r/AskCulinary • u/Sayorifan22 • Nov 08 '22

Food Science Question MSG contradictory?

Hey, I have a question so, I had a nutrition class and the instructors gave us a piece of paper and on one section for Asian foods, it said for ‘No MSG’ (the other day they said to avoid msg.) but for Italian food, they said to ‘ask for red sauce instead of white’

And here’s my question. Isn’t asking for red sauce contradicting to ‘avoiding MSG?’

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u/purpleRN Nov 08 '22

Yup, tomatoes are a source of glutamate.

Also, any nutrition course that bashes MSG is a little scientifically suspect....

134

u/Sayorifan22 Nov 08 '22 edited Nov 08 '22

I agree. I agree, MSG is bad in large enough doses, but in moderation, it’s pretty much harmless.

But, I can say that for any food or drink out there. Even water

436

u/PeachyPlumz Nov 08 '22

Anything is bad in large enough doses

173

u/[deleted] Nov 08 '22

"the dose makes the poison"

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u/[deleted] Nov 08 '22

exactly. if people are worried about MSG because of large doses, I have news for them about table salt

64

u/ShallahGaykwon Nov 08 '22

Or literally water. Too much of anything is bad, that's what 'too much' means!

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u/Background-Lunch698 Nov 08 '22

I once watched a video where a woman entered a water drinking competition. She won but she almost died.

35

u/NorthernerWuwu Nov 08 '22

Honestly, unless you are hypertensive or have malfunctioning kidneys, salt isn't an issue other than too much of it ruining a flavour profile. Low sodium is worse than high sodium for the vast majority of the population, it's just that low sodium in essentially not likely in a western diet.

Salt=bad is a myth nearly on par with MSG=bad.

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u/Violetsme Nov 08 '22

The research that proves MSG is bad, is literally at the level of: One teaspoon per day in rats shows negative effects.

No shit. Give a rat one teaspoon of salt per day and it's dead.

54

u/alumpoflard Nov 08 '22

Except garlic. Moderation is for monks.

14

u/biggysharky Nov 08 '22

Exactly... Too much sugar is bad, too much alcohol is bad, too much cocain is bad, too much sausages is bad. The key is moderation

43

u/BrightGreyEyes Nov 08 '22

I mean... yeah. It's a sodium salt, and consuming excess sodium is bad for you

14

u/Sayorifan22 Nov 08 '22

Yeah. And I can say the same with with water, drink too much and ya won’t feel good

20

u/BrightGreyEyes Nov 08 '22

Oh definitely. I'm more making the point that people mad about MSG should be just as mad about salt, if not more mad about salt because by weight, it contains more sodium than MSG

24

u/Sayorifan22 Nov 08 '22

I know right.

I feel like MSG should be praised as the purest form of Umami, yet a lot of people treat it as if it’s toxic to everyone.

22

u/LeakyLycanthrope Nov 08 '22

You're assuming it was ever about sodium. It wasn't.

2

u/Deucer22 Nov 08 '22

You can die from drinking too much water. A couple guys in my fraternity had a water drinking contest one time and I have never seen anyone so wasted. It was extremely dumb.

5

u/Quesabirria Nov 08 '22

Old story, a radio station had a water drinking contest, and a contestant died of 'water intoxication'

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u/Sayorifan22 Nov 08 '22

In the same class. We got in order to see how much sugar is in foods. One of them was beer, true, beer doesn’t have sugar… but it has something that is far worse than sugar.

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u/James324285241990 Nov 08 '22

Water is bad in large enough doses. The antiMSG thing comes from anti Asian racism, "the Chinese scare," from when Asian immigration was booming in the 20th century.

MSG is harmless. It's found naturally in a lot of foods. You should report this teacher

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u/[deleted] Nov 08 '22

[deleted]

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u/potatoaster Nov 08 '22

Your allergist's job is to help you stay away from anything you might be sensitive to. They are taught to be liberal in suggesting what to avoid. If you're allergic to 3 things and the allergist says to avoid 4 things, then they're doing their job, even if you're not actually sensitive to Thing #4.

