Is MSG bad for you?

[Senegoid]

Okay, here it comes. I suggest that the gentle reader wait until a substantial block of uninterrupted time is available before beginning to read this.
Well, I didn’t realize I was stumbling into a hive of MSG cult worship here. Sorry, folks, I didn’t mean to challenge all your inviolate certitudes. It doesn’t matter to me, really, how y’all react (or not) to MSG, and I’m not aiming to take all your MSG away. If MSG floats all your boats, then go for it! Chow down, me hearties! But the prevailing tone of this thread certainly seems obsessed with convincing me that I’m really just imagining my own sensitivity to the stuff. You’re really intent on proving someone wrong on the Internet!

And you’re certainly all twisting yourself into pretzels trying to do so.

Permit me to elaborate.

First, some premises:
(1) I noted that seemingly “normal” quantities of MSG added to a lot of foods (like Campbell’s Soup) seem not to bother me.

(2) There was a widely known (or widely believed) notion that in the past, Chinese restaurants added massive amounts of MSG to their food.

(3) This was thought to be the cause of “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome”, a compendium of vaguely off-kilter feelings that some people got when eating at some Chinese restaurants.

(4) MSG began to fall out of favor, as best I recall, about the late 1970’s or early 1980’s. So much so that a lot of Chinese restaurants not only didn’t use it (or quit using it), but even publicly proclaimed so on their menus.

(5) I myself had a long history, way back then, of consistently becoming vaguely ill when eating Chinese food. This could not have been a placebo (or “nocebo”) effect because in my teen years, I didn’t even know about MSG or Chinese Restaurant syndrome. But I sure knew that eating at certain Chinese restaurants consistently made me vaguely (and sometimes more than vaguely), but transiently, ill.

The cult MSG worship fans of this thread are bending themselves into contortions trying to prove this wrong, but most of their above posts are decidedly lame.

We begin with the OP by Melbourne who links to Cecil’s old article, Is the food additive MSG bad for you?, June 22, 1990. Cecil doesn’t specifically say the MSG is or isn’t healthful, but he does note:

@Cecil

An alleged example of this is “Chinese restaurant syndrome.” A half hour after eating MSG-laden soup, once a staple of budget Chinese cuisine, some people say they experience headaches, tightness of the chest, and a burning sensation. Researchers have had difficulty reproducing this in the lab, but the feds got so many complaints from the field they’ve issued tougher label requirements for MSG in meat and poultry and are thinking of doing the same for other foods.

Cecil does, however, quote (and link) the Mayo Clinic article, listing the commonly noted symptoms, and this:

@Mayo Clinic as quoted by Cecil

However, researchers have found no definitive evidence of a link between MSG and these symptoms. Researchers acknowledge, though, that a small percentage of people may have short-term reactions to MSG. Symptoms are usually mild and don’t require treatment.

Next is GMANCANADA with a helpful Skeptoid link:

@GMANCANADA

Definitely now a case of ignorance promoted, not ignorance fought.

Excellent Brian Dunning summary of MSG from a couple months ago.

MSG: How a Friendly Flavor Became Your Enemy

This guy goes on an anti-anti-MSG ideological rant, insisting that the whole MSG problem is just a hysterical fear promulgated by American pop hippie anti-everything (including anti-Asian) woo culture. But wait! There are a few useful bits here. Unlike the FDA link (cited elsewhere in this thread), Dunning makes a distinction between glutamate and monosodium glutamate: He agrees with FDA that we get about 13 grams/day of glutamate in our daily diets without any problem, but he also notes that a small number of taste-party subjects reported symptoms on the much smaller dose of 3 grams of MSG (on an empty stomach), about six times the usual 0.5 grams of added MSG/day that we usually get. But there is no comparison given against eating large doses of MSG with meals! So this remains unresolved.

Then sir viks tangentially posted a link to a post from This American Life which contributes absolutely nothing of use to this thread. It seems that someone suggested that the letter to New England Journal of Medicine that started it all was in fact just a prank hoax forgery. While this post does mention a few times that the MSG sickness is a myth, it says nothing to confirm or refute this. Rather, this garbled and nigh-unreadable article focuses on investigating that claim that the letter was a hoax, and ultimately refutes that claim.

