How MSG Got a Bad Rap
fivethirtyeight.com
fivethirtyeight.com
The problem is that it is incredibly difficult to avoid MSG because it is not required to be labeled as such, but can be hidden behind a large number of other monikers such as 'Natural Flavors'.
This is similar to the "uncured bacon" phenomenon. Truly uncured bacon wouldn't taste like bacon at all, so producers cure using plant extracts that are naturally high in nitrates rather than in curing salt. The end result is the same, but provides a bogus label that some people take seriously.
I assume you have some evidence for the 'very high concentration' that indicates the relative levels of concentrations in 'natural foods' compared to the levels that can be found in foods with added MSG?
You don't seem to be disputing that people are sensitive to glutamates, so why can't we have clear labeling of when it is added?
"Foods highest in Glutamic acid (based on levels per 200-Calorie serving)"
I'm not aware of any plausible mechanism explaining why MSG would cause a laundry list of vague health complaints it's blamed for.
Edit: Wow, thank you all for the information!
If we had discovered how to synthesize salt in 1909 and had called it "NACL" since then, it would be precisely as controversial as MSG is.
(Sarcasm off: salt is widely used across many cultures cuisines because salt is delicious. This property is shared with MSG, but MSG is only called MSG when Asians use it. When Italians use it it is called "food.")
And also because salt is needed to stay alive.
anyway one can accomplish the same flavor with dried shrimp or bonito flakes, which are high in glutamate. I’m sure all restaurants that claim not to use MSG just go there instead.
To be more sure of yourself, you can run an controlled, blinded experiment where you have group A consume food with monosodium glutamate added and group B consume food without the additive. So long as you don't tell which food is which, then group A won't have a different response from group B.
But these things don't actually answer your question. They answer the question "How do we know it is safe?"
To explain "why MSG is safe" seems like it would be impossible for the same reason that proving a negative is impossible: you would have to go through all of the possible metabolic processes and show that and it does not screw with them.
I myself am a gout sufferer, and MSG is one of my triggers. I didn't realise what was causing me to always have a bout of gout after eating Chinese food, so I would change what I ordered, what I ate to try and figure it out. Ultimately I started cooking my favourite dishes at home, using pre-made sauces bought at the store (they didn't mention MSG after all, and I had no idea that yeast extract was the same thing).
The restaurant near me claimed they did not cook with MSG, however the manufacturer for their soy sauce used for stir frying apparently added yeast extract (MSG by another name) and they were not aware of it.
These days I end up cooking at home more, which is probably healthier and better for my wallet in the long term.
One good reason might be if there were an unfounded stigma attached to one of the names. Rapeseed has many common names in the English language[0]; what are they trying to hide?! (In large measure, the unfortunate connotation of rapey-ness.)
I'll ask you the same thing I've asked the other two people on this thread who've reported personal experience with MSG sensitivity. Have you tried the things I listed here?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10866718
I ask because, again, it would be pretty fascinating to find a sensitivity to MSG that wasn't correlated with a sodium or glutamate sensitivity. MSG instantaneously breaks into sodium and glutamate in liquid (such as in your stomach).
> Another question to ask yourself: do you get headaches when you eat blue cheese, parmesan, mushrooms, or tomatoes? Those are naturally intense sources of glutamic acid.
Other than mushrooms (which I also avoid religiously), none of the others listed cause gout for me.
Things that cause my gout relentlessly and quickly: asparagus, beans, legumes (peanuts included), mushrooms, MSG, bacon (specifically nitrites in it), pork (yes, I know bacon is pork), whey proteins, and almonds.
From the FDA website[0]:
"How can I know if there is MSG in my food?"
"FDA requires that foods containing added MSG list it in the ingredient panel on the packaging as monosodium glutamate. However, MSG occurs naturally in ingredients such as hydrolyzed vegetable protein, autolyzed yeast, hydrolyzed yeast, yeast extract, soy extracts, and protein isolate, as well as in tomatoes and cheeses. While FDA requires that these products be listed on the ingredient panel, the agency does not require the label to also specify that they naturally contain MSG. However, foods with any ingredient that naturally contains MSG cannot claim “No MSG” or “No added MSG” on their packaging. MSG also cannot be listed as “spices and flavoring.”"
