The MSG Connection

I’m honestly surprised this wasn’t even mentioned. MSG was a commercial product in Japan starting around 1909. MSG is one of those “Generally Recommended as Safe” food additives. Basically, consuming a lot isn’t going to hurt you.

However, one of the side-effects of consuming MSG is that you get a serious rise of insulin. This gives your a corresponding drop in blood sugar levels and – lo and behold! – you’re hungry again very quickly. Since owners of asian restaurants in the USA used to add MSG in great quantities to their food, the classic “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome” resulted. (Other effects of MSG were largely due to preconceptions, but the insulin rise is well established.) Consequently: eat food with MSG, get hungry sooner, eat more, get obese.

Over the last 35 years I can recall going to Chinese restaurants, I’ve watched a steady rise in quality as well as the general prevalance of “No MSG added” signs placed prominently in those restaurants. This is, of course, their responses to the concerns from westerners about the MSG effects mentioned above. However, the quiet revolution during that same period was the rising use of MSG in fast food; yet another contributor to America’s obesity problem.

So, the real issue about how people used to find Chinese food unsatisfying or unfilling is that cooks used to add MSG in great quantity, then backed off. That and/or other processed foods have so much MSG now that nobody is noticing any kind of difference between them.

Welcome to the SDMB. So that everyone knows what you’re referring to, it’s customary to include a link to the column you are commenting on. Here you go: Why do you soon feel hungry again after eating Chinese food? Or do you? - The Straight Dope

That’s news to me. I’ve always heard “China Restaurant Syndrome” refer to Headaches that some people get from a lot of MSG - a certain portion of the population is sensitive to it by genetic. At first, this idea was dismissed as “you’re all imagining this”, but then doctors did tests and found out that certain people really reacted to MSG, and thus, with this validation, restaurants started reducing MSG so people could eat Chinese food without getting headaches.

The Chinese Restaurant syndrome is more of a medical myth than reality, it was a percieved connection without much basis in reality.

The following text is from “On Food An Cooking” by Harold McGee: the “Bible” of food science.

Artificial MSG, as used in Chinese restaurant is actually just derived from normal kelp. It is usually the carrier of the umammi flavour in vegetables. But it’s naturally occurring in many diverse food stuffs like leeks, parmesan cheese , nori seaweed, cheddar, peas, asparagus, tomatoes, for example. Umammi flavour is also prevalent in meats and mushrooms, but the flavour is here carried by insoniate and guanylate.

Asian cuisines like umammi flavour and has always enhanced this characteristic with different kinds of fermented sauces and well cooked stocks. Artificial msg is actually not really that strange to the cuisine, it’s a short cut to get a hearty savory stock but to save time by not cooking it for hours. So if you cook asian cuisine without artificial glutamate it will be almost always the same.

Here’s the 2004 discussion of this question.

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=253242

Then as now, most posters haven’t experienced the phenomenon, other than the OPs in each case. I think I have experienced it, and the OPs haven’t explained it very well. Probably 20 times in my life, this sequence of events has occurred:

1.) I eat a huge meal of Chinese food. Totally full. Bloated, even.
2.) About an hour later, I get a feeling in my stomach that is similar to hunger pangs. I have no actual interest in eating.
3.) Within a minute or less, the pangs subside and don’t return.
I’ve only noticed this with Chinese food. I always assumed it had something to do with the way one or more of the ingredients break down in my stomach that causes a momentary sensation that I experience as hunger, but I never gave much thought to why. I’ll concede the possibility that I’ve fallen prey to the myth–maybe it’s just my stomach settling after any big meal, and I apply it to the Saying when it’s Chinese food and forget about it otherwise. But it’s quite noticable when it happens.