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theclash06013 t1_iuj9cuz wrote

MSG contains glutamic acid, which is what causes things to taste savory, a flavor known as "umami." Umami is a major flavor profile in a lot of asian foods. In the USA it was difficult for people cooking asian foods to get their hands on natural sources of umami that are traditionally used, so a lot of asian restaurants, specifically Chinese restaurants, started to use MSG to get that savoriness. MSG was really not used in the USA or Europe to that point, Julia Child's The Joy of Cooking famously called it "the mysterious white powder of the Orient.”

In the 1960's and 1970's articles came about about how MSG could give people headaches or have other negative effects. Someone wrote a letter to the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine saying "hey, when I eat a bunch of Chinese food I have these symptoms, and some other people do too, and we think that it may be connected to overconsumption of MSG." This ended up turning into a New York Times article called "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome Puzzles Doctors," which blamed MSG. The story took off and people blamed MSG for a number of things.

There were some studies claiming to support these conclusions that MSG was dangerous, but they were all deeply flawed and later debunked. For example one of the most notable ones, a 1969 study in Nature by Dr. J.W. Olney, concluded that young mice who had a highly-concentrated dose of MSG injected directly into their brains experienced markedly higher rates of obesity and even tissue death. The issue is that (a) the concentration of MSG being used was significantly higher than normal consumption and (b) you eat MSG, you don't inject it into your brain. That study, like just about every other on the dangers of MSG, was debunked.

There have been a number of studies done showing that MSG is not dangerous at all, nor does it cause this "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome," but the public perception already existed that it was bad, and changing perceptions is very difficult, so a lot of people continue to think that MSG is inherently bad, even though it is not.

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nayhem_jr t1_iujxzp4 wrote

Adding on, glutamic acid is widely found in meats, and in certain other foods such as seaweed, kelp, and yeast. (Yeast extract may appear in some ingredient lists as a sneaky way of adding glutamates without listing MSG.) Your body needs and wants this.

Meanwhile, the sodium part of MSG might cause some concerns if you have a restrictive diet. MSG is just one of many, many sodium sources that aren't table salt.

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YessikZiiiq t1_iujz726 wrote

Adding again, many use MSG being bad to justify their own racism. The ingredient has been racialized even though it's in many processed foods.

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surface_ripened t1_iuk027o wrote

Can't be explained more thoroughly than that. TL;DR = cause it's a useful "spice" and racism.

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tmahfan117 t1_iuj61n9 wrote

MSG have a very savory (umami) flavor and enhances other savory and salty flavors in the food.

So adding it to chicken broth made it taste extra chicken brothy.

People got against it because some articles came out about how it had sodium in it (which it does) and could have negative health impacts.

After research, it was found that eating MSG in normal small quantities has little to no impact on health.

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wilbur111 t1_iujhcq7 wrote

Articles came out about how mono sodium glutamate contains sodium??

Well I hope they were paid well for their research.

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Competitive_Ad_5515 t1_iujmih4 wrote

Also the research was more along the lines of "the sodium contained in msg does not contribute to raised blood/system sodium levels" similar to the cholesterol in eggs being found not to significantly raise blood levels

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yuoioa t1_iuk6pri wrote

> Also the research was more along the lines of "the sodium contained in msg does not contribute to raised blood/system sodium levels"

That doesn't sound very plausible. When MSG dissolves, it dissociates into sodium ions and glutamate ions. The sodium ions are exactly the same as the ions from, e.g., sodium chloride - they don't "remember" that they used to be attached to glutamate ions. And surely any MSG that you eat will dissolve pretty quickly as it goes through your digestive system?

The controversial health claims about MSG are that it has some other mysterious effect that makes people feel ill after eating it, in a way that doesn't happen with sodium chloride. Sometimes it is claimed that everyone experiences these effects, but sometimes it is claimed that only certain people are sensitive to it (which, of course, would be harder to rule out).

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Competitive_Ad_5515 t1_iuk7b67 wrote

MSG is actually recommend in low-sodium diets, because it contains less sodium than the salt it is often replacing; often by up to 40%.

But yes, you are right that it in and of itself does actually act as a source of sodium for the body.

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boring_pants t1_iujlkre wrote

> After research, it was found that eating MSG in normal small quantities has little to no impact on health.

That's understating the findings somewhat. It's not "little health impact at small quantities", it's "the studies that claimed it was harmful were flawed and have been thoroughly debunked, and the only reason people bought into them in the first place was because MSG was associated with Asian cooking and Americans were really super racist at the time"

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AdarTan t1_iujq0tl wrote

Didn't the whole panic start off from what was later determined to be a joke article submitted pseudonymously to a medical journal?

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EricKei t1_iujroqa wrote

Not sure. I was under the impression that it was written by somebody who was holding a grudge (he ate at a Chinese place and fell ill later that day) and just decided to be a jerk about it. He found an easy scapegoat.

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E_Snap t1_iujy27k wrote

You’re right. He used the name “Dr. Ho Man Kwok”

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AdarTan t1_iujzswk wrote

I just looked it up and turns out the claim that it was a joke might have been a hoax itself, so I've got no clue anymore.

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Any-Growth8158 t1_iujqqpe wrote

That may be the modern argument against MSG which is no where near as bad as its press.

