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This American Life did a great story on the history of why and how MSG was vilified. I won’t post any spoilers because it is a fantastic listen.
That was a fantastic cast!
Theoretically speaking you could be oversensitive to the substance, so in small amounts it should be fine for your body, and in larger amounts you’d get all those alleged symptoms.
However in practice that means that a lot more things than just crystalline MSG would trigger those symptoms - like mushrooms, tomato paste, soy sauce, Parmesan cheese, meat broth, etc.
Babies are also ingesting large amounts of glutamate when being breastfed. Which is why I believe 99.99…% of glutamate “intolerance” / “allergies” are caused by the nocebo-effect.
It probably comes down to eating a lot of very salty foods and not recognizing that you’ve had too much salt. Common symptoms include temporary high blood pressure and headaches, the same issue that people claim they have with MSG.
As someone who is sensitive to MSG, tomatoes, parmesan etc. ALSO affect me in similar ways, albeit usually less severely.
Just because it’s a neurotransmitter in your brain, doesn’t mean it can’t have adverse affects elsewhere in the body (conversely, there are many drugs that have an effect on the body, but no effect on the brain due to the blood brain barrier), i.e. the body is complex.
That said, it’s generally recognized as safe and may potentially cause side effects in some people but there isn’t much evidence for it, and MSG is one of the most studied food additives in the world.
True. I guess nicotine is a good example of this. When delivered directly into the bloodstream (via inhalation or a nicotine patch) it is an addictive stimulant. When ingested orally it is poisonous.It’s poisonous, anyway, and we don’t really know how the inhalation of chemical additives (at least idk) May compound the nicotine poisoning.
Back to being poisonous anyway, that’s why a lot of first time users feel nauseated and vomit.
You are right. All it took was 10 seconds for me to google. I am an idiot. What is true however is that it is much more dangerous when ingested orally. All my nicotine shots (for ecigs) carry the typical “skull” warning symbol, with the advice to call a doctor if you accidentally swallow some.
You’re not an idiot; misinformation abounds and it just gets tedious looking up everything, all the time.
Interesting side note: it wasn’t unusual on family farms, for a long time, to give horses a couple of plugs of chewing tobacco, as a deworming agent.
Allergy doesn’t mean instant death. I have a pollen allergy but the symptoms are sneezing and itchy eyes. I have a nut allergy but the only symptom is an itchy mouth and throat. I still live even though I’m often enough in contact with the chemicals that make my body go “no”.
So if MSG allergy was a thing (which it doesn’t seem to be, based on my quick Google search) then it would not cause people to die necessarily.
I think it makes a difference whether it it is in your lungs temporarily, or constantly interacting with tiny neurons in your brain. I honestly don’t know for sure, though, so take this with a grain of salt.
Glad I am not allergic. I keep a small jar in the kitchen and it is easily the most interesting seasoning to experiment with.
Meanwhile, my sister claims to be severely allergic. It’s crazy given the number of items in her regular diet containing MSG if you read the label. Sadly, she is full of excuses like this she uses to rationalize an insanely high fat diet and is obese.
I have also used MSG to reduce both fat and salt in the meals I cook. A big reason I asked this question is that I wanted to know if there is a legitimate reason I should tell people that the food I cooked for them contains glutamate. Because the reaction is often similar to your sisters. And guess what, if I don’t tell them, nobody is experiencing any form of side effects.
Since the “S” in MSG is salt, yeah, they would all die. I might be wrong, but, I’m pretty I read a paper years ago that said an allergy to salt was impossible. It’s one of those base elements that don’t seem that important until it is. It would be the same as allergic to hydrogen.
No, the “S” is sodium. MSG (monosodium glutamate) is a sodium compound like salt, but the anion is different - for salt it’s chloride, for MSG it’s glutamate.
It could be theoretically possible that only the anion caused you some hard. For example, sodium cyanide is extremely poisonous, but also a sodium salt. In practice however glutamate is just some aminoacid.
Sodium, not salt is a part of MSG. This is also like saying that the Hydrogen in Hydrogen Cyanide kills ya.
The S is sodium, which is a component of salt.
