7 ms·

How MSG Got a Bad Rap

57 points by caublestone 11y ago

JohnTHaller 11y ago
I thought this was going to be an article about Madison Square Garden. If you're thinking of clicking for that reason, it's not. It's about monosodium glutamate.
- askafriend 11y ago
  Now I kinda want an article and discussion of Madison Square Garden. Come on HN, make it happen!
tcfunk 11y ago
I would be interested to know more about this, as I've always considered MSG something to avoid entirely. Unfortunately, the article doesn't really offer specifics as to why MSG is safe, apart from "so-and-so said it is". Edit: Wow, thank you all for the information!
- Eric_WVGG 11y ago
  You’ve got the burden of proof backward. When I say, "water is unsafe," it's on me to explain why. The folks who said "MSG is unsafe," like the folks who told us margarine is healthier than butter, have been shown over time to have relied on bad science. anyway one can accomplish the same flavor with dried shrimp or bonito flakes, which are high in glutamate. I’m sure all restaurants that claim not to use MSG just go there instead.
- afarrell 11y ago
  MSG is a salt, so when you put it in water, it dissolves into sodium and glutamate. Glutamate is an amino acid found naturally in a variety of tasty foods. So, you already consume it and you're fine. To be more sure of yourself, you can run an controlled, blinded experiment where you have group A consume food with monosodium glutamate added and group B consume food without the additive. So long as you don't tell which food is which, then group A won't have a different response from group B. But these things don't actually answer your question. They answer the question "How do we know it is safe?" To explain "why MSG is safe" seems like it would be impossible for the same reason that proving a negative is impossible: you would have to go through all of the possible metabolic processes and show that and it does not screw with them.
- tptacek 11y ago
  It's safe because it's simply the salt of sodium and glutamic acid. Glutamate is an amino acid that is a fundamental building block of your metabolism. It's also been omnipresent in human diets for millennia. If we had discovered how to synthesize salt in 1909 and had called it "NACL" since then, it would be precisely as controversial as MSG is.
  - patio11 11y ago
    The counterfactual world should really be obsessed with the fact that Asians put NACL on everything, too. NACL is in soy sauce. NACL is in tempura. NACL is in fried rice. An independent lab tested 48 items at an Asian fusion restaurant and detected NACL in 46 of them! Will no one save health-conscious Americans from the perils of NAsianCL? (Sarcasm off: salt is widely used across many cultures cuisines because salt is delicious. This property is shared with MSG, but MSG is only called MSG when Asians use it. When Italians use it it is called "food.")
    - mchahn 11y ago
      > salt is widely used across many cultures cuisines because salt is delicious. And also because salt is needed to stay alive.
afarrell 11y ago
I wonder if it would be possible to rebrand MSG as "umami salt"
- DougN7 11y ago
  From what I understand, it already has hundreds of names. You have to wonder why that would be.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    Obviously, because it's stigmatized. Surely you can't be suggesting that we can draw conclusions about its biological properties simply from that.
- DougN7 11y ago
  From what I understand, it already has hundreds of names. You have to wonder why that would be.
- mmanfrin 11y ago
  Prior to being called MSG, it was often called 'poultry salt'.
donretag 11y ago
I do not care about "the lack of evidence tying MSG to negative health effects", I am affected. It is not racism, stereotyping or "the nocebo effect", but something that is real. One time that I had an MSG attack (racing heart) was when I cooked Zatarain's at home. Or perhaps, according the author, I want to secretly vilify the creole? Clickbait drivel. "When it comes to MSG, the false connections are fairly innocuous for most people but may still cause unnecessary discomfort for some, either because they are experiencing the nocebo effect or depriving themselves of deliciousness." I have been to 6 Asian countries for a time period of over 4 months total. I guess I must have been stereotyping them all along.
- tptacek 11y ago
