3 ms·

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 somet

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.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    Studies of food with MSG added suggest that typical dishes with MSG have less than 0.5 grams of MSG (and thus even less glutamate). 3 grams of glutamate is a lot. The important question in this part of the thread, just to be clear, isn't whether you can more rapidly ingest glutamic acid by eating pure MSG than by eating parmesan. Of course you can! The question is whether you get a roughly equivalent dose of glutamate from common umami-forward dishes than you do from dishes where umami is added through MSG. If people who claim to be MSG-sensitive are eating typical dishes (the kind where MSG is buried in the label as "yeast extract") and reporting symptoms, but aren't responding to a blue cheese burger with mushrooms, something's wrong wth the reporting.
    - rm999 11y ago
      >If people who claim to be MSG-sensitive are eating typical dishes (the kind where MSG is buried in the label as "yeast extract") and reporting symptoms, but aren't responding to a blue cheese burger with mushrooms, something's wrong wth the reporting. This was the point of my comment: there is far more free glutamate in (some) foods containing powdered MSG, like Zatarain's, than there is in naturally high glutamate foods like mushrooms and parmesan. I'm talking potentially an order of magnitude. This is partially because of the way people use the powders, and partially because the processing of MSG involves freeing bound glutamates. As someone who cooks with powdered MSG, I'm speaking from personal experience here - I don't have a sensitivity to glutamate, so I cook with a lot of it. So do many other people I know. >The question is whether you get a roughly equivalent dose of glutamate from common umami-forward dishes than you do from dishes where umami is added through MSG. The answer is "not at all" for many types of food (like a typical corner Chinese restaurant, who uses powdered MSG a lot like I do).
      - tptacek 11y ago
        "The processing of MSG involves freeing bound glutamates"? This sounds suspiciously Mercola-ish. Can you be more specific?
  - vonmoltke 11y ago
- donretag 11y ago
  Thanks for that clarification. The few times I have had attacks were either after Asian restaurants, that Zatarain's rice (MSG clearly indicated in the ingredients, I checked after my attack started) and my first time: Quiznos. I had so few attacks, that I forget about my intolerance. Not sure if I had headaches, because I was so focused on my pseudo heart attack! I spent 7 weeks in Vietnam and I saw MSG everywhere. Never had an attack. I constantly eat parmesan, mushrooms, or tomatoes (rarely blue cheese). I have always been a "jumpy" person, perhaps these foods always have affected me, just slightly. Perhaps it is the time to be formally tested. Thanks again.
codingdave 11y ago
The article supports you - "Of course, a small subset of people do have negative reactions that are directly due to glutamate, but the science to date shows that is likely to be a rare phenomenon." Just like any allergy, something that is safe for most people will be harmful to a few. Even something that is rare will still exist, and when the whole world is connected to talk about it, those rare people will pop up. I'm not sure how we developed such a harsh culture where we don't accept those rarities for who they are.
- Nadya 11y ago
  >I'm not sure how we developed such a harsh culture where we don't accept those rarities for who they are. Because the extreme rarities are overshadowed by others and begin being treated as such. Which is extremely unfortunate. It's the ones making false claims (be it intentional or ignorance) that get everyone treated in the same bucket. Other examples include: people claiming to be sensitive to gluten who aren't. People who are allergic to soy but really aren't. People who are overweight blaming their genes/gland rather than their 5k calorie daily intake consisting of almost entirely fatty foods and sugary drinks. Are there people who are truly overweight because of genes/gland issues? Sure. Are there people actually allergic to soy? You bet! Are there gluten-sensitive people? Yep! But when seemingly everyone who is overweight begins to blame their genes/glands, people begin to roll their eyes. "Suuuuuure, that's the reason. Yep. Totally. /s" Fact is that a large number of people are wrong [0] and self-diagnose. The gluten-free fad dieting especially annoys me, because many people think "gluten-free == healthier" when a gluten-free diet is the opposite [1]. A lot of these people are explained by simple ignorance and think "[some term]-free" means it is healthier. "Sugar-free", "fat-free", "gluten-free"? Oh, it must be healthy! [0] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26043918 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26043918 [1] http://www.webmd.com/diet/healthy-kitchen-11/truth-about-gluten http://www.webmd.com/diet/healthy-kitchen-11/truth-about-glu...
itp 11y ago
> It is not racism, stereotyping or "the nocebo effect", but something that is real. The nocebo effect is real, though. Placebo and nocebo effects are well supported by any number of experiments and trials. Please do not take it as an insult when someone suggests that something you are really feeling might be an instance of a nocebo effect; I think that this type of dismissal (of psychogenic phenomena in general) as "not real" may be an aspect of a broader stigma about mental health issues.

