I've talked to many otherwise perfectly rational folks who get worked up about avoiding MSG when it comes to Asian food — but still go out and buy liquid aminos or eat foods that are caked in it.
> FDA considers the addition of MSG to foods to be “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS). Although many people identify themselves as sensitive to MSG, in studies with such individuals given MSG or a placebo, scientists have not been able to consistently trigger reactions. [1]
[1]: https://www.fda.gov/Food/IngredientsPackagingLabeling/FoodAd...
Even the (rebutted, non-reproducing) studies that showed adverse reactions to MSG (in the 80s and early 90s) showed headache as one of the symptoms not associated with MSG (tingling and numbness were more closely associated).
I don't doubt you're able to give yourself a migraine, but I do doubt that you're controlling for MSG.
This might be one of the best-studied food safety questions in the literature.
How did they find the subjects? Was it a general call for college students, or did they attempt to drill down to find rare sensitive individuals?
Double refers to the fact that not only do the test subject not know what treatment they are getting (e.g. real or placebo), but also the staff who administer that treatment do not know: both are blind, hence double. This is important because if the administrators know, then something in their behavior such as body language could leak the information to the test subjects.
If administrator and test subject are the same person, it cannot be double. However, you can take steps to prevent yourself from knowing what you're taking, like preparing identical containers which are randomized and whatnot. If there is no second human there serving to you who could leak clues then it may be as good as double blind.
Seems pretty straightforward to me.
P.S. I have no reaction to MSG I just don't understand why you would think someone is being irrational.
Because nobody has a reaction to MSG. It's ill effects are entirely fictional.
It has not been proven, and will not be proven, that every single person in the world has no reaction to MSG. All I'm advocating is a little bit of doubt. The human body is complex and not every person is the same and not every biological process is completely understood. We can make statements as a whole, like that most people that think they're sensitive to MSG aren't. But we shouldn't excitedly immediately dismiss a person claiming that something is happening to them.
The reason MSG gets such harsh pushback is that the idea of "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome" or "MSG sensitivity" has been rebutted pretty comprehensively both from an empirical perspective --- decades of studies have never established a link, which according to the narrative of MSG sensitivity should be very easy to do! --- and from a theoretical perspective. In fact, the theoretical basis for the safety of MSG is pretty plain just from the molecule, which makes you wonder how people could be spinning stories about the dangers of chemical MSG at all.
What I'm trying to say is that you shouldn't take that knowledge and then proceed to tell an individual, who you haven't studied, that they are wrong about what is happening to their bodies. People have weird and rare reactions to things all the time. You should have a healthy amount of doubt and realize that maybe you don't have complete knowledge of their bodies. Why is everyone here so certain? Who proved that no person on the planet has any reaction to MSG?
Side note: Latacora intreagues me, I think it's a good aproach to satisfy some security pain points. If things go well in the next few months, I may reach out to evaluate fit;-)
I'll tell you why I care. I'm coming from the perspective of someone that DOES have a rare and strange immune system reaction to a common food. I've seen doctor after doctor for years and no one can tell me what it is. I've tested it over and over and over and my doctors all agree with my assessment. But for some reason, I have to deal with a lot of people that tell me I'm wrong because read something on the internet about it being a fad. Why is everyone so damn certain they have complete knowledge of someone's digestive system and immune system?
"You think the probability that someone on the planet has a sensitivity to a certain food/molecule is about the same as there being a teapot orbiting Mars?"
No, I KNOW people have food sensitivities. But not to MSG or its metabolites. I have as much evidence for the teapot as the MSG sensitivity, so I couldn't really guess which is more likely. I'd be happy to change my mind on either if presented with plausible research!
I mean, you also have a whole ton of negative results regarding the plausibility of MSG sensitivity.
Do you have any results showing that someone has looked into the possibility of a teapot floating around Mars and not found one?
There's no clear mechanism for either to be true, but so far I think my money's on teapot.
If you're allergic to tomatoes or salt, then it's a personal thing, not a general property of tomatoes or salt.
And you have an example of a food anywhere that meets that standard? Literally nothing meets this ideal of "safety", so I don't understand why you're OK with peanuts or shrimp when those are clearly shown to be death sentences for some people.
So really what you're talking about is glutamate which is a very widely occuring amino acid. It's "non-essential" which means that your body produces it. Almost all fermented foods contain it (including liquid aminos). Cheeses, meats, vegetables, etc contain it. It's very likely that you eat several times as much naturally occurring glutamate in your diet as you would if you used MSG in your cooking.
Basically if someone says they are allergic to MSG, but not allergic to all of the other foods that contain glutamate, is like someone saying they're allergic to table salt, but not allergic to all of the other foods that contain sodium, which is not medically plausible.
The flip side is that very high blood concentration of sodium can cause medical issues, and people worried about glutamate argue that a similar effect is going on when you eat MSG, but research so far indicates that at normal dietary levels, you're fine to sprinkle a little of either molecule on your food.
If someone says they are allergic to MSG, they are simply abusing the word allergic. The reaction isn't allergic. It is not an immune response.
Nobody in the thread above you used the word "allergic"; you made that up.
Immune reactions are very different; they can be triggered by traces of the material. Nobody in their right mind claims they react to traces of MSG.
The following paper studies the actual mechanisms how of MSG alters blood flows in brains. Well, rat brains:
https://open.library.ubc.ca/cIRcle/collections/ubctheses/24/...
> Basically if someone says they are allergic to MSG, but not allergic to all of the other foods that contain glutamate, is like someone saying they're allergic to table salt, but not allergic to all of the other foods that contain sodium, which is not medically plausible.
OK, so how come I can eat table salt but chlorine alone will kill me?
Go back and complete that chem 100 course
We can draw a ready analogy to saccharides. It is like denying the effects of sugar because indigestible complex carbohydrates are made of sugar and do not produce those effects. "A blood sugar spike doesn't exist because cellulose is made of sugars, and I've eaten a large bowl of moistened sawdust without experiencing such a spike. It's probably an imagined effect or maybe caused by something else, such as a response to anti-caking agents in the sugar."
Why is MSG used in the first place on foods which already contain glutamate? For instance, why is it used in Vietnamese lemon grass chicken recipes, given that chicken protein has tons of glutamate? It's because the glutamate that is locked up in protein doesn't produce the taste effect of MSG.
So why don't these naysayers deny the existence of the taste effect of MSG also?
As in: "Gee, I don't believe that MSG can possibly be a flavor enhancer, because boiled chicken breast contains copious glutamate and yet tastes bland. People who say that flavor is enhanced by MSG are just imagining it due to confirmation bias fueled by mass hysteria."
There are a lot of "sensitivity" syndromes, and some are associated with genetic issues, some with toxicity, and others with mental health. And then there are questionable diseases [2]. Yes, the sufferers are sometimes vocal and unscientific. Those claiming to follow science shouldn't be.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture-bound_syndrome [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_questionable_diseases
If many double blind experiments are not enough to convince you, I suspect nothing will.
How do you feel about vaccines?
I don't doubt there are lots of studies showing no MSG effects (not that anyone bothered to link to them). I even believe them, just that there may be other factors at play. Plus they only studied MSG, I doubt they studied the people who claim to be affected by it.
Did you miss the part where I brought up psychosomatic effects, culture-bound syndrome, mental illness, and questionable diseases? Do you want to contribute any hypotheses or just make fun of people?