  It's statistically more likely that you're sodium sensitive than that you're sensitive to glutamic acid. If you got a racing heart but no headache, that's an even stronger indicator: people who are salt sensitive experience palpitations when they ingest too much of it, but people who are sensitive to glutamates usually present with intense headaches. Another question to ask yourself: do you get headaches when you eat blue cheese, parmesan, mushrooms, or tomatoes? Those are naturally intense sources of glutamic acid. I don't think many people are arguing that it's impossible to be sensitive to glutamic acid (the case is stronger that nobody is specifically allergic to MSG, though). But there are people sensitive to all sorts of things, including very basic food inputs like salt. We don't dismiss people with shellfish allergies and say "but shellfish is perfectly safe!". But we also don't treat shellfish like hazmat because some people can't eat it. Finally: the reason people call out the nocebo effect is that the placebo/nocebo effect is extremely and counterintuitively powerful. You'd expect people suffering from a nocebo effect to have a dismissive reaction to that explanation, because the effect plays tricks on our thinking. (I upvoted you, by the way.)
  - rm999 11y ago
    >do you get headaches when you eat blue cheese, parmesan, mushrooms, or tomatoes? Those are naturally intense sources of glutamic acid How much, though? Some quick and dirty math (please correct me if I'm wrong in any of this): 100 grams of parmesan cheese (about a cup) is 1.2 grams of free glutamates: http://www.msgfacts.com/nutrition/what_foods_are_glutamate-rich.aspx http://www.msgfacts.com/nutrition/what_foods_are_glutamate-r... Powdered MSG contains 78% free glutamate and 12.2% sodium, or about a 6.4:1 glutamate:sodium ratio: http://www.edenfoods.com/articles/view.php?articles_id=207 http://www.edenfoods.com/articles/view.php?articles_id=207 A teaspoon of powdered MSG contains 500 mg of sodium (http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/91dpQqbFZrL._SL1500_.jpg http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/91dpQqbFZrL._SL1500_.j...). This is about 3.2 grams of glutamate. So, if my math is correct, a teaspoon of powdered MSG contains as much sodium as 2.7 cups (0.5 * 6.4 / 1.2) of parmesan cheese. As someone who regularly cooks with MSG powder and has seen other people cook with it too (my chinese friend uses a 1:1 ratio of salt and MSG powder), it's easy to load food with way more than 1 teaspoon of MSG per serving. My point is, I think people who cook with MSG use way more glutamate than people who cook with natural foods like parmesan or mushrooms.
dammitcoetzee 11y ago
It's because they're notorious for being Chinatown G's.
DougN7 11y ago
My wife gets a migraine within minutes of eating something with MSG. In fact, we figure something has MSG after the fact by the migraine. Homemade asian foods don't seem to bring it on as we're careful to keep that one ingredient out.
- tptacek 11y ago
  Did you try the things I suggested here? https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=10866718 https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=10866718 It would be really interesting to discover someone who was genuinely sensitive to monosodium glutamate but not to sodium or free glutamates in other foods. I'm not sure how that would be explainable. There have been many blinded experiments looking for glutamate reactions (using MSG as the vector), and they're not inconclusive; they appear to refute "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome".
jimrandomh 11y ago
The article had a pretty clear position it was arguing for, so rather than read to the end, I jumped out of the author's narrative and searched PubMed (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=monosodium+glutamate+randomized+controlled+trial+headache http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=monosodium+glutamat...). Of the first page of results, two were randomized placebo-controlled trials of MSG administration (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23565943 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23565943 and http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9215242 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9215242) and both had positive results.
- tptacek 11y ago
  Followup studies were unable to reproduce the results of the Yang study: http://jn.nutrition.org/content/130/4/1058S.full http://jn.nutrition.org/content/130/4/1058S.full
  - jimrandomh 11y ago
    From the study you linked to: > In Protocol A, 50 (38.5%) of 130 subjects reported two or more symptoms (“positive response”) during the MSG challenge and had no symptoms or one symptom after placebo. Nineteen subjects (14.6%) reported two or more symptoms to both MSG and placebo, whereas 17 subjects (13.1%) reported two or more symptoms to placebo and no symptoms or one symptom after MSG. Forty-four subjects (33.8%) reported no symptoms or one symptom to both MSG and placebo. Administration of 5 g MSG was associated with a significantly higher frequency of response, i.e., of occurrence of two or more symptoms and with significantly higher frequency of occurrence of four of the 10 symptoms.