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.
- tptacek 11y ago
  Studies of food with MSG added suggest that typical dishes with MSG have less than 0.5 grams of MSG (and thus even less glutamate). 3 grams of glutamate is a lot. The important question in this part of the thread, just to be clear, isn't whether you can more rapidly ingest glutamic acid by eating pure MSG than by eating parmesan. Of course you can! The question is whether you get a roughly equivalent dose of glutamate from common umami-forward dishes than you do from dishes where umami is added through MSG. If people who claim to be MSG-sensitive are eating typical dishes (the kind where MSG is buried in the label as "yeast extract") and reporting symptoms, but aren't responding to a blue cheese burger with mushrooms, something's wrong wth the reporting.
  - rm999 11y ago
    >If people who claim to be MSG-sensitive are eating typical dishes (the kind where MSG is buried in the label as "yeast extract") and reporting symptoms, but aren't responding to a blue cheese burger with mushrooms, something's wrong wth the reporting. This was the point of my comment: there is far more free glutamate in (some) foods containing powdered MSG, like Zatarain's, than there is in naturally high glutamate foods like mushrooms and parmesan. I'm talking potentially an order of magnitude. This is partially because of the way people use the powders, and partially because the processing of MSG involves freeing bound glutamates. As someone who cooks with powdered MSG, I'm speaking from personal experience here - I don't have a sensitivity to glutamate, so I cook with a lot of it. So do many other people I know. >The question is whether you get a roughly equivalent dose of glutamate from common umami-forward dishes than you do from dishes where umami is added through MSG. The answer is "not at all" for many types of food (like a typical corner Chinese restaurant, who uses powdered MSG a lot like I do).
    - tptacek 11y ago
      "The processing of MSG involves freeing bound glutamates"? This sounds suspiciously Mercola-ish. Can you be more specific?
- vonmoltke 11y ago
donretag 11y ago
Thanks for that clarification. The few times I have had attacks were either after Asian restaurants, that Zatarain's rice (MSG clearly indicated in the ingredients, I checked after my attack started) and my first time: Quiznos. I had so few attacks, that I forget about my intolerance. Not sure if I had headaches, because I was so focused on my pseudo heart attack! I spent 7 weeks in Vietnam and I saw MSG everywhere. Never had an attack. I constantly eat parmesan, mushrooms, or tomatoes (rarely blue cheese). I have always been a "jumpy" person, perhaps these foods always have affected me, just slightly. Perhaps it is the time to be formally tested. Thanks again.

codingdave 11y ago

The article supports you - "Of course, a small subset of people do have negative reactions that are directly due to glutamate, but the science to date shows that is likely to be a rare phenomenon." Just like any allergy, something that is safe for most people will be harmful to a few. Even something that is rare will still exist, and when the whole world is connected to talk about it, those rare people will pop up. I'm not sure how we developed such a harsh culture where we don't accept those rarities for who they are.

Nadya 11y ago
>I'm not sure how we developed such a harsh culture where we don't accept those rarities for who they are. Because the extreme rarities are overshadowed by others and begin being treated as such. Which is extremely unfortunate. It's the ones making false claims (be it intentional or ignorance) that get everyone treated in the same bucket. Other examples include: people claiming to be sensitive to gluten who aren't. People who are allergic to soy but really aren't. People who are overweight blaming their genes/gland rather than their 5k calorie daily intake consisting of almost entirely fatty foods and sugary drinks. Are there people who are truly overweight because of genes/gland issues? Sure. Are there people actually allergic to soy? You bet! Are there gluten-sensitive people? Yep! But when seemingly everyone who is overweight begins to blame their genes/glands, people begin to roll their eyes. "Suuuuuure, that's the reason. Yep. Totally. /s" Fact is that a large number of people are wrong [0] and self-diagnose. The gluten-free fad dieting especially annoys me, because many people think "gluten-free == healthier" when a gluten-free diet is the opposite [1]. A lot of these people are explained by simple ignorance and think "[some term]-free" means it is healthier. "Sugar-free", "fat-free", "gluten-free"? Oh, it must be healthy! [0] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26043918 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26043918 [1] http://www.webmd.com/diet/healthy-kitchen-11/truth-about-gluten http://www.webmd.com/diet/healthy-kitchen-11/truth-about-glu...

itp 11y ago

> It is not racism, stereotyping or "the nocebo effect", but something that is real. The nocebo effect is real, though. Placebo and nocebo effects are well supported by any number of experiments and trials. Please do not take it as an insult when someone suggests that something you are really feeling might be an instance of a nocebo effect; I think that this type of dismissal (of psychogenic phenomena in general) as "not real" may be an aspect of a broader stigma about mental health issues.