> 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.
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.
> 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
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/...
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.
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?
> it is an essential building block of protein found in muscle tissue, the brain, and other organs.
It's not only found in every organ, it's present in 99.6% of all human proteins, out of 20328 only 72 do not use glutamate, and of those 29 are keratin proteins.
It's just interesting that the molecule we evolved to recognize as a "protein!" marker in our food turns out not to be one of the protein submolecules we actually need to surive.
Still, perhaps it's a bit silly because I don't blink when adding salt.
I'm a sort of accidental vegetarian, in that I never really decided to become one; the rest of my family is vegetarian and I stopped eating meat because it was inconvenient, and then gradually I lost interest in it.
I realized at some point MSG is really useful for adding umami flavor to things without adding other flavors, like seaweed or tomato or mushroom. It is wonderful for certain things, and makes some vegetarian dishes basically indistinguishable from those with meat. I think it's a little odd that people will go out of their way to add unusual strong-flavored ingredients for the umami, when you could just add MSG.
At the same time, MSG on its own to me has a really cheap umami quality. It reminds me of really cheap frozen dinners and bad food from elementary school. For awhile I couldn't get over that, and then eventually realized that when it's used in complement with the right things in the right amounts, it works great--you just need to figure out the right settings.
So sometimes those natural sources of umami just seem contorted and more trouble than they're worth. Other times, they seem to supply umami in a way that doesn't seem cheap or one-dimensional.
I suspect that there's some other component of many "umami" flavors we haven't discovered yet, or other tastes that technically aren't umami but would be identified as such currently. It's difficult for me to believe that MSG is really capturing most of what I like about savory dishes; I feel like something else is missing. I'm waiting for other amino acid salt receptors to be identified; I wouldn't be surprised if they're somehow linked in their activity to glutamate receptors or something of that sort.
Is it really that simple? Please explain.
https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/90/3/728S/4597145
The author is an employee of Ajinomoto Co, Inc., the same company that the author of the New Yorker article visited.
Abstract:
In 1907 Kikunae Ikeda, a professor at the Tokyo Imperial University, began his research to identify the umami component in kelp. Within a year, he had succeeded in isolating, purifying, and identifying the principal component of umami and quickly obtained a production patent. In 1909 Saburosuke Suzuki, an entrepreneur, and Ikeda began the industrial production of monosodium L-glutamate (MSG). The first industrial production process was an extraction method in which vegetable proteins were treated with hydrochloric acid to disrupt peptide bonds. L-Glutamic acid hydrochloride was then isolated from this material and purified as MSG. Initial production of MSG was limited because of the technical drawbacks of this method. Better methods did not emerge until the 1950s. One of these was direct chemical synthesis, which was used from 1962 to 1973. In this procedure, acrylonitrile was the starting material, and optical resolution of DL-glutamic acid was achieved by preferential crystallization. In 1956 a direct fermentation method to produce glutamate was introduced. The advantages of the fermentation method (eg, reduction of production costs and environmental load) were large enough to cause all glutamate manufacturers to shift to fermentation. Today, total world production of MSG by fermentation is estimated to be 2 million tons/y (2 billion kg/y).
https://open.library.ubc.ca/cIRcle/collections/ubctheses/24/... [2016]
She basically takes it for granted that MSG causes headaches and is looking at the mechanisms.
A recent study found that a single oral dose of 150mg/kg taken consecutively for five days resulted in headache and muscle tenderness when given to healthy young men (Shimada et al. 2013). Older work concluded that MSG consumption did not induce symptoms of pain or sensitivity but many of these studies have been scrutinized for their poor methodology (Tarasoff and Kelly 1993). Without definitive proof that MSG is harmful, it has been cleared in the United States and Canada as safe for human consumption and can be added to foods without regulation from Health Canada.
Lots more in this paper; very good work.
Pure MSG:
https://www.amazon.com/Accent-Flavor-Enhancer-lb-canister/dp...
And a seasoning mixture that contains MSG, salt, and a mixture of spices:
https://www.amazon.com/Sa-son-Accent-Seasoning-Original-Pack...
I have only ever seen the first kind of Accent before (crystals of pure MSG) so I too was initially confused about what the author meant when writing
I picked up a dusty bottle of Ac’cent-brand MSG at my corner bodega. I brought it home, made dinner, and stepped into the light. After a few months of passionate use, I levelled up from Ac’cent, which includes other flavorings besides MSG, to the more pure and exquisite Ajinomoto...
Which is not to say the result isn’t the same as if they just added the MSG. It’s just a different approach to adding it.
https://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749(00)44233-8/ful...
I've yet to see one that showed actual adverse effects of eating MSG via food, regardless of claimed sensitivities. I think this is the heart of the "racist" claim - there's no study that supports the existence of that sort of MSG sensitivity out there yet (that I've heard about)
> neither persistent nor serious effects from MSG ingestion
Effects don't have to be serious or persistent for them to be a nuisance enough to avoid!
I don't need six hours of a mild headache/nausea, thanks.
> large doses of MSG given without food
(Density of MSG is 1.62 g/cm³, 1 teaspoon = 5cm³)
Those are strawman avoiders of MSG, not everyone. I avoid stuff which lists MSG under these names. As well as disodium inosinate or disodium guanylate.
I can tolerate some MSG, but if there is too much, I get headache/nausea. That is, it's not like I can't have a few chips at a party.