    - tptacek 11y ago
      "More importantly, the responses reported were inconsistent and were not reproducible." (These inconsistent results occurred only in subjects who were given doses of MSG 6x greater than what is used in typical recipes, and only without food --- MSG added to food produced no responses at all, inconsistent or otherwise.)
    - 11y ago
X-Istence 11y ago
MSG in the US may be on labels in a variety of different ways, including "yeast extract". Why does something that is considered to not have any adverse effects labeled differently other than to confuse the consumer? I myself am a gout sufferer, and MSG is one of my triggers. I didn't realise what was causing me to always have a bout of gout after eating Chinese food, so I would change what I ordered, what I ate to try and figure it out. Ultimately I started cooking my favourite dishes at home, using pre-made sauces bought at the store (they didn't mention MSG after all, and I had no idea that yeast extract was the same thing). The restaurant near me claimed they did not cook with MSG, however the manufacturer for their soy sauce used for stir frying apparently added yeast extract (MSG by another name) and they were not aware of it. These days I end up cooking at home more, which is probably healthier and better for my wallet in the long term.
- itp 11y ago
  > Why does something that is considered to not have any adverse effects labeled differently other than to confuse the consumer? One good reason might be if there were an unfounded stigma attached to one of the names. Rapeseed has many common names in the English language[0]; what are they trying to hide?! (In large measure, the unfortunate connotation of rapey-ness.) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapeseed#Common_names https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapeseed#Common_names
- tptacek 11y ago
  Again: there is no debate that MSG is stigmatized in the US. You can't draw conclusions from that! All sorts of things are stigmatized that shouldn't be, and there are other things that aren't stigmatized that probably should be. I'll ask you the same thing I've asked the other two people on this thread who've reported personal experience with MSG sensitivity. Have you tried the things I listed here? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10866718 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10866718 I ask because, again, it would be pretty fascinating to find a sensitivity to MSG that wasn't correlated with a sodium or glutamate sensitivity. MSG instantaneously breaks into sodium and glutamate in liquid (such as in your stomach).
  - 11y ago
shkkmo 11y ago
I have no doubt that there are lots of people who falsely believe they have reactions to MSG. There are lots of people who falsely believe they have reactions to gluten, but that doesn't mean that Celiac's disease doesn't exist. The problem is that it is incredibly difficult to avoid MSG because it is not required to be labeled as such, but can be hidden behind a large number of other monikers such as 'Natural Flavors'.
- tptacek 11y ago
  But it's also incredibly difficult to avoid glutamates because they occur naturally in very high concentrations in some of the foodstuffs people find most palatable, so they make their way into all sorts of recipes. This is similar to the "uncured bacon" phenomenon. Truly uncured bacon wouldn't taste like bacon at all, so producers cure using plant extracts that are naturally high in nitrates rather than in curing salt. The end result is the same, but provides a bogus label that some people take seriously.
  - shkkmo 11y ago
    > also incredibly difficult to avoid glutamates because they occur naturally in very high concentrations in some of the foodstuffs people find most palatable I assume you have some evidence for the 'very high concentration' that indicates the relative levels of concentrations in 'natural foods' compared to the levels that can be found in foods with added MSG? You don't seem to be disputing that people are sensitive to glutamates, so why can't we have clear labeling of when it is added?
    - tptacek 11y ago
      I don't understand this question. Are you really asking whether it's possible to find out how much glutamic acid is in a gram of a given foodstuff? The answer is "yes", of course, just like you can easily find out how much sodium or iron is food.
      - shkkmo 11y ago
mmanfrin 11y ago
MSG is absolutely delicious on steaks. The family recipe calls for garlic salt, black pepper, and msg. Grill on whatever grill you use (we used countertop grills like the george foreman). Perfection.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
microtherion 11y ago
If you think MSG got a bad rap, try selling chocolates garnished with lark's vomit.

