I have no doubt that there are lots of people who falsely believe they have reactions to MSG. There are lots of people who falsely believe they have reactions to gluten, but that doesn't mean that Celiac's disease doesn't exist.
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'.
But it's also incredibly difficult to avoid glutamates because they occur naturally in very high concentrations in some of the foodstuffs people find most palatable, so they make their way into all sorts of recipes.
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.
> also incredibly difficult to avoid glutamates because they occur naturally in very high concentrations in some of the foodstuffs people find most palatable
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?
I don't understand this question. Are you really asking whether it's possible to find out how much glutamic acid is in a gram of a given foodstuff? The answer is "yes", of course, just like you can easily find out how much sodium or iron is food.
How? I don't see a 'grams of free glutamate' label on food. I can't even find sources that tell me the average amount of free glutamates in foods where MSG is typically added.
This is exactly the problem the parent comment describes. Manufacturers aren't required to even mention MSG, or any glutamate for that matter, so we simply don't know.
I would be interested to know more about this, as I've always considered MSG something to avoid entirely. Unfortunately, the article doesn't really offer specifics as to why MSG is safe, apart from "so-and-so said it is".
It's safe because it's simply the salt of sodium and glutamic acid. Glutamate is an amino acid that is a fundamental building block of your metabolism. It's also been omnipresent in human diets for millennia.
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.
The counterfactual world should really be obsessed with the fact that Asians put NACL on everything, too. NACL is in soy sauce. NACL is in tempura. NACL is in fried rice. An independent lab tested 48 items at an Asian fusion restaurant and detected NACL in 46 of them! Will no one save health-conscious Americans from the perils of NAsianCL?
(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.")
You’ve got the burden of proof backward. When I say, "water is unsafe," it's on me to explain why. The folks who said "MSG is unsafe," like the folks who told us margarine is healthier than butter, have been shown over time to have relied on bad science.
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.
MSG is a salt, so when you put it in water, it dissolves into sodium and glutamate. Glutamate is an amino acid found naturally in a variety of tasty foods. So, you already consume it and you're fine.
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.
MSG in the US may be on labels in a variety of different ways, including "yeast extract". Why does something that is considered to not have any adverse effects labeled differently other than to confuse the consumer?
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.
> Why does something that is considered to not have any adverse effects labeled differently other than to confuse the consumer?
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.)
Again: there is no debate that MSG is stigmatized in the US. You can't draw conclusions from that! All sorts of things are stigmatized that shouldn't be, and there are other things that aren't stigmatized that probably should be.
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?
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).
I don't have any issues with salt at all. I have absolutely nothing against MSG, and have in the past loved eating food with MSG in it. It took me months of trial and error to figure out that MSG was the common ingredient that was causing me my pain.
> 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.
It's not that I don't believe you that there are foods with MSG in them that trigger symptoms. But if you can eat a couple of tomatoes without triggering symptoms, it doesn't sound like it's the glutamate that's doing it. And MSG is just sodium and glutamate; it dissolves instantly in water.
I eat at most a half tomato at once in a salad or on a burger. I am not a big fan of tomato based sauces (for pasta/pizza) because they are too acidic for my tastes.
Why does something that is considered to not have any adverse effects labeled differently other than to confuse the consumer?
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.”"
Do you restrict your consumption of MSG rich food like tomatoes, potatoes, walnuts? They contain a few hundreds mg per 100g which is probably more than what you'd get from soy sauce.
Tomatoes, I haven't had issues with, but I rarely eat them in very large quantities. I do stay away from nuts, almonds, walnuts, peanuts due to getting attacks, and don't consume a lot of potatoes due to the carbs.
3 tomatoes have about the same amount of glutamate as the average prepared dish with MSG added. 3 tomatoes sounds like a lot, but tomatoes are mostly water, and if you're eating a prepared dish where tomatoes are a strong flavor (like tomato sauce), you're getting a lot of glutamate.
It's really crazy how common MSG is, and as a result it can be very difficult to diagnose an allergy. A friend of mine has a severe reaction to MSG (diarrhea, skin lesions, etc.), and it took years of misery before he figured out the cause.
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).
Wait what Dole sprays glutamic acid on bananas? How would that even work? Is it absorbed through the peel or something? To what end? Can you provide a link?
Not sure what they do actually. It could be a fertilizer, spray, or some other process, but somehow they end up with glutamic acid in the banana. Other brands aren't usually a problem, and often organic Dole is fine as well.
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.
MSG is absolutely delicious on steaks. The family recipe calls for garlic salt, black pepper, and msg. Grill on whatever grill you use (we used countertop grills like the george foreman). Perfection.
I thought this was going to be an article about Madison Square Garden. If you're thinking of clicking for that reason, it's not. It's about monosodium glutamate.
My wife gets a migraine within minutes of eating something with MSG. In fact, we figure something has MSG after the fact by the migraine. Homemade asian foods don't seem to bring it on as we're careful to keep that one ingredient out.
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.
> 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.
"More importantly, the responses reported were inconsistent and were not reproducible."
(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.)
To clarify, in these (very small) studies, subjects who consumed MSG did exhibit symptoms. (So positive as in measurable effect, not positive as in good)
I do not care about "the lack of evidence tying MSG to negative health effects", I am affected. It is not racism, stereotyping or "the nocebo effect", but something that is real.
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.
It's statistically more likely that you're sodium sensitive than that you're sensitive to glutamic acid. If you got a racing heart but no headache, that's an even stronger indicator: people who are salt sensitive experience palpitations when they ingest too much of it, but people who are sensitive to glutamates usually present with intense headaches.
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.
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.
Studies of food with MSG added suggest that typical dishes with MSG have less than 0.5 grams of MSG (and thus even less glutamate). 3 grams of glutamate is a lot.
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.
>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).
> it's easy to load food with way more than 1 teaspoon of MSG per serving
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.
Thanks for that clarification. The few times I have had attacks were either after Asian restaurants, that Zatarain's rice (MSG clearly indicated in the ingredients, I checked after my attack started) and my first time: Quiznos.
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.
> It is not racism, stereotyping or "the nocebo effect", but something that is real.
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.
The article supports you - "Of course, a small subset of people do have negative reactions that are directly due to glutamate, but the science to date shows that is likely to be a rare phenomenon."
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.
>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!
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'.