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Busting the MSG Myth

Yank said:
do they mention that the whole anti-MSG thing was started as a hoax?
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They give the entire history from the discovery of glutamate being a major player in umami in 1908, by a Japanese guy, who started the first company to make it, through its adoption by the US forces for addition to rations, to all the rest of its history.

No mention of any hoax, but the programme goes into considerable detail.
 
Reason for its demise - 1968 - a Chinese-American doctor wrote to the New England Medical Journal to suggest that when he ate at Chinese restaurants serving N Chinese food, he frequently experienced headaches, palpitations, and other unpleasant but otherwise minor conditions. He listed several possible causes for this, just by way of supposition, and one was MSG. The rest of America latched onto MSG and the rest? That is history.
 
I can tell you first hand it isn't a hoax, if I have MSG 6 hours or so later I develop a migraine like headache, cold sweats and feel terrible the next day with no energy. I had regular bouts untill finding the link with MSG.

Now if I get the same symptoms I can guarantee that going through labeling on packages I find MSG in the ingredients.
 
The "problem" is that MSG is everywhere - the Japanese guy was a trained biochemist and realised that his wife's stock was especially good, so set about isolating what ingredient X was - it was glutamic acid that was just part of the totally mundane everyday ingredients.

Richest natural sources - tomatoes, soy sauce and ???? cheese???? - listen to the programme.

Loads of studies have been conducted and no link to anything ever found.

As I said originally, I could not understand, but never questioned, why something that is everywhere, including in our own bodies, got the bad press. Glutamate is 4-5% of human muscle. Glutamate is an essential amino-acid and all amino-acids are absorbed from the gut as discrete amino-acids, so whether anyone eats MSG as exactly that, or as part of a protein molecule, the body absorbs it as glutamate.
 
davidsrsb said:
As an artificial food additive, it is added in far higher quantities than found naturally, which causes me migraines.
Soy sauce varies from the real thing brewed in barrels to completely synthetic concoctions based on caramel and MSG
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Not what the Vietnamese-Chinese-Brit and Burmese-Brit, both chefs/restauranteurs, claimed and totally "natural" soy sauce has high levels of glutamate, which is what gives it that huge umami kick.

MSG - E621 for those interested/curious/unaware.

The presenter was told that eggs are transformed by MSG so cooked 2 scrambled eggs with a pinch of MSG and she could not imagine eating scrambled eggs without after that, even though she could not really explain the difference - just better.
 
Vinny said:
The presenter was told that eggs are transformed by MSG so cooked 2 scrambled eggs with a pinch of MSG and she could not imagine eating scrambled eggs without after that, even though she could not really explain the difference - just better.
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There's a reason MSG is often added as a "flavour enhancer."
 
Traditional soy sauce does contain plenty of glutamate, just not at the levels found in the synthetics. A first draw soy sauce has a very complex and balanced flavour, really good.
 
I heard the programme, it was interesting. I used to buy big packets of msg from chinese supermarkets in the nineties, but when I met The Wife, she reacts badly to it, so stopped. Not really missed it.
 
The cause is that piling in synthetic MSG is cheaper than quality ingredients.
Just like cheap curry that is just a ton of chili and pepper, all the expensive spices they just show a photograph of it to the food.
 
Vinny said:
Reason for its demise - 1968 - a Chinese-American doctor wrote to the New England Medical Journal to suggest that when he ate at Chinese restaurants serving N Chinese food, he frequently experienced headaches, palpitations, and other unpleasant but otherwise minor conditions. He listed several possible causes for this, just by way of supposition, and one was MSG. The rest of America latched onto MSG and the rest? That is history.
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And this is the alleged hoax - an American doctor, now deceased, claimed to have written the Ho Man Kwok letter as a joke. He and another doctor had a bet to see who could get into the New England Journal of Medicine first.

On the other hand, the real hoax could be the claim that Ho Man Kwok was a hoax...

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/668/transcript

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/668/the-long-fuse/act-one-19
 
Almost all commercially-produced MSG is made by fermenting plant starches and drying the resulting broth. If it's a "synthetic additive", then so is wine.

Some Chinese takeaway food can cause headaches, but look at the high levels of salt and especially sugar used in some popular sauces if you want a culprit.
 
One thing they left out was the finding that MSG could pass across the Blood Brain barrier and thus cause the headaches etc. This lead to concerns that it might also travel across the Blood Placenta barrier and adversely affect the foetus. A couple in our work place got a grant to do some rapid research into this and found that MSG did not pass the Placenta.
It was a good Radio 4 programe with an even reporting from both sides I thought.
 
Rodrat said:
I don't eat Chinese food very often but when I do I want msg, tastes bland without it.
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Then use the rotten fish sauce. Just do.

It looks and smells disgusting, but it took me an Australian friend, used to Asian food, to show me how good it was in a dish. I guess the quantity might be a factor, but basically it can’t kill you you know.
 
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