings out nothing but the vanity, the emptiness, of the affair. Parachutists, to their credit, do not get on their rides promising to stay aboard forever. Swift and Kelce will probably make thunderous vows of forever-together-hood. Great, but what is a vow worth if it is bracketed beforehand, qualified, undermined, and effectively broken? Maybe Swift will one day turn the moment into an embittered song, as is her wont. But that won’t go back and make the MSG marriage any more valid.

Don’t let MSG fool you. Marriage is not a day but a lifetime. It’s not a party but a death to self. It’s not a facade, but among the most beautiful and strong things God ever made. It’s like peas and carrots, Forrest. Those things are good by themselves and even better together. Man and woman separately are good. Man and woman together are, in a way, divine. You can spice things up, but the roux is wonderful without any embellishment at all. One way or the other, you don’t need MSG.

But if you’re not really getting married in the first place, then maybe you do.