It's found naturally in many foods you wouldn't expect (pears, cucumbers, tomatoes), and other times companies add it to unexpected items (Dole sprays it on bananas).
Based on the downvotes, people either think I'm full of shit or crazy, but what can say other than he has the same problem with Dole bananas as other high MSG foods.
https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=10866718
It would be really interesting to discover someone who was genuinely sensitive to monosodium glutamate but not to sodium or free glutamates in other foods. I'm not sure how that would be explainable.
There have been many blinded experiments looking for glutamate reactions (using MSG as the vector), and they're not inconclusive; they appear to refute "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome".
> In Protocol A, 50 (38.5%) of 130 subjects reported two or more symptoms (“positive response”) during the MSG challenge and had no symptoms or one symptom after placebo. Nineteen subjects (14.6%) reported two or more symptoms to both MSG and placebo, whereas 17 subjects (13.1%) reported two or more symptoms to placebo and no symptoms or one symptom after MSG. Forty-four subjects (33.8%) reported no symptoms or one symptom to both MSG and placebo. Administration of 5 g MSG was associated with a significantly higher frequency of response, i.e., of occurrence of two or more symptoms and with significantly higher frequency of occurrence of four of the 10 symptoms.
> The results suggest that large doses of MSG given without food may elicit more symptoms than a placebo in individuals who believe that they react adversely to MSG. However, the frequency of the responses was low and the responses reported were inconsistent and were not reproducible. The responses were not observed when MSG was given with food.
So, the study demonstrated that relatively high doses of MSG given straight to people causes a scattering of inconsistent reactions, but that MSG in food does nothing.
There were 2 subjects in protocol D where food was used. In the steps between A and B 50% of relevant participants were eliminated. IN the steps between B and C 1/3 of the relevant participants were elminated.
The study did not demonstrate that MSG in food does nothing, they just failed to observe an effect on two participants.
The study did demonstrate that MSG can have an effect but that the effect is not consistent. To me that gives even more reason to view a failure to observe an effect in two participants as inconclusive.
(These inconsistent results occurred only in subjects who were given doses of MSG 6x greater than what is used in typical recipes, and only without food --- MSG added to food produced no responses at all, inconsistent or otherwise.)
One time that I had an MSG attack (racing heart) was when I cooked Zatarain's at home. Or perhaps, according the author, I want to secretly vilify the creole? Clickbait drivel.
"When it comes to MSG, the false connections are fairly innocuous for most people but may still cause unnecessary discomfort for some, either because they are experiencing the nocebo effect or depriving themselves of deliciousness."
I have been to 6 Asian countries for a time period of over 4 months total. I guess I must have been stereotyping them all along.
Another question to ask yourself: do you get headaches when you eat blue cheese, parmesan, mushrooms, or tomatoes? Those are naturally intense sources of glutamic acid.
I don't think many people are arguing that it's impossible to be sensitive to glutamic acid (the case is stronger that nobody is specifically allergic to MSG, though). But there are people sensitive to all sorts of things, including very basic food inputs like salt. We don't dismiss people with shellfish allergies and say "but shellfish is perfectly safe!". But we also don't treat shellfish like hazmat because some people can't eat it.
Finally: the reason people call out the nocebo effect is that the placebo/nocebo effect is extremely and counterintuitively powerful. You'd expect people suffering from a nocebo effect to have a dismissive reaction to that explanation, because the effect plays tricks on our thinking.
(I upvoted you, by the way.)
How much, though? Some quick and dirty math (please correct me if I'm wrong in any of this):
100 grams of parmesan cheese (about a cup) is 1.2 grams of free glutamates: http://www.msgfacts.com/nutrition/what_foods_are_glutamate-r...
Powdered MSG contains 78% free glutamate and 12.2% sodium, or about a 6.4:1 glutamate:sodium ratio: http://www.edenfoods.com/articles/view.php?articles_id=207
A teaspoon of powdered MSG contains 500 mg of sodium (http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/91dpQqbFZrL._SL1500_.j...). This is about 3.2 grams of glutamate.