57 points by caublestone 11y ago

I thought this was going to be an article about Madison Square Garden. If you're thinking of clicking for that reason, it's not. It's about monosodium glutamate.

askafriend 11y ago
Now I kinda want an article and discussion of Madison Square Garden. Come on HN, make it happen!

tcfunk 11y ago

I would be interested to know more about this, as I've always considered MSG something to avoid entirely. Unfortunately, the article doesn't really offer specifics as to why MSG is safe, apart from "so-and-so said it is". Edit: Wow, thank you all for the information!

Eric_WVGG 11y ago
You’ve got the burden of proof backward. When I say, "water is unsafe," it's on me to explain why. The folks who said "MSG is unsafe," like the folks who told us margarine is healthier than butter, have been shown over time to have relied on bad science. anyway one can accomplish the same flavor with dried shrimp or bonito flakes, which are high in glutamate. I’m sure all restaurants that claim not to use MSG just go there instead.
afarrell 11y ago
MSG is a salt, so when you put it in water, it dissolves into sodium and glutamate. Glutamate is an amino acid found naturally in a variety of tasty foods. So, you already consume it and you're fine. To be more sure of yourself, you can run an controlled, blinded experiment where you have group A consume food with monosodium glutamate added and group B consume food without the additive. So long as you don't tell which food is which, then group A won't have a different response from group B. But these things don't actually answer your question. They answer the question "How do we know it is safe?" To explain "why MSG is safe" seems like it would be impossible for the same reason that proving a negative is impossible: you would have to go through all of the possible metabolic processes and show that and it does not screw with them.
tptacek 11y ago
It's safe because it's simply the salt of sodium and glutamic acid. Glutamate is an amino acid that is a fundamental building block of your metabolism. It's also been omnipresent in human diets for millennia. If we had discovered how to synthesize salt in 1909 and had called it "NACL" since then, it would be precisely as controversial as MSG is.
- patio11 11y ago
  The counterfactual world should really be obsessed with the fact that Asians put NACL on everything, too. NACL is in soy sauce. NACL is in tempura. NACL is in fried rice. An independent lab tested 48 items at an Asian fusion restaurant and detected NACL in 46 of them! Will no one save health-conscious Americans from the perils of NAsianCL? (Sarcasm off: salt is widely used across many cultures cuisines because salt is delicious. This property is shared with MSG, but MSG is only called MSG when Asians use it. When Italians use it it is called "food.")
  - mchahn 11y ago
    > salt is widely used across many cultures cuisines because salt is delicious. And also because salt is needed to stay alive.

afarrell 11y ago

I wonder if it would be possible to rebrand MSG as "umami salt"

DougN7 11y ago
From what I understand, it already has hundreds of names. You have to wonder why that would be.
- tptacek 11y ago
  Obviously, because it's stigmatized. Surely you can't be suggesting that we can draw conclusions about its biological properties simply from that.
DougN7 11y ago
From what I understand, it already has hundreds of names. You have to wonder why that would be.
mmanfrin 11y ago
Prior to being called MSG, it was often called 'poultry salt'.

donretag 11y ago

I do not care about "the lack of evidence tying MSG to negative health effects", I am affected. It is not racism, stereotyping or "the nocebo effect", but something that is real. One time that I had an MSG attack (racing heart) was when I cooked Zatarain's at home. Or perhaps, according the author, I want to secretly vilify the creole? Clickbait drivel. "When it comes to MSG, the false connections are fairly innocuous for most people but may still cause unnecessary discomfort for some, either because they are experiencing the nocebo effect or depriving themselves of deliciousness." I have been to 6 Asian countries for a time period of over 4 months total. I guess I must have been stereotyping them all along.