The original MSG "scare" was due to its association with Chinese food and anti-asian sentiment. Many people claimed to come down with symptoms described as "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome". These symptoms were found to be baseless through double blind tests, but people still claim these symptoms which are a form of the placebo/nocebo effect.

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Grummbles28 t1_iujt1hz wrote

I could be wrong but some studies included injecting it directly to the blood stream of mice and the results showed some negative effects on their heart...duh.

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RelicBeckwelf t1_iuj8mzk wrote

It was due to un savory research that it was declared a health hazard. A researcher released data showing it caused heart attacks in mice. What they didn't mention is that they had to give the mice 500x the normal dose to cause it. Add to that racism and xenophobia in that it was mostly Asian cooking that added MSG, and the average person not knowing it occurs naturally in alot of foods. Years pass with products and restraunts advertising "no MSG and everyone "knows" MSG being bad, without knowing why.

It's the opposite of what happened with spinach. Everyone swears spinach is the healthiest shit ever grown, massive source of Iron, but that's all bullshit because some researcher moved a decimal point which got spinach known as the single best source of dietary iron on the planet.

Basically its just bullshit, cognitive dissonance and bad science.

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JFT8675309 t1_iujk3ec wrote

I mean, a decimal point and Popeye!

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Yrcrazypa t1_iujkdqj wrote

I believe Popeye had that because of the bungled research.

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JFT8675309 t1_iujkuen wrote

Yes. 🙂

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nayhem_jr t1_iujzpc8 wrote

Meanwhile, ask for some Cajun Sparkle the next time you're at Popeye's. ✨🍗✨

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EricKei t1_iujrxpv wrote

It's my understanding that something similar happened with saccharin. Something along the lines of "It can cause cancer...in rats who were force-fed three thousand times a human's expected lifetime consumption of saccharin in a very short period of time."

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Ippus_21 t1_iujugas wrote

>un savory research

I see what you did there... r/Angryupvote

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ineptguy5 t1_iujp1eb wrote

I thought msg caused headaches and/or migraines? Apparently no?

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ChronoMonkeyX t1_iuju8yd wrote

Doritos are full of MSG, but the people who swear Chinese food makes them sick could down a whole bag of Doritos and never notice.

They did a test where they gave a room full of people a free meal, then afterward told them that people in the left half of the room had MSG in their food and the other half didn't, and a bunch of people started complaining about feeling sick. Everyone got the exact same food, no MSG.

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Wendy_Frederick t1_iuk4733 wrote

MSG does cause some people to get migraines. Also makes my ankles swell and makes my stomach upset the next day!!

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berael t1_iuj7a7t wrote

A baseless hysteria back in the 60s fueled by xenophobia lead to lots of people thinking that MSG is bad for you. Turns out the whole thing was total bullshit. The only people still against it are the ones who haven't gotten over the fake claims.

It's irresistible because it amps up savory flavors in anything.

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boboclock t1_iuj69dp wrote

I forget the chemistry for the first bit but basically racism against Asians and American media panics are why people are so against it.

There's a good Sporkful episode about it, it probably goes into the chemistry too

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Stiggalicious t1_iuje1lc wrote

Glutamic acid can also be found in high concentrations in all sorts of normal foods.

Carrots, mushrooms, and seaweed are all high in glutamic acid. Parmesan cheese is 1.6% by weight raw glutamic acid. Eggs are 10-11% glutamic acid.

Atlantic cod is 15 grams per 6 oz portion.

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Belzeturtle t1_iujxzs7 wrote

> Eggs are 10-11% glutamic acid.

Nope. Eggs are 0.12% glutamic acid.

Source: Youssef A. Attia; Mohammed A. Al-Harthi; Mohamed A. Korish and Mohamed H. Shiboob, Protein and Amino Acid Content in Four Brands of Commercial Table Eggs in Retail Markets in Relation to Human Requirements, Animals (Basel), 2020.

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mkomaha t1_iujmz7q wrote

what level would be 500* the normal human amount?

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DarkAlman t1_iujrgv9 wrote

MSG is a flavor enhancer. It amplifies the Umami (Savory) flavor in food and is used to improve the taste of a variety of products, typically Junk Food but is most well known for its use in take out Chinese.

MSG has a bad reputation due to dubious scientific research done in the 1950s.

A single researcher published papers describing what he called 'Chinese restaurant syndrome' claiming that he always got sick from eating Chinese food and specifically blamed the MSG they used without any real hard evidence to back that up.

This researcher could have just as easily been getting sick due to an intolerance to soy, fish sauce, or any other commonly used product in Chinese cuisine.

Other research was performed on MSG in this era usually involved concentrations that were hundreds of times higher than used in food.

Later research showed that eating small amounts of MSG is perfectly healthy, and showed that his research was dubious at best and probably had racist underpinnings. But by that point the news media had caused it to go viral and caution against MSG has never gone away.

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slinger301 t1_iuk7g2r wrote

Here's another tidbit for consideration. MSG is the salt form of Glutamic Acid, which is a nonessential amino acid. In this case "nonessential" means that we don't need to eat it because our bodies can make it by itself. it is essential to the production of every part of our body. That's why it tastes good: a good flavor is how our tongue tells our brain that "yes, we should eat this" (some exceptions apply).

So eating MSG is eating something that naturally occurs in your body anyways, which makes it very hard to pose a case that it's harmful.

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Hey_Readit t1_iujtx97 wrote

Maybe because it’s a world renowned venue in NYC and i don’t think people are against the food there

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