Not long after that, I came in with:

@Senegoid

I continue to believe that some people must be overly sensitive to MSG and thus susceptible to the unpleasant effects Cecil mentions.

Data point: Myself. MSG sometimes affects me this way. It appears to be only large doses, as Chinese food was often reputed to contain. Foods like Campbell’s canned soup or other such prepared foods have never bothered me, even though they often list MSG among the ingredients.

The rest of the thread seems to consist largely of MSG cult worshippers attempting lamely to debunk this first-person testimony that yes, someone does seem to get sick on large doses of MSG.

GMANCANADA, in Post #6, relies on the Dunning (skeptoid) article to say “the answer is crystal clear the evidence in 2020 is very conclusive that MSG is not a health risk.” (GMANCANADA’s emphasis.)

Well, no, Dunning didn’t entirely say that. He did note that some people reacted badly to large doses of MSG, which is just what I claimed.

Next, Melbourne (the OP, remember) admits (Post #7) that he used to have problems with Chinese food, which only seems to add another data point to my own thesis. Ah, but he then rationalizes that it’s the sodium in MSG that’s doing it. That shouldn’t matter — if MSG is equivalent to glutamate, as the FDA page says and some posters here parrot, then it’s still the MSG that made him get headaches, even if it’s just the sodium component of it.

Next comes MSG cultist Chronos who, in Post #9, thoroughly distorted what I had previously written and added additional nonsense:

@Chronos

So, foods that contain loads of MSG don’t affect you, and therefore you must be susceptible to MSG?

There’s a hole in this thinking. OK, maybe there is something in Chinese food that isn’t found in other food that you have a bad reaction to. But it can’t be MSG, because MSG is not something that isn’t found in other food.

(I trust that we are all equally able to parse that convoluted triple-negative in the last sentence there.)

I already responded to some of this in Post #15. To give a bit more discussion:
(1) I said large doses, as Chinese restaurants were commonly thought to use, affect me while smaller doses as commonly added to other foods don’t.
(2) The notion that it must be some other ingredient is thoroughly speculative with utterly no support.
(3) It could still be the MSG because Dunning noted that MSG seems to be different than glutamate: 13g glutamate/day (as in lots of natural food) didn’t bother anybody, but 3g MSG did bother some people.
(4) Restaurants that may have used a lot of MSG caused this reaction, while other Chinese restaurants that were known NOT to use MSG did not. So you’re saying that restaurants that omitted MSG must consistently and systematically have omitted some other mystery ingredient too?

Next comes RitterSport with a link to the FDA page Questions and Answers on Monosodium glutamate (MSG). This page says MSG is indistinguishable from glutamate, but that contradicts Dunning’s report of some people having reactions to 3g of MSG but not to 13g of glutamate.

Now that’s 13g of glutamate/day with food, versus 3g of MSG all at once without food. Quite possibly, 3g (or more?) glutamate all at once would also be bothersome, and maybe with or without food. That’s what I suspect Chinese restaurants were doing by shoveling it in. But none of the links cited in this thread address those variables.

Next, GMANCANADA (Post #11) and Derleth (Post #12) suggest that it’s caffeine. And Rittersport already suggested it’s just too much salt.

Well, could be. I can believe that a megadose of either salt or caffeine would make one sickly. But the subject of this thread is what large doses of MSG do.

In Post #16, RitterSport tries to wave away Chronos’s remarks by suggesting that soups have at least as much MSG as Chinese food, and wonders why I think Chinese has more. Chronos, in Post #17, makes the totally unsupported suggestion that KFC has more MSG than Chinese food.

We note here that Chronos and others in this thread, like Vonnegut’s Tralfamadorians, doesn’t seem able to tell past tense from present tense. I’ve already noted (and it’s even part of Dunning’s thesis) that Chinese restaurants allegedly used massive amounts of MSG in years past, but quit using it more recently (in the late 1970’s or early 1980’s, I think). So nobody, not even me, is complaining about MSG in Chinese food NOW. The discussion of Chinese Restaurant Syndrome refers to a common complaint from years ago. I don’t know what Chronos is trying to prove by comparing MSG in KFC versus MSG in Chinese food NOW.