tptacek 11y ago
It's statistically more likely that you're sodium sensitive than that you're sensitive to glutamic acid. If you got a racing heart but no headache, that's an even stronger indicator: people who are salt sensitive experience palpitations when they ingest too much of it, but people who are sensitive to glutamates usually present with intense headaches. Another question to ask yourself: do you get headaches when you eat blue cheese, parmesan, mushrooms, or tomatoes? Those are naturally intense sources of glutamic acid. I don't think many people are arguing that it's impossible to be sensitive to glutamic acid (the case is stronger that nobody is specifically allergic to MSG, though). But there are people sensitive to all sorts of things, including very basic food inputs like salt. We don't dismiss people with shellfish allergies and say "but shellfish is perfectly safe!". But we also don't treat shellfish like hazmat because some people can't eat it. Finally: the reason people call out the nocebo effect is that the placebo/nocebo effect is extremely and counterintuitively powerful. You'd expect people suffering from a nocebo effect to have a dismissive reaction to that explanation, because the effect plays tricks on our thinking. (I upvoted you, by the way.)
- rm999 11y ago
  >do you get headaches when you eat blue cheese, parmesan, mushrooms, or tomatoes? Those are naturally intense sources of glutamic acid How much, though? Some quick and dirty math (please correct me if I'm wrong in any of this): 100 grams of parmesan cheese (about a cup) is 1.2 grams of free glutamates: http://www.msgfacts.com/nutrition/what_foods_are_glutamate-rich.aspx http://www.msgfacts.com/nutrition/what_foods_are_glutamate-r... Powdered MSG contains 78% free glutamate and 12.2% sodium, or about a 6.4:1 glutamate:sodium ratio: http://www.edenfoods.com/articles/view.php?articles_id=207 http://www.edenfoods.com/articles/view.php?articles_id=207 A teaspoon of powdered MSG contains 500 mg of sodium (http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/91dpQqbFZrL._SL1500_.jpg http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/91dpQqbFZrL._SL1500_.j...). This is about 3.2 grams of glutamate. So, if my math is correct, a teaspoon of powdered MSG contains as much sodium as 2.7 cups (0.5 * 6.4 / 1.2) of parmesan cheese. As someone who regularly cooks with MSG powder and has seen other people cook with it too (my chinese friend uses a 1:1 ratio of salt and MSG powder), it's easy to load food with way more than 1 teaspoon of MSG per serving. My point is, I think people who cook with MSG use way more glutamate than people who cook with natural foods like parmesan or mushrooms.

dammitcoetzee 11y ago

It's because they're notorious for being Chinatown G's.

DougN7 11y ago

My wife gets a migraine within minutes of eating something with MSG. In fact, we figure something has MSG after the fact by the migraine. Homemade asian foods don't seem to bring it on as we're careful to keep that one ingredient out.

tptacek 11y ago
Did you try the things I suggested here? https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=10866718 https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=10866718 It would be really interesting to discover someone who was genuinely sensitive to monosodium glutamate but not to sodium or free glutamates in other foods. I'm not sure how that would be explainable. There have been many blinded experiments looking for glutamate reactions (using MSG as the vector), and they're not inconclusive; they appear to refute "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome".

jimrandomh 11y ago

The article had a pretty clear position it was arguing for, so rather than read to the end, I jumped out of the author's narrative and searched PubMed (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=monosodium+glutamate+randomized+controlled+trial+headache http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=monosodium+glutamat...). Of the first page of results, two were randomized placebo-controlled trials of MSG administration (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23565943 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23565943 and http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9215242 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9215242) and both had positive results.

tptacek 11y ago
Followup studies were unable to reproduce the results of the Yang study: http://jn.nutrition.org/content/130/4/1058S.full http://jn.nutrition.org/content/130/4/1058S.full
- jimrandomh 11y ago
  From the study you linked to: > In Protocol A, 50 (38.5%) of 130 subjects reported two or more symptoms (“positive response”) during the MSG challenge and had no symptoms or one symptom after placebo. Nineteen subjects (14.6%) reported two or more symptoms to both MSG and placebo, whereas 17 subjects (13.1%) reported two or more symptoms to placebo and no symptoms or one symptom after MSG. Forty-four subjects (33.8%) reported no symptoms or one symptom to both MSG and placebo. Administration of 5 g MSG was associated with a significantly higher frequency of response, i.e., of occurrence of two or more symptoms and with significantly higher frequency of occurrence of four of the 10 symptoms.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    "More importantly, the responses reported were inconsistent and were not reproducible." (These inconsistent results occurred only in subjects who were given doses of MSG 6x greater than what is used in typical recipes, and only without food --- MSG added to food produced no responses at all, inconsistent or otherwise.)
  - 11y ago

