Excitotoxicity and MSG Labelling Controversy

Factual Questions
1

The background: if MSG is bad for you, it should banned, regulated, or at least required in labeling. “Word on the street” is that, when added to a food, it it definitely NOT required to be on the label.
More background: the reason MSG is bad for is the same as the reason that some or all other free glutamates are bad for you–excitoxicity. (This thread is not primarily about that particular phenomenon, though it is interesting and frightening.)

Many sites assert something quite like this:

A lot of those sites are just some lay person passing along what they’ve heard, but the actual quote is from Russell Blaylock, who wrote a book on excitoxicity; he is an MD of some note so I take him a little more seriously. (Here is another link to a similar quote, p.3.) He is not merely saying that other free glutamates, some/all of which are as bad/almost as bad as MSG, go by those names. He’s saying MSG per se does as well as related toxins.

An interesting assertion. It is pretty demoralizing, of course, because it means that the ingredient labels we are all exhorted to read so frequently aren’t all that useful, but I cautiously accepted the assertion. Still, I never could figure out why, if it is legal to call MSG more or less whatever you want, anyone would label it MSG at all. Those three letters have a miserable reputation after all, why not avoid fessing up? So I looked up the relevant regulation in the United States:

21CFR501.22
(h)(5) Any monosodium glutamate used as an ingredient in food shall be declared by its common or usual name monosodium glutamate.
(Code of Federal Regulations, Title 21, Volume 6, Chapter I, Subchapter E, Part 501, Section 501.22)

It may be relevant that the reg and the ingredient labels never abbreviate monosodium glutamate, while the critics almost always render it “MSG”. In any case, something is obviously amiss. I have come up with several theories as to why there is such a discrepancy. None of them is very plausible, and some are downright laughable. Here are the ones that come to mind:

“MSG” once stood for “monosodium glutamate”, but it no longer does. “SAT” once stood for “Scholastic Aptitude Test”, but now it stands for something different. Rumor has it that “DVD” once stood for “digital video disk”, but it doesn’t stand for anything any more. (The upshot is: don’t take scientific-sounding 3-letter initialisms too seriously.)

The Federal government isn’t terribly serious about its regulations. You can do pretty much what you want, and the regulators will be fine with it, either because they are lazy, credulous, or easily bribed. (This creates a very interesting pair of “take your pick” upshots: Stricter regulation is either sorely needed or totally useless.)

The Feds are very serious about their regulations, but lots of ordinary folks on the web are aware of violations that the Feds have not yet noticed. (I don’t understand this one very well, partly because I made it up about ten minutes ago.)

It is completely fair to use “MSG” as a by-word for free glutamates since we care about whether or not they are toxic, not whether or not they have a sodium atom stuck on them. (I.e., when criticizing food processors for not labeling additives properly, you do not have to use terminology properly yourself.)

Anyway, if someone can shed some light on this, I’d much appreciate it.

2

I don’t know enough about the background except to say when excitotoxicity occurs in neuroscience contexts, it generally implies massive cellular damage, not “feeling sick.” I would think that the quantities required for each effect differ by many orders of magnitude. And it is injected, not ingested.

People who claim MSG-sensitivity may be operating under a placebo effect, or results are mixed at best.

Or “digital versatile disc”, but I think that one was never an acronym. But there’s a difference between “choosing to use the acronym/initialism instead of the long term” vs. “outright stating that SAT stands for SAT.”

3

“Many sites assert” an amazing array of crap, which does not make it real.

As for Russell Blaylock, while being a retired neurosurgeon he is also a well-known loon who is virulently antivaccine (among other things, he suggested that the H1N1 flu vaccine was part of an Illuminati Depopulation Agenda), warns of non-existent dangers of amalgam fillings and water fluoridation and has said that the Soviet Union exported STDs into America to damage our young people’s Moral Fiber.

Not a remotely believable source.

4

I think the OP is asking about the reporting requirements for MSG in ingredient lists? If so, we may be able to answer this GQ question while dancing around some of the rest of the post.

5

If you think MSG is bad, how about frucose, sucrose, and all the other sugars? Look at all the diabetics. They should be banded or heavily regulated. Then there’s dihydrogen oxide which has been known to kill people.

6

The labelling laws do allows for some latitude, and hydrolysed vegetable protein is a well know way of avoiding including the flavour of MSG without explicitly naming it. But if you go this route, are you expecting that every ingredient should break down its constituents on the label? What do you expect your average vegetable or meat ingredient to list as? The many thousands of individual chemicals that are present in varying amounts? This would of course include the naturally occurring MSG. Labelling provides ingredients in the recipe. It doesn’t provide the chemical makeup of the final product. That would be close to impossible, and also useless.