I get that genetically msg is not a problem for a huge amount of the population, but what about someone like me that genuinely has msg reactions that require me to do a time out at restaurants because of body shock loading?
It’s no different from Asians that don’t process alcohol so well. Some want a time out because genetically they’re in a group that might not like alcohol.
How is this hard to understand?
The difference is that glutamate is produced by our bodies naturally. Alcohol (Ethanol) is not. It is literally poison to every human, which is why the liver takes a lot of damage when removing it from your body.
Cool and fun except for people that for whatever reason have a problem with msg, and you’re busy telling them it’s a made up problem. Being a sufferer I almost believed it until - who should appear - my kid outside the restaurant because of same said problem. We both sat there with our made up food processing problem. Tell yourself whatever - like I care.
Take a skin-prick allergy test and you"ll have proof.
skin prick tests don’t work for dietary sensitivities
“Food allergy symptoms are caused by the interaction between a food allergen and an antibody known as IgE (immunoglobulin E). To diagnose a food allergy, your allergist may use a skin prick test (SPT) to measure the presence of IgE antibodies for the suspect food. SPTs are inexpensive, produce immediate results, and can be performed in the doctor’s office.”
Source: foodallergy.org
I tried to Google “body shock loading” because I’m unfamiliar with this term, but mostly found articles about going into shock. May I ask what this experience is like for you? What do you feel when exposed to glutamate? Are OTC antiinflammatories/antihistamines an effective treatment for the reaction of do you need some kind of steroid?
Antihistamines sounds like something to try. I do get hayfever, so it might be worth the effort.
It’s like a headache pressure without any headache pain, and it loads up all the way down my chest. It can be very crushing in tropical heat, and possibly include headache pain with alcohol consumption. The heaviest moment I’ve ever suffered was a bit of a knockout pressure. Like concussion.
I’m usually very apologetic about it because you’re having a huge reaction to something a proud restaurant prepared.
If I see heavily glazed bok choy I get worried.
That does sound like there’s some inflammation going on. It sucks having a rare condition most people will never encounter and, as a result, don’t believe is real. Personally I’ve suffered aphthous ulcers in my mouth my whole life, they’re very painful and make it hard to eat or drink. My friends in highschool made fun of me at lunch because they didn’t understand how much it hurts. I found some random advice online about 15 years ago, switched toothpaste to a brand without Sodium Lauryl/Laureth Sulfate, and BAM: many fewer ulcers, massive improvement to my quality of life! So, I like to think I understand your plight a bit more than some other commenters here. Good luck!
Does this only happen in restaurants?
Do you have such reactions to glutamine rich foods? (Tomatoes, fish, eggs) Msg is also in most processed foods.
If you only have such reaction at restaurants, it’s probably something else.
The initial craze about msg was pure racism and very bad science.
https://www.jandonline.org/article/S2212-2672(21)00068-X/fulltext
There’s a lot of Asian pride in telling me it’s not msg, and doing studies to prove it’s not msg. (Asian pride as described by Asian pride experts of that ethnicity).
However, the horrible fact remains that for some people MSG is proving to be the cause of reactions. The usual source is restaurants using MSG, but just to clarify the matter we find out the hard way when friends get too happy with MSG.
As much as I want to believe in rigorous science I still have to tell you that you’re not considering the actual sufferers. It’s a reaction akin to getting punched, and I definitely know about it.
It wounds the pride of the occasional restaurant that doesn’t really want people to walk out because of a medical problem. I’m sorry about that. I’ll look into possible solutions. It’s my fault for really enjoying Asia and Asian food.
Again, all of that is really testable. You can even blind test yourself at home.
Any salted meats will naturally form MSG when the glutamic acid binds to sodium. Pretty much all processed foods contain msg even if it was not an additive because it naturally forms on the foods themselves when free glutamate binds to salts. If you had any form of Japanese food cooked with kombu or seaweed, it also had high msg content.
None of this is even unique to Asian foods. Most cheeses are extremely high in msg, especially aged cheeses like Parmesan. Pretty much all savory foods contain some glutamate and glutamic acids.
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