X-Istence 11y ago

MSG in the US may be on labels in a variety of different ways, including "yeast extract". Why does something that is considered to not have any adverse effects labeled differently other than to confuse the consumer? I myself am a gout sufferer, and MSG is one of my triggers. I didn't realise what was causing me to always have a bout of gout after eating Chinese food, so I would change what I ordered, what I ate to try and figure it out. Ultimately I started cooking my favourite dishes at home, using pre-made sauces bought at the store (they didn't mention MSG after all, and I had no idea that yeast extract was the same thing). The restaurant near me claimed they did not cook with MSG, however the manufacturer for their soy sauce used for stir frying apparently added yeast extract (MSG by another name) and they were not aware of it. These days I end up cooking at home more, which is probably healthier and better for my wallet in the long term.

itp 11y ago
> Why does something that is considered to not have any adverse effects labeled differently other than to confuse the consumer? One good reason might be if there were an unfounded stigma attached to one of the names. Rapeseed has many common names in the English language[0]; what are they trying to hide?! (In large measure, the unfortunate connotation of rapey-ness.) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapeseed#Common_names https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapeseed#Common_names
tptacek 11y ago
Again: there is no debate that MSG is stigmatized in the US. You can't draw conclusions from that! All sorts of things are stigmatized that shouldn't be, and there are other things that aren't stigmatized that probably should be. I'll ask you the same thing I've asked the other two people on this thread who've reported personal experience with MSG sensitivity. Have you tried the things I listed here? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10866718 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10866718 I ask because, again, it would be pretty fascinating to find a sensitivity to MSG that wasn't correlated with a sodium or glutamate sensitivity. MSG instantaneously breaks into sodium and glutamate in liquid (such as in your stomach).
- 11y ago

shkkmo 11y ago

I have no doubt that there are lots of people who falsely believe they have reactions to MSG. There are lots of people who falsely believe they have reactions to gluten, but that doesn't mean that Celiac's disease doesn't exist. The problem is that it is incredibly difficult to avoid MSG because it is not required to be labeled as such, but can be hidden behind a large number of other monikers such as 'Natural Flavors'.

tptacek 11y ago
But it's also incredibly difficult to avoid glutamates because they occur naturally in very high concentrations in some of the foodstuffs people find most palatable, so they make their way into all sorts of recipes. This is similar to the "uncured bacon" phenomenon. Truly uncured bacon wouldn't taste like bacon at all, so producers cure using plant extracts that are naturally high in nitrates rather than in curing salt. The end result is the same, but provides a bogus label that some people take seriously.
- shkkmo 11y ago
  > also incredibly difficult to avoid glutamates because they occur naturally in very high concentrations in some of the foodstuffs people find most palatable I assume you have some evidence for the 'very high concentration' that indicates the relative levels of concentrations in 'natural foods' compared to the levels that can be found in foods with added MSG? You don't seem to be disputing that people are sensitive to glutamates, so why can't we have clear labeling of when it is added?
  - tptacek 11y ago
    I don't understand this question. Are you really asking whether it's possible to find out how much glutamic acid is in a gram of a given foodstuff? The answer is "yes", of course, just like you can easily find out how much sodium or iron is food.
    - shkkmo 11y ago

mmanfrin 11y ago

MSG is absolutely delicious on steaks. The family recipe calls for garlic salt, black pepper, and msg. Grill on whatever grill you use (we used countertop grills like the george foreman). Perfection.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

microtherion 11y ago

If you think MSG got a bad rap, try selling chocolates garnished with lark's vomit.