But DID Chinese restaurants really shovel it in? That was the common belief back then. Melbourne, in Post #30, offers second-person witness to that:

@Melbourne

Some of the restaurants, like the one my housemate worked at, used to buy drums of the stuff, and throw handfuls of it into the product. I think it’s entirely reasonable to notice that some foods have higher levels of one particular glutamic salt than other foods have, and to take an interest in food preparation. I don’t think there is any need to be rude about it.

Well, getting rude about it is what cultists do when challenged. (I think he’s referring to needscoffee’s snarky Post #29.)

Derleth, et al, hand-waves it all away as confirmation bias:

@Derleth

Confirmation bias plus a lot of people eating at the “exotic” Chinese restaurant and remembering if they felt even a little bit off afterwards, whereas they wouldn’t give it a second thought if they felt less-than-great after eating at a steakhouse.

But did I mention that I felt effects of “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome” consistently and repeatedly at certain Chinese restaurants, and not at steakhouses or Mexican or Italian or KFC? And that this happened before I even knew what MSG was? Someone explain to me how confirmation bias happens in those situations? (needscoffee also waved it off as confirmation bias on Post #19, while also citing the This American Life post to show that the original NEJM letter was just made up, which is exactly what that post concludes it was NOT. The letter might be right or wrong, but it wasn’t a hoax as claimed. Dunning notes this too.)

I’ll pass over (for now) the other useless drivel that needscoffee wrote in his several posts. Suffice it to say, for the moment, that he should have had more coffee and gotten himself a little more awake before reading the linked cites or writing any of his posts. I’ll elaborate later, if I’m not too exhausted before I finish here.

Now, we get to some posts that were potentially helpful:
D’Anconia posted a link to KFC’s nutritional page, listing products with MSG. I never did manage to view the stuff he cited, but RitterSport helpfully found the page and cut-and-pasted the text into Post #25. I already noted that there are several items on that list that I do eat without ill effects. Again, I presume that these foods contain normal and reasonable amounts of natural glutamate and added MSG, but not the megadoses that I think some Chinese restaurants used to use. Again, Melbourne attests to at least one Chinese restaurant that did this.

CairoCarol, in Post #13, supposes that her ill effects, which happened just once, must have been from a bad batch of food that happened once upon a time. needscoffee, in Post #20, imagines much the same thing, that food may intermittently be bad. These ignore the stated claim that I got bad effects consistently at certain restaurants. Did low-budget Chinese restaurants routinely buy up the two-week-old unused ingredients that other restaurants didn’t use? Did they routinely shovel in megadoses of cadaverine and putrescine? (And, tangentially, can you believe that this spell-checker knows the words “cadaverine” and “putrescine”? But I digress.)

MSG cultist Chingon unhelpfully remarks, in Post #27:

@Chingon

I doubt anything will dissuade you from your stance that MSG from Chinese food makes you ill.

Actually, I did say what evidence might be dissuasive there, way back in Post #18:

@Senegoid

I would like to learn more, or see a cite, about KFC shoveling in the MSG. I have eaten often at KFC with no problems, throughout my entire adult life at least. If they indeed are piling it in, then that would clearly repudiate everything I think I know about my own hypersensitivity to the stuff.

@Senegoid in Post #26

I’ve been under the impression that way too much MSG affects me badly, as was reputedly used in some Chinese restaurants years ago. Nothing in this thread has yet to show me otherwise. So how does KFC MSG usage compare? @Chronos, it was you who wrote, above, that KFC uses more MSG than Chinese restaurants. Cite?

So, if somebody can demonstrate that some common food I am likely to be eating (KFC or otherwise) now has megadoses of MSG, and I’m not keeling over from it, that would be convincing. D’Anconia and RitterSport gave steps in that direction with their KFC cites — but nothing there to suggest KFC uses abnormal quantities.

This thread is, for the most part, little more than a compendium of Recreational Outrage that somebody on the Internet, in this day and age, still reports having had Chinese Restaurant Syndrome back in the day. Come to think of it, I really don’t have the energy or enthusiasm to respond much more to needscoffee or Chingon or Inner Stickler, whose posts are mostly just the sort of snark that cultists tend to spew when their particular religions are challenged. I’ll just leave that at that.