Labelling provides a clear legal value to you as a consumer. It the label says it has chicken in it, it had better not contain rabbit. Truth in labelling. More so, if the label lists the chicken as the first ingredient, and rice as the second, there had better be more chicken than rice. When it gets down to additives - well that is what they are - things that have been added. The labels never were intended to break down the ingredients into their constituents. If the manufacturer puts in MSG as a powder, it gets labelled as MSG. If they put it in as a constituent of Parmesan Cheese, it gets labelled as cheese, not a thousand individual chemicals present in the cheese.

MSG hysteria is old, and I will admit I though that one had long died out, to be replaced by the whatever the latest fashion in conspiracy health nuttery. I guess these things never fully die. The Internet is a rich source of sillyness. Especially if someone is pushing a book or some other way of making money from it.

7

Dr. Oz is a real M.D. as well, but that doesn’t make what he promotes on TV any less bullshit.

8

I’m reminded of the nitrate-free cured meats that have celery juice added.

9

Oh god, don’t get me started on that one. I cure a lot of meat every year and have given up trying to explain to some of my friends that I’m not in the business of giving out poison.

10

Here’s the breakdown as I understand it.

Hydrolyzing protein is accomplished through the use of an acid. Among the breakdown products is glutamic acid. Glutamic acid can trigger reactions in people who are sensitive to MSG. How much glutamic acid is formed depends on the protein that is started with and the process used.

Technically, hydrolyzed vegetable protein is not allowed as a term any longer. A 1994 book is way out of date. And the Nutrition Digest link is from 2007, also out of date. The source of the protein must be declared: pea protein, soy protein, etc. That’s because soy is now recognized as an allergen, and allergens must be specifically mentioned. The FDA has done recalls for products which do not mention the protein source.

The FDA MSG FAQ has this to say:

MSG is a trigger - for hysteria in the woo world. I can’t quite figure out exactly what question the OP is asking, but the current situation is that naturally occurring MSG does not have to be labelled; added MSG must be labelled; a claim of no MSG is forbidden if there is a chance of naturally occurring MSG.

11

I’ll admit I have yet to find any scientific evidence against MSG. However, there are several agonists of the NMDA receptor that seem to have an effect on me. This is entirely anecdotal and I don’t claim to know why, but I am sensitive. When I consume the wrong amount of an agonist my brain feels “foggy”. The best way to describe it is feeling as though I was startled awake from a nap.

A lot of body builders and athletes are taking D-aspartic acid which some research suggested might increase testosterone. Aspartic acid is a NMDA receptor agonist. Some users are reporting similar complaints of brain fog.

I know people regularly attribute this sensitivity to nonsense…but I’ve tested with/without several times and noticed a difference. Short of having my own blind study I’m pretty convinced.

I don’t know, however, if this brain fog causes any long term damage.

12

Hydrolysis of proteins into peptides and free amino acids is also how your body digests food. Your body just achieves this with enzymes, rather than heat and pH. Given the same starting protein, you will digest and absorb the same amount of glutamate regardless of whether hydrolysis happens before or after your mouth. The only differences is that the rate of glutamate absorption may be slower if you eat a protein rather than its constituent amino acids. That depends a lot on the protein you eat however, some are more soluble and rapidly digested than others.

ETA: Not disagreeing, just trying to fight ignorance by clarifying that “hydrolysis” isn’t some toxic industrial process.

13

For a little perspective: glutamic acid is one of the amino acids our bodies use as building blocks to make proteins. Monosodium glutamate is simple the sodium salt of glutamic acid.

Glutamic acid is in the proteins we all commonly eat, but adds flavor when in its unbound form. That glutamate also is involved in multiple normal biochemical reactions in the body and has neurotransmitter functions.

Nutbars like Russell Blaylock have evidently decided that consumption of small amounts of MSG have the same effect as massive releases of glutamate in the body from causes like ischemic stroke and thus are harmful. There is no evidence to justify such a belief.

A huge amount of glutamate probably wouldn’t be good for you, just as lots of mercury or fluoride aren’t a great idea either. Jumping to the conclusion that minute amounts are bad too because TOXINS! is typical lame-brained woo.

14

You need new friends. I’ll take meat by mail!

Glutamate receptors (of which NMDA are a subtype) are everywhere in your nervous system. With neurotransmitters like serotonin, you can formulate tdrugs that only affect a small subset of them, but these receptors are also concentrated in a few specific locations. Glutamate is the #1 excitatory neurotransmitter so you cannot focus as easy. I am skeptical that the levels of normal consumption can affect things and I think in order to have much of an effect you’d have to consume excessive, impossible amounts. That said, it doesn’t sound like you can rule out something else interacting with you, perhaps that comes in the same foods.