I've talked to many otherwise perfectly rational folks who get worked up about avoiding MSG when it comes to Asian food — but still go out and buy liquid aminos or eat foods that are caked in it.
Many people don't know that tomatoes, cheeses and other foods naturally have MSG. And:
> FDA considers the addition of MSG to foods to be “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS). Although many people identify themselves as sensitive to MSG, in studies with such individuals given MSG or a placebo, scientists have not been able to consistently trigger reactions. [1]
Not really. It only "works" for subjective measurements. As an asthma patient how well they can breathe after taking medicine, and you can get a placebo effect. Measure the volume of airflow in and out of their lungs and you don't.
Scientists have been doing challenge studies with MSG for 4 decades, and no study that presented subjects with MSGs and detected any adverse reactions significantly different than placebo has ever reproduced.
Even the (rebutted, non-reproducing) studies that showed adverse reactions to MSG (in the 80s and early 90s) showed headache as one of the symptoms not associated with MSG (tingling and numbness were more closely associated).
I don't doubt you're able to give yourself a migraine, but I do doubt that you're controlling for MSG.
This might be one of the best-studied food safety questions in the literature.
I think it’s very likely that something with MSG on the label often includes things like anti-caking agents or nitrates that may actually be the culprit. I kept a food diary for a year and the common headache trigger seemed to be “MSG”. Changing my diet to avoid it eliminated the headaches. So it really doesn’t matter to me if someone on the internet says it can’t be MSG. The practical result in my case was close enough. I have sympathy for anyone that suffers from migraines.
You can't do a double-blind expepriment on yourself, but you can simulate one.
Double refers to the fact that not only do the test subject not know what treatment they are getting (e.g. real or placebo), but also the staff who administer that treatment do not know: both are blind, hence double. This is important because if the administrators know, then something in their behavior such as body language could leak the information to the test subjects.
If administrator and test subject are the same person, it cannot be double. However, you can take steps to prevent yourself from knowing what you're taking, like preparing identical containers which are randomized and whatnot. If there is no second human there serving to you who could leak clues then it may be as good as double blind.
Prepare your two samples. Put them in identical containers. Attach sealed envelopes that record which one is which. Mix them up in such a way that you can't tell them apart anymore. Randomly mark one A and one B. Perform your experiment on A and B. Once you have the results, open the envelopes to find out which one was which.
I just checked the ingredients on my liquid aminos and it doesn't say msg. Their website says they don't add it, but there may be "very small amounts" that naturally occur from the soybeans. Please explain.
P.S. I have no reaction to MSG I just don't understand why you would think someone is being irrational.
Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) is an amino acid bound to a sodium molecule to make it into a shelf stable powder. Much like table salt (NaCl) is a sodium molecule bound to a chloride molecule to achieve the same. When they contact the water in food they both dissolve into the component molecules.
So really what you're talking about is glutamate which is a very widely occuring amino acid. It's "non-essential" which means that your body produces it. Almost all fermented foods contain it (including liquid aminos). Cheeses, meats, vegetables, etc contain it. It's very likely that you eat several times as much naturally occurring glutamate in your diet as you would if you used MSG in your cooking.
Basically if someone says they are allergic to MSG, but not allergic to all of the other foods that contain glutamate, is like someone saying they're allergic to table salt, but not allergic to all of the other foods that contain sodium, which is not medically plausible.
The flip side is that very high blood concentration of sodium can cause medical issues, and people worried about glutamate argue that a similar effect is going on when you eat MSG, but research so far indicates that at normal dietary levels, you're fine to sprinkle a little of either molecule on your food.
Your chemistry is scarily bad, are you trolling? When elements combine into molecules the result often behaves very differently from the components.
> Basically if someone says they are allergic to MSG, but not allergic to all of the other foods that contain glutamate, is like someone saying they're allergic to table salt, but not allergic to all of the other foods that contain sodium, which is not medically plausible.
OK, so how come I can eat table salt but chlorine alone will kill me?
Indeed consuming protein molecules which contain glutamate is different from consuming free glutamate in the form of MSG.
We can draw a ready analogy to saccharides. It is like denying the effects of sugar because indigestible complex carbohydrates are made of sugar and do not produce those effects. "A blood sugar spike doesn't exist because cellulose is made of sugars, and I've eaten a large bowl of moistened sawdust without experiencing such a spike. It's probably an imagined effect or maybe caused by something else, such as a response to anti-caking agents in the sugar."
Why is MSG used in the first place on foods which already contain glutamate? For instance, why is it used in Vietnamese lemon grass chicken recipes, given that chicken protein has tons of glutamate? It's because the glutamate that is locked up in protein doesn't produce the taste effect of MSG.
So why don't these naysayers deny the existence of the taste effect of MSG also?
As in: "Gee, I don't believe that MSG can possibly be a flavor enhancer, because boiled chicken breast contains copious glutamate and yet tastes bland. People who say that flavor is enhanced by MSG are just imagining it due to confirmation bias fueled by mass hysteria."
> Because nobody has a reaction to MSG. It's ill effects are entirely fictional.
