No, the entire hoopla can be linked back to a single letter to the editor to the New England Journal of Medicine in 1968, written by a man commenting that he sometimes felt strange after eating Chinese food. No research, no testing, the concept of MSG being bad for you is based on the equivalent of one one guy’s preference for Thai.
Of course, just after an alien movie comes out, UFO sightings go up. It was only a matter of time before reports of “strange MSG-related phenomenon” started coming in and “caring” Chinese restaurants were forced to put out the “no MSG signs”.
i assume most of this has died down by now- recent tests show that MSG is no more harmful than a similar amount of sugar, salt, or a piece of bread- any effects people might perceive are usually caused by the standard sugar rush when eating heavily on an empty stomach.
Incidentally, a food with much more MSG in it than Chinese that somehow managed to evade the witch-hunt? Cheddar Cheese.
No, I’m not going to footnote sources, this is a blog, dammit, not an academic paper. I just got out of a 3 hour meeting about department policy and currently hate the world.
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27Jan
11 Responses
I’ve always been a little wary of MSG. I believe that after it solvates in water it’s just glutamate, and glutamate is the primary excitatory neurotransmitter in your brain. The blood/brain barrier should mostly protect you, but it doesn’t work perfectly or uniformly (the hypothalamus isn’t protected, for example). So I find people’s complaints about headaches pretty believable, although getting from “headache” to “bad for you” would take some more work.
I know, I know: first I complain about sweetener alarmism, now I’m defending MSG alarmism. I guess I just enjoy being difficult.
Cool bit of info there. I didn’t know that China had MSG back in the day. I assumed with a name like MSG it had to be 20th century. Thanks for the tidbit.
Tom: the paper I mentioned in the sweetener bit was actually on excitotoxicity (the toxic properties of excitatory amino acid neurotransmitters, primarily Aspartate and Glutamate, for everyone else). AT the time, there was no solid evidence that aspartate from aspartame or glutamate from MSG had any neurotoxic effects. It’s a big point of contention, if only because it just doesn’t make any sense: they go straight thru the blood-brain barrier, and *should* trigger wide-spread excitotoxic effects, particularly in the cerebellum and limbic areas. But, it doesn’t seem to.
There may be new research I don’t know of, but as Zaf points out, the Chinese *have* been eating the stuff for ever.
interesting… I didn’t realize the (theoretical) dose was high enough for excitotoxicity. It’s decided then: it’s a mystery.
I’m glad MSG isn’t killing me, but has no one else experienced the “feeling weird” thing? Or gotten headaches? Hard to know whether it’s just an insulin spike and Pavlovian response, respectively, but it does seem like something’s going on.
the weird feeling is normal after salty, greasy, badly made food. Well made chinese/japanese food won’t bother anyone but most people are eating the ethnic equivalent of reheated truckstop spaghetti. For a real life experiment try the chinese place on the corner of 7th and Penn SE. The headache wasn’t half as bad as the nausea…
I definitely experience the MSG headaches (occasionally), and I only get the headache after going to a Chinese restaurant. It doesn’t always happen, but it hits me, and I never think about it until I actually get the headache, so I don’t think it’s psychosomatic.
Buuuut, I’ve never felt it after having Cheddar Cheese or anything, so maybe it is all in my head…
I think the point here isn’t that headaches aren’t possible after chinese food, but that if you get one it is almost certainly not related to MSG. If you get a headache,
1) It’s much more likely to be a product of the dishes’ high salt and fat content
2) It’s the same headache you would get when eating any low quality food an empty stomach (think about how you felt after that lunch-cart chilidog you had)
Having said that, I’m willing to do blind test event if people can suggest enough non-msg restaurants and takeout places in DC. Volunteers?
EJG and WINDC will be making Jiaozi and possibly baozi in the near future. aaaaand there is one of the worst chinese restaurants in the city right near by. We can control the MSG/grease content in our food and get zero MSG dumplings from the restaurant. One half of the group will get tasty filling dinner and the other half will get a headache and probably a sour tummy.
That would kill the MSG headache lore, no?
Sorry, but I get a blinding headaches which last up to 24 hours, leaving me incapacitated. I cannot function enough to make a phone call once it gets into full swing. Usualy 1/2 hour after ingesting amounts of food with msg, or others with “natural” flavors. I do my best to avoid them, but most people do not know what it is when I ask if it is in their food. Being unable to function for 24 hours does indeed go from a Headache, to being “bad” for me…
Is there some kind of litmus p[aper to test for MSG? That would make life easier for a lot of us, that are “intolerant” of MSG.
Anyone who scoffs at people for MSG complaints has evidently never suffered from food allergies. The claims are legitimate. I’ve had to be careful to avoid MSG for a number of years now. Luckily I don’t get the headaches but I do get severe skin reactions from it. I have tested this out many times to be sure and there’s no doubt the reaction is caused by the MSG. The government needs to tighten labeling laws on this. There are hundreds of names currently used for MSG. Autolyzed yeast, sodium caseinate and hydrolized vegetable protein are just a few examples. This makes it near impossible for people to avoid it.