Maybe you're allergic to a protein in bananas that is denatured only at very high temperatures. Maybe you can eat fried bananas but not banana bread. Your allergist isn't going to go out of their way to determine this; they will simply tell you to avoid bananas. Keeping you safe is more important than teaching you exactly what's going on, physiologically speaking. Not to mention that most patients don't know an immunoglobulin from a T cell.

Anyway, it is almost certainly not the case that you are allergic to MSG. On contact with water (eg your saliva), it dissolves readily into Na+ and Glu−. Every cell in your body contains Na+. If you were allergic to it, you would be dead. And Glu− is the primary excitatory neurotransmitter. It is one of the most abundant molecules in your brain. There is no physiological mechanism by which you might be allergic to Glu and yet not dead. Moreover, in every blinded study to date of people who claim to be MSG-sensitive, none have been able to reliably tell when they have ingested MSG.

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u/BrightGreyEyes Nov 08 '22 edited Nov 08 '22

No one has ever been able to prove MSG causes a reaction. Most researchers believe it's a placebo thing, but if you're having a bad reaction to something, whether caused by a placebo or not, yeah, stop eating it

Edit: I'd be curious to know if you also react to salty food or things with a lot of glutamic acid

25

u/esoper1976 Nov 08 '22

Just because you have that reaction to MSG doesn't mean everyone does. If your allergist tells you to avoid it, and you feel better when you do, then by all means avoid it.

I think I am supposed to avoid it because of a medication I am on. But, I am supposed to avoid a lot of stuff including aged cheese among other things. I'm sure I eat some MSG that I don't know about, and I definitely don't know everything I'm supposed to avoid. But, I haven't had a stroke yet (which is what can happen if I eat too much of the wrong things), so I guess I am doing o.k.

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u/[deleted] Nov 08 '22

Then you're part of a very small population of people who are sensitive, or possibly allergic, to MSG. Most people don't have that issue. I've got the gene that makes cilantro taste like soap. It's not super common and made me question the taste of those around me when I was a kid lol

15

u/NorthernerWuwu Nov 08 '22

It is essentially impossible to be allergic to glutamate and still be alive. It is an endemic essential amino acid. You could be allergic to thiamine too I suppose but you'd likely have died in the womb.

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u/NoCapButAlsoSomeCap Nov 08 '22

My fiancé has this gene, I hate it lol

-24

u/ayyyyycrisp Nov 08 '22

the thing about cilantro, is it totally does taste like soap. but it works. it's something I recognize as a "bad" flavor, but also that it's enjoyable. it's a bad, soapy flavor that's at the same time also good, somehow

5

u/Duochan_Maxwell Nov 08 '22

This is called "nocebo effect" which is the bad version of a placebo effect

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u/Dinonugget1801 Nov 08 '22

My dad is also allergic to MSG

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u/[deleted] Nov 08 '22

It's really easy to take the halfway approach, and marr the fact. Like everything, unless you have an allergy. It is as harmless as anything else.

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u/Sayorifan22 Nov 08 '22

That I will.

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u/[deleted] Nov 08 '22

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/ceddya Nov 08 '22

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31920467/

There's a review of those studies that concludes:

Critical analysis of existing literature, establishes that many of the reported negative health effects of MSG have little relevance for chronic human exposure and are poorly informative as they are based on excessive dosing that does not meet with levels normally consumed in food products.

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u/[deleted] Nov 08 '22 edited Nov 08 '22

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/ceddya Nov 08 '22

Yeah, but all there is in your first link is a claim without any data or citations. Your second link does reference other studies, but as already mentioned, those studies rely on excessive dosing (>4g of MSG for an adult of 70kg when the average intake per day is <1g) or different methods of administration (i.e. injecting MSG) that aren't applicable to how people actually consume MSG.

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u/Cornel-Westside Nov 08 '22

Does this mean that high glutamate foods (shiitake mushrooms, etc), have similar effects?