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Comment by dylan604 | Hacker News Reader

"Ingredients: Monosodium Glutamate, White and Black Pepper, Fine Flake Salt, Sage, Coriander, and other natural spices"

So if the first listed ingredient represents the most abundant ingredient...

Also, such a cop out that the FDA has allowed "other natural spices" to be a legit listing. Supposedly to protect corporate secrets blah blah. What if someone is allergic to one of those "natural spices". Either we're for accurate food labeling for the public's safety, or we're not. This in between state highly suggests we're not.

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> So if the first listed ingredient represents the most abundant ingredient...

It's seasoning, so it doesn't seem surprising at all that MSG would be pretty high on the list. Do you think that's bad?

When some one says "secret recipe of 11 herbs & spices" my mind doesn't immediately jump to MSG as an herb or spice. Then to see that it is the primary ingredient definitely jumps out to me. Does it not to you?

It's in the same category as salt, which I'd kinda expect to be in the 11-things "secret recipe", but which isn't a herb or spice.

Call it celery powder then if it makes you feel better

Isn't celery powder a 'natural' source of nitrates? I didn't think of it as an analog to MSG.

Celery powder isn't MSG?

Some people still hang on to the flawed science and xenophobic belief that MSG is bad.

Yeah it is a hard one to shake. My mom was not the least bit xenophobic but she did get serious headaches from MSG. But only when she knew she was eating it. And she loved tomatoes too! I miss her dearly, and she was actually quite sharp, but she would not let go of the MSG thing despite ample evidence to contradict her belief.

The headaches are real, but it's a similar pipeline/effect to caffeine/theobromine. Your brain wants at least a little MSG in your diet because it does exciting things with it. Your brain is also easily over-saturated with it and gets "hungover" if you eat/drink too much in too short an amount of time, and different people can be differently sensitive (just as with coffee/tea/chocolate/etc).

Certainly there were restaurants trying to sell you the "5-Hour Energy" equivalent of MSG and some cuisines tend to get closer to doing that naturally. But also you shouldn't directly or indirectly blame the people that make that food for you, just as it is silly to blame all coffee shops for the caffeine headaches and migraines you sometimes get if you don't watch how much coffee you are drinking.

It's so weird to see this completely legitimate critique of food labelling standards is stitched on to a nothing-comment about seasoning containing MSG

How is it any more of a nothing-comment than yours? MSG is fine, but it definitely isn't what I would have imagined being the main ingredient. A little MSG goes a long way, so if that's the main ingredient, how little is used of the actual herbs&spices? I never said anything negative about MSG. You read that into it on your own instead of just thinking about the rest of what was implied

I think it should go without saying that allowing companies to vaguely say things like “our product contains a bunch of stuff, trust us, bro” goes against the spirit of transparency behind the FDA’s rules.

The reason I called the MSG part a "nothing comment" is that it doesn't say anything, everything is left to implication. Nowhere did I say that you said anything negative about MSG, I was complaining about the total lack of substance. You just pointed out that MSG is the "most abundant ingredient" (meaning it makes up at least 17% in this case, I think).

Anyway it doesn't matter.

The FDA maintains a list of known allergens and they must always be listed if used as ingredients, even if they are seasonings/spices. Besides, if I put on a hard hat for safety but not a hi-vis vest then it doesn't make wearing the hard hat any less for safety. False dichotomies about it don't help move safety forward.

Same would go for coca cola recipe, and many others

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