4 ms·

The difference is MSG has been heavily studies and the evidence suggest it does not have long term health effects. There are some people that have an allergy to

by kls 7y ago

The difference is MSG has been heavily studies and the evidence suggest it does not have long term health effects. There are some people that have an allergy to it but the gap between those that truly do and those that claim they do is wide and a lot of that has to do with belief of misinformation. The difference with arsenic in apple seeds is that most people are not eating the seeds, while sea weed is regularly consumed and everyone has a reaction to arsenic whereas only a minority of people have a reaction to the consumption of sea weed.

ceejayoz 7y ago
> The difference is MSG has been heavily studies and the evidence suggest it does not have long term health effects. And that's a perfectly good argument. "It comes from seaweed and you eat seaweed just fine" is not. You've singled out arsenic in your response, but I also mentioned formaldehyde, which is throughout the apple's flesh. Would you drink a bottle of it because of that?
- Spivak 7y ago
  The logic isn't "it comes from seaweed so it's not harmful" it's "you wouldn't really give a second thought as to whether seaweed salt was safe to consume if you saw it on the shelf but are naturally skeptical of MSG because it's a scary chemical name."
close04 7y ago
It’s as if you’re actively trying to miss my point. The reports of MSG being called “the devil“ were greatly exaggerated. Your personal interpretation of what I said: > The jury is still out on how (un)healthy MSG is Was: > people will hail MSG as the devil The fact that it’s a seaweed extract, or that some people eat it and are ok are orthogonal to what I said. I said one should be careful about excessive use of anything that hasn’t been studied to the point where any reasonable shadow of doubt was removed. The fact that multiple published studies came up with these potential links and there’s no definitive one to contradict them at the very least warrants caution. Which is what I suggested. It’s sensible advice to not do anything excessively, even more so if you have any doubt. Some people excessively drank alcohol, smoked, ate red meat, etc. (all plant based or at least natural) all their life and were just fine. But it’s still not an argument for doing the same. And the link I gave didn’t come from personal opinion (these are strong on HN), or some random blog but nih.gov. And their advice is just as sensible: we need to study more (yeah, guess they weren’t told on HN that MSG was super extensively tested and we have the definitive results) and advised caution. That’s it.

by kls 7y ago

ceejayoz 7y ago

> The difference is MSG has been heavily studies and the evidence suggest it does not have long term health effects. And that's a perfectly good argument. "It comes from seaweed and you eat seaweed just fine" is not. You've singled out arsenic in your response, but I also mentioned formaldehyde, which is throughout the apple's flesh. Would you drink a bottle of it because of that?

Spivak 7y ago
The logic isn't "it comes from seaweed so it's not harmful" it's "you wouldn't really give a second thought as to whether seaweed salt was safe to consume if you saw it on the shelf but are naturally skeptical of MSG because it's a scary chemical name."

close04 7y ago

It’s as if you’re actively trying to miss my point. The reports of MSG being called “the devil“ were greatly exaggerated. Your personal interpretation of what I said: > The jury is still out on how (un)healthy MSG is Was: > people will hail MSG as the devil The fact that it’s a seaweed extract, or that some people eat it and are ok are orthogonal to what I said. I said one should be careful about excessive use of anything that hasn’t been studied to the point where any reasonable shadow of doubt was removed. The fact that multiple published studies came up with these potential links and there’s no definitive one to contradict them at the very least warrants caution. Which is what I suggested. It’s sensible advice to not do anything excessively, even more so if you have any doubt. Some people excessively drank alcohol, smoked, ate red meat, etc. (all plant based or at least natural) all their life and were just fine. But it’s still not an argument for doing the same. And the link I gave didn’t come from personal opinion (these are strong on HN), or some random blog but nih.gov. And their advice is just as sensible: we need to study more (yeah, guess they weren’t told on HN that MSG was super extensively tested and we have the definitive results) and advised caution. That’s it.