MSG is back. Is the idea it's bad for us just a myth or food science? | Hacker News Reader

MSG is back. Is the idea it's bad for us just a myth or food science?

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25 pointsgnabgib24 comments

Nutrition labels in Germany often list "celery powder". That's not because the product needs any celery flavor (the powder is pretty much tasteless, as far as I understand), but because customers may be wary of "Natriumglutamat".

Manufacturers need to label every ingredient, so they don't use chemically synthesized MSG, but celery powder, which is virtually identical, but customers think it's organic and healthy, as opposed to the evil chemical MSG.

It wouldn't suprise me if celery was relatively rich in glutamate given its use in stocks and mirepoix, but I think that celery powder is mostly used for its nitrate and nitrite content as a meat curing agent.

Celery salt, at least, is a game changer when making things like stews, gravies and sauces.

If I’m making a ‘western’ dish (for want of a better phrase) it is an essential ingredient to get the depth of flavour into the sauce. The only thing which I find is equally as good at attaining that depth is… celery

This is a common food labelling hack in the US when a manufacturer has a product like sausage or bacon which would normally be treated with sodium nitrate (curing salt) to maintain color and taste. When 'nitrate-free' became something the organic food crowd wanted to see on the label but grey meat was not going to be appealing in the package you suddenly found a lot of recipes that included some sort of celery extract because it was high in available nitrates.

tl;dr in the US this was more about nitrates and color of packaged meat than it was about glatamates.

My uncle Roger tells me that MSG is just fine. It tastes great, and like all things, in moderation it's not a big deal.

For those not in the know, 'Uncle Roger' is hilarious:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_Ng

"Rice-cooking supremacists" -- is beautiful from one Asian American to another and "This Nephew using Huawei phone, they always listening" LOL.

Bottom line (quote)

> A very small percentage of people may have hypersensitivities to MSG.

I am hypersensitive to poison oak. Some are immune.

If you studied logic, you know: "all generalities are wrong".

> If you studied logic, you know: "all generalities are wrong".

Including that one: we’re all, every one of us, hypersensitive to hydrogen fluoride.

I use MSG constantly, and I'm one of the people that get headaches if they eat too much of it. Really, you have to so much that the dish starts to taste bad before you get headaches, and I'm pretty sure you build up a tolerance anyways. I will say, while it's a good salt substitute for people looking to lower their sodium intake, you can't replace all of your salt with it. In fact, it's absolutely disgusting if you use it for something other than savoury dishes.

I'm curious if you've tried potassium monoglutamate. Chatgippity tells me it's a "milder" version of MSG, but obv w/o the sodium. Sorta like "non-salt".

Then people will start worrying about low blood pressure, as potassium helps lower your blood pressure. :)

How much MSG do you use? I've noticed that just a pinch or 2 is enough to flavour the food (and I am talking about for around 1kg of meat + rice). (A pinch may be roughly equivalent to 1/3rd of a quarter of teaspoon). And yeah, it's not a salt substitute, as you need to use a lot of it to get the salty taste.

I replace 20% of my salt with MSG when I use it, and I normally salt meat with 1% of its weight. A pinch or two for a 1kg of meat + rice isn't enough for me unless you're not using a lot of meat, but obviously YMMV.

Put too much and any food starts to taste like cool ranch doritos. Then you realize cool ranch flavor is pretty much pure MSG. Then you achieve enlightenment.

> There is no chemical difference between the MSG found in food and the additive.

This is a familiar refrain, but it's false. While there may be no chemical difference between the MSG found in food and the MSG found in the additive, the additive is not solely MSG. Food-grade MSG is 96%-99% pure, meaning that the remaining content is most likely the growth substrate, including the bacteria and/or mold produced as an MSG by-product. MSG health-related studies tend to be performed using 100% pure, pharmaceutical grade MSG, which is not what people cook with. I would posit that people tend to be sensitive to the impurities, not the MSG itself.

I often hear some variant of the comment, "You're probably not really sensitive to MSG; it's been disproven by science." Even if this is technically true, it's not practically relevant, and using "science" to tell people that their food sensitivities don't exist is a particularly insensitive form of gaslighting.

Disclaimer: As far as I know, I am not sensitive to food-grade MSG additives. But I know people who are, and I have no reason to doubt their sensitivities. In my own cooking, I prefer to use kelp powder.

Here are some case reports of a similar phenomenon involving “citric acid”: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6097542/

Definitely no worse than sugar.

tl;dr: myth, busted many times, and mainly based on vaguely racist pushback against the proliferation of “Chinese” restaurants into America in the 1970s… an enormous number of humans consume it every day with zero ill effect.

With all things nutrition I like the simple rule: If it's made in a factory, don't eat it.

If the MSG comes naturally, I eat it. If it comes via processing, I don't.

Cue the "oh but corn gets husked in a factory" or "blueberries get cropped by a machine" comments lol.

It's exactly the same molecule "made" in a factory or made naturally from anchovies or seaweed.

That's not compelling. When these molecules come naturally, they come with other ingredients that often complement or offset the positive or negative effects. Another aspect of naturally made food is it is much harder to "overdose" simply by eating.

It's amazing how such a simple and obviously true rule of thumb gets overthought.

>When these molecules come naturally, they come with other ingredients that often complement or offset the positive or negative effects.

They can also come with ingredients that amplify their negative effects. That's why you usually don't eat your food raw, you cook it or leech out the bad stuff.

I was trying to acknowledge that by saying "complement or offset the positive or negative effects"

But what's your point? Needing to cook food (in most cases) implies you should eat processed food?

Again, overcomplicating a simple, obvious, and useful rule of thumb.

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