I heard that monosodium glutamate causes brain damage. What have scientific studies shown?
Glutamic acid is a common component of most proteins. If you don’t eat it in your food, your body makes its own. If for some reason you can’t make it, you die.
Like salt, or sugar, or fried onions, it is possible to eat too much MSG and have a bad reaction. A few people are more sensitive than others, and may suffer from what’s called Chinese restaurant syndrome For the rest of us, as the MSDS says: “ingestion of large doses may cause gastro-intestinal upset.”
This is what mainstream science says:
MSG actually brings out the natural flavor of brains. Just don’t overdo it.
Not only does monosodium glutamate have low toxicity (everything has SOME toxicity), the Chinese Restaurant Syndrome appears to be a myth.
Here are parts of the abstract from “Review of alleged reaction to monosodium glutamate and outcome of a multicenter
double-blind placebo-controlled study” published by Geha RS, Beiser A, Ren C, Patterson R, Greenberger PA, Grammer LC, Ditto AM, Harris KE, Shaughnessy MA, Yarnold PR, Corren J, Saxon A.
in the April 2000 Journal of Nutrition, Vol 130 (4S Suppl):pp. 1058S-1062S
“…the Food and Drug Administration has classified MSG as generally recognized as safe (GRAS). Nevertheless, there is an ongoing debate exists concerning whether MSG causes any of the alleged reactions. A complex of symptoms after ingestion of a Chinese meal was first described in 1968.”
“Results of surveys and of clinical challenges with MSG in the general population reveal no evidence of untoward effects. We
recently conducted a multicenter DBPC challenge study in 130 subjects (the largest to date) to analyze the response of subjects who report symptoms from ingesting MSG. The results suggest that large doses of MSG given without food may elicit more symptoms than a placebo in individuals who believe that they react adversely to MSG. However, the frequency of the responses was low and the responses reported were inconsistent and were not reproducible. The responses
were not observed when MSG was given with food.”
Abstract and link to free copy of full text can be found at:
Whoops, I missed the “brain damage” part in the OP. There is a factual basis for the brain damage story. It just has *nothing to do * with Monododium glutamate ingestion.
Glutamate is one of the brains major excitatory neurotransmitters
If the neurons happen to release too much glutamate, or have damaged glutamate receptors, the glutamate can reach toxic levels. So yes, under certain specialized circumstances, glutamate can kill brain cells, but that does not mean that it is dangerous to eat MSG.