Mostly. There are still die-hard holdouts here every time the topic comes up.
I’m here for all of this except the spoon when a dab on a fingertip will do for bisquick paste and marmite.
And why heat the sardines, not necessary imo?
I just bought some panko pork rind crumbs, may pour some in a bowl with melted butter🤣
Not ashamed at all about that!
but I do have a crisco brick for baking cookies in my cupboard is that shameful?
I’m the same way. I saw a Chinese restaurant here in the Chicago suburbs a decade ago advertising “No MSG” prominently on their front signage. Well, now I definitely wasn’t going to order from there. Similarly, a Mexican restaurant in New York advertising “no lard.” That sign was on the inside. Big no from me there, too.
I just buy the cheap, generic bottles of MSG that are labeled MSG in big white letters at my grocery store for 99 cents. Down the aisle, you can pay like four bucks or so for the same amount of Accent brand MSG. Why? It’s exactly the same thing, not like a spice that will depend on where it’s grown, what exact cultivar, how its stored and transported, etc. I guess because then you don’t have the big MSG letters staring in your face, and you can hide behind the Accent labeling, or something.
MSG is a good source of glutamine. You can apply a small amount to dinner and it might have a mildly positive effect. Or you can pay thirty dollars for a small tub of it as an exercise supplement (of very marginal benefit).
Cold coffee when I was working nights at the hospital years ago as an RN and too many admissions and no time to heat it up.
I definitely used to get headaches after eating at one Chinese restaurant. I attributed it to MSG.
I certainly eat small amounts of MSG all the time without incident. My dad used to have a jar of it, I use soy sauce and oyster sauce in my own cooking, and I still eat at Chinese restaurants that (I assume) use the stuff. But something gave me a particular kind of headache, usually after eating the “chicken soup” at that restaurant.
That doesn’t lead to the conclusion was that it had to be MSG. Especially if you know you eat it in other things with no ill effect. If you hadn’t heard that MSG was bad, you wouldn’t have made that leap.
- Do you know that they used MSG in the soup?
- Did they use equal or greater amounts of MSG in other dishes?
- Were there any other ingredients in the soup that weren’t in other dishes?
I get a headache when I eat too much, or too much salt. That bowl of soup could easily put me over the edge on either count. How could I blame it on any one reason without better data?
This is why double-blind studies are done. And msg has passed that test.
Counterpoint - researchers do have biases, and the medical community has a history of discounting patient experience. This is why studies which review multiple experiments are necessary.
For instance, glutamic acid is also present in mushrooms, which is common in Chinese food. Did any of the experiments take these other sources of glutamate into account?
And did anyone do follow up research asking what is going on that these people are reporting post Chinese headaches.
Counter-Counterpoint: the following are also high in glutamates, so if these don’t cause a problem, it’s probably not the glutamate that’s a problem
Marmite
Parmigiano-Reggiano
Vegemite
Seaweed
Soy sauce
Fish sauce
Oyster sauce
Tomatoes
Cured Ham
Garlic, onions
Anchovies
Beef
All of these have at least 100 mg of glutamates per 100 grams of food
Yes, the idea of msg headaches was completely made up, an idle speculation. Nobody ever complained of Chinese restaurant headaches headaches before then.
What is interesting is that a lot of people get headaches with very high sodium foods and when you cut out the msg you need a lot more sodium to get the same flavor. So you may be more likely to get a headache at a Chinese restaurant that has been intimidated into decreasing the msg.
My mother’s gingerbread recipe (actually a gingersnap recipe from the plaid cookbook) uses Crisco. When I make them I use Crisco.
That prepared potato pancake mix that you just make with beaten raw egg and let sit to set up for a few minutes?
Sometimes that doesn’t actually get fried before being eaten.
… Okay, I’m lying.
… about the “sometimes”
It has started appearing in Costcos around the GTA.
Just a guess, they are probably using a stock/boullion/etc. Loaded with sodium.
Once when making tacos for friends I did not have enough seasoning, i threw in a boullion cube th compensate, it was nearly inedible.
Dunno, it was a weird headache, of a type I haven’t had in many years.
I’m reading a Cooks Illustrated book, and they actually recommend this!* So no need to be ashamed.
*well, they recommend steaming the veggies on the stove, not in the microwave, but they probably think anything done in the microwave is shameful
This is the bit of these discussions I never get. There are different kinds of glutamates, right? So why should “these foods contain glutamates and you don’t have a problem” be an argument that “monosodium glutamate” specifically can’t possibly cause problems when when those other foods most likely contain different glutamates? Do any of these foods contain “monosodium” glutamate?
I’ve read what feels like dozens of MSG threads now, but this has never been clear to me.
No. Cook’s Illustrated is fine with the microwave. Here’s a recipe where they first microwave the beans, then pan fry them:
You won’t be able to read the whole recipe, but you can read the technique:
To achieve those results without the hassle of frying, we first softened the beans by steaming them in the microwave. Then we charred them in a skillet with just a couple tablespoons of hot oil.
The microwave is an excellent tool for steaming vegetables – I’d say it’s one of the things it excels at.
I do the microwave-then-fry or grill method on a number of things, including thick asparagus stalks and potatoes.
@tofor The glutamate in MSG is chemically indistinguishable from glutamate present in food proteins. MSG is the sodium salt of the common amino acid glutamic acid. Our bodies ultimately metabolize both sources of glutamate in the same way. As far as medical chemistry can tell, there’s no physiologically significant difference between them. Glutamate is an ion of glutamic acid so will naturally and spontaneously form monosodium glutamate salt in solution. Life evolved and took advantage of that fact.
Does this mean that if I eat glutamates in other forms they will combine with the salt in my body to become MSG after I eat them?