The difference, of course, is that there is an underlying condition that makes gluten problematic for a small number of people --- celiac disease. There is no known "celiac of MSG", despite decades of searching for it.
Anything is possible, but the evidence overwhelmingly suggest that if you're having a reliable reaction to foods with MSG in them, it's something else in those foods you're sensitive to --- most likely salt! --- not MSG.
Overconsumption of FOS causes bloating, nausea, "brain fog," lower GI upset, and a whole raft of other symptoms that sound an awful lot like what many self-diagnosed NCGS folks report. For folks with Fructose Malabsorption, the threshold consumption of FOS that causes symptoms is less than 10% the level that causes symptoms in the general population.
The confounding thing is that wheat is rich is FOS. So folks who believe they have NCGS stop eating wheat and sometimes feel better. They probably have Fructose Malabsorption, or are suffering from insulin spiking effects from refined carbs, or some other effect. But they heard gluten was bad for you, and when they ate the package of bread that said "gluten free," and stopped eating the normal wheat bread, they started feeling better.
"Middlebrow dismissals" of their condition don't really help them either. True, gluten is almost certainly not their problem. But gluten free food, as a side effect of lacking wheat, often helps them feel better! What are the chances that something similar is happening with MSG? Perhaps added MSG is often found along side other ingredients/contaminants that cause headaches and other reported "MSG symptoms"?
MSG is a clear common denominator. Many people report that if they avoid anything with MSG (under any of its names), they avoid the associated problems. That doesn't mean it's MSG.
Why do studies focus on the MSG? Because they are sparked by the motivation to clear MSG's name (which could actually be right). They don't care about finding the root cause of these symptoms.
The proper scientific approach is to ignore the MSG hypothesis of the self-reported sufferers and get to the root cause, not simply to test that hypothesis and be done.
> "Middlebrow dismissals" of their condition don't really help them either.
Exactly; same in this MSG situation.
Can you point to studies which confirm salt as the cause of these symptoms that MSG is unfairly blamed for?
I can eat consume copious amounts of salt without any ill effects, like finishing huge bowls of soup to the last drop.
I exercise a lot so I use salt liberally, and add it to water. If I don't supplement the salt intake, I start getting muscle cramps and a kind of lethargic feeling, particularly in hot weather.
I did an experiment, though, about 8 months ago: I started drinking bouillon. I prepared about a mug of hot water with a teaspoon of the soup stock. On one mug per day, I was okay. When I went up to three, the headaches and nausea showed up. I felt like crap, so I cut it short.
There is salt in that stuff, but that can't be it.
A more reliable exploration would be, after diligently logging your food and drink intake (with time and quantities) along with your physical feelings for a couple months, add a daily regime of a specific amount of pure MSG. Start small, and increase the MSG intake until you start feeling adverse symptoms. Assuming symptoms manifest, then increase your daily hydration levels (obviously not to the point of giving yourself hyperhydration) and note when/if the adverse symptoms previously noted diminish.
Here's how I discovered my MSG intolerance:
I made a bunch of onion soup (from onion soup mix), and ate a ton of it. I then spent the next 24 hours feeling terrible, downing pepto, etc.
A few weeks later I made a recipe that included onion soup mix as an ingredient. Again I felt terrible.
I though, Aha, I must have an onion allergy, this onion soup mix keeps making me sick.
So I started checking if onions themselves made me sick. But onions were no problem.
Then I looked at the other ingredients on the onion soup mix. Monosodium glutamate stood out. I remembered hearing that could cause problems. So I started learning more about it, and as I did much of my digestive life came into focus. I remembered moments of intestinal agony ever since I was a teenager that I couldn't explain. I paid attention to what bothered my stomach, and always there was some form of MSG---autolyzed yeast, etc.
Since making an effort to avoid MSG I almost never encounter those symptoms. And when I do it's usually attributable to food prepared by others whose ingredients I can't strictly account for.
People claim MSG intolerance isn't a real thing, but my experience has shown me otherwise.
Maybe you are some sort of undiscovered outlier? That may be compelling to you, but it seems unlikely to me... the research indicates you're far more likely to be among those who have misidentified a cause for their symptoms, one conveniently pointed out to them by urban legend. It's completely unsurprising, and I've done the same many times before.
Personally, I'd say that you may have an allergy or immune reaction to yeast, rather than MSG intolerance.
https://open.library.ubc.ca/cIRcle/collections/ubctheses/24/...
Wow.
When I was little, back in the 70's, my mom used these bouillons: Knorr and whatnot. We had no idea what is MSG, but somehow I clued in to the idea that I was feeling sick from that soup and was dreading the "headache soup".
In the late 80's, I once so ill from a cup of instant noodles that I had to go home.
Not long after that, I finally learned about MSG from a book I stumbled upon in the library (circa 1989, I think). It all clicked.
I understood mom's soup and the instant noodles incident.
I started avoiding everything with MSG and have scarcely had any apparently food-related headaches since: all the ones I've had over have been from eating out.
One particular series fell into a clear pattern. A new Chinese restaurant opened near where I work. I ate there on three separate occasions over the course of six months, around lunch time. Each time, I felt some discomfort in the abdomen toward the evening and headache/nausea the following morning lasting into the afternoon. Each time, exactly the same repetition.