So, if my math is correct, a teaspoon of powdered MSG contains as much sodium as 2.7 cups (0.5 * 6.4 / 1.2) of parmesan cheese. As someone who regularly cooks with MSG powder and has seen other people cook with it too (my chinese friend uses a 1:1 ratio of salt and MSG powder), it's easy to load food with way more than 1 teaspoon of MSG per serving.
My point is, I think people who cook with MSG use way more glutamate than people who cook with natural foods like parmesan or mushrooms.
The important question in this part of the thread, just to be clear, isn't whether you can more rapidly ingest glutamic acid by eating pure MSG than by eating parmesan. Of course you can! The question is whether you get a roughly equivalent dose of glutamate from common umami-forward dishes than you do from dishes where umami is added through MSG.
If people who claim to be MSG-sensitive are eating typical dishes (the kind where MSG is buried in the label as "yeast extract") and reporting symptoms, but aren't responding to a blue cheese burger with mushrooms, something's wrong wth the reporting.
This was the point of my comment: there is far more free glutamate in (some) foods containing powdered MSG, like Zatarain's, than there is in naturally high glutamate foods like mushrooms and parmesan. I'm talking potentially an order of magnitude. This is partially because of the way people use the powders, and partially because the processing of MSG involves freeing bound glutamates. As someone who cooks with powdered MSG, I'm speaking from personal experience here - I don't have a sensitivity to glutamate, so I cook with a lot of it. So do many other people I know.
>The question is whether you get a roughly equivalent dose of glutamate from common umami-forward dishes than you do from dishes where umami is added through MSG.
The answer is "not at all" for many types of food (like a typical corner Chinese restaurant, who uses powdered MSG a lot like I do).
Leaving aside the MSG, that would be over 500mg of added salt per serving. I would find that disgustingly salty and unpalatable, so I don't see how it's "easy" to add that much.
I had so few attacks, that I forget about my intolerance. Not sure if I had headaches, because I was so focused on my pseudo heart attack! I spent 7 weeks in Vietnam and I saw MSG everywhere. Never had an attack.
I constantly eat parmesan, mushrooms, or tomatoes (rarely blue cheese). I have always been a "jumpy" person, perhaps these foods always have affected me, just slightly. Perhaps it is the time to be formally tested. Thanks again.
The nocebo effect is real, though. Placebo and nocebo effects are well supported by any number of experiments and trials. Please do not take it as an insult when someone suggests that something you are really feeling might be an instance of a nocebo effect; I think that this type of dismissal (of psychogenic phenomena in general) as "not real" may be an aspect of a broader stigma about mental health issues.
Just like any allergy, something that is safe for most people will be harmful to a few. Even something that is rare will still exist, and when the whole world is connected to talk about it, those rare people will pop up. I'm not sure how we developed such a harsh culture where we don't accept those rarities for who they are.
Because the extreme rarities are overshadowed by others and begin being treated as such. Which is extremely unfortunate. It's the ones making false claims (be it intentional or ignorance) that get everyone treated in the same bucket.
Other examples include: people claiming to be sensitive to gluten who aren't. People who are allergic to soy but really aren't. People who are overweight blaming their genes/gland rather than their 5k calorie daily intake consisting of almost entirely fatty foods and sugary drinks.
Are there people who are truly overweight because of genes/gland issues? Sure. Are there people actually allergic to soy? You bet! Are there gluten-sensitive people? Yep!
But when seemingly everyone who is overweight begins to blame their genes/glands, people begin to roll their eyes. "Suuuuuure, that's the reason. Yep. Totally. /s"
Fact is that a large number of people are wrong [0] and self-diagnose. The gluten-free fad dieting especially annoys me, because many people think "gluten-free == healthier" when a gluten-free diet is the opposite [1]. A lot of these people are explained by simple ignorance and think "[some term]-free" means it is healthier. "Sugar-free", "fat-free", "gluten-free"? Oh, it must be healthy!
[0] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26043918
[1] http://www.webmd.com/diet/healthy-kitchen-11/truth-about-glu...