It has not been proven, and will not be proven, that every single person in the world has no reaction to MSG. All I'm advocating is a little bit of doubt. The human body is complex and not every person is the same and not every biological process is completely understood. We can make statements as a whole, like that most people that think they're sensitive to MSG aren't. But we shouldn't excitedly immediately dismiss a person claiming that something is happening to them.
You might just as well raise concerns about adverse effects from dill, or alliums, or fava beans. In fact, all three of those are more likely to be associated with ill effects, because they're more allergenic.
The reason MSG gets such harsh pushback is that the idea of "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome" or "MSG sensitivity" has been rebutted pretty comprehensively both from an empirical perspective --- decades of studies have never established a link, which according to the narrative of MSG sensitivity should be very easy to do! --- and from a theoretical perspective. In fact, the theoretical basis for the safety of MSG is pretty plain just from the molecule, which makes you wonder how people could be spinning stories about the dangers of chemical MSG at all.
I'm not trying to raise concerns. And actually, I agree with everything that you said. There is obviously a lot of misinformation and most of people's reactions and stories are factually incorrect and part of a fad. We can say that for sure because we've studied it.
What I'm trying to say is that you shouldn't take that knowledge and then proceed to tell an individual, who you haven't studied, that they are wrong about what is happening to their bodies. People have weird and rare reactions to things all the time. You should have a healthy amount of doubt and realize that maybe you don't have complete knowledge of their bodies. Why is everyone here so certain? Who proved that no person on the planet has any reaction to MSG?
I agree with your sentimate. It's also important to remember that we continually learn new things about how previously considered inert components actually have effect when ingestested in combination with active ingredients. I love glutamate. When isolating them from other components and changing chemical structure, then dumping that in high volumes into other food (where the Chinese Food Syndrome part comes from), it does not seem unreasonable to me that it may cause irritation to some peoples digestive system. So I guess it's important to express that a whole is not only a sum of its parts, and both biology and chemistry are fluid evolving disciplines.
The articles mentioned studies, but I can't give informed speculation, have not looked at any of the studies. Will assume the participants who reported irritation are a small enough a population to fall within the range of participants reporting irritation from placebo. So I'll opine that most of the people who report negative reaction probably have not sufficiently isolated MSG as the culprit, even if they are certain enough to convict.
Side note: Latacora intreagues me, I think it's a good aproach to satisfy some security pain points. If things go well in the next few months, I may reach out to evaluate fit;-)
I'm constantly worried about that teapot orbiting Mars that nobody can disprove. Imagine how much it must be worth! What color might it be? Endless fascination.
You think the probability that someone on the planet has a sensitivity to a certain food/molecule is about the same as there being a teapot orbiting Mars? Everything a person consumes has a vast variety of effects in different people. We're discovering new reactions all the time.
I'll tell you why I care. I'm coming from the perspective of someone that DOES have a rare and strange immune system reaction to a common food. I've seen doctor after doctor for years and no one can tell me what it is. I've tested it over and over and over and my doctors all agree with my assessment. But for some reason, I have to deal with a lot of people that tell me I'm wrong because read something on the internet about it being a fad. Why is everyone so damn certain they have complete knowledge of someone's digestive system and immune system?
My partner has IBS, so I'm also frustrated with unidentified food reactions/digestive issues. But I can't help her by ignoring the best tool for discerning reality we have, which remains scientific research. The results on MSG, glutamates, is very, very clear.
"You think the probability that someone on the planet has a sensitivity to a certain food/molecule is about the same as there being a teapot orbiting Mars?"
No, I KNOW people have food sensitivities. But not to MSG or its metabolites. I have as much evidence for the teapot as the MSG sensitivity, so I couldn't really guess which is more likely. I'd be happy to change my mind on either if presented with plausible research!
I have as much evidence for the teapot as the MSG sensitivity, so I couldn't really guess which is more likely. I'd be happy to change my mind on either if presented with plausible research!
I mean, you also have a whole ton of negative results regarding the plausibility of MSG sensitivity.
Do you have any results showing that someone has looked into the possibility of a teapot floating around Mars and not found one?
There's no clear mechanism for either to be true, but so far I think my money's on teapot.
Sure, and you could say the same about tomatoes. But, generally speaking, people don't have reactions to tomatoes. The oddity/absurdity is spending extraneous resources/time arguing whether being allergic to MSG is actually a thing, just as it would be to devote resources into whether being allergic to tomatoes is a thing (hell, it's borderline as absurd as studying if being allergic to salt is a thing, at which point you would just be dead).
If you're allergic to tomatoes or salt, then it's a personal thing, not a general property of tomatoes or salt.
> It has not been proven, and will not be proven, that every single person in the world has no reaction to MSG.
And you have an example of a food anywhere that meets that standard? Literally nothing meets this ideal of "safety", so I don't understand why you're OK with peanuts or shrimp when those are clearly shown to be death sentences for some people.
MSG is, chemically, just a specific salt of glutamic acid. When dissolved (in food, or in the mouth) it forms free glutamate, which triggers the umami sensation on the tongue. Liquid aminos, cheeses, tomatoes, and many other foods are naturally high in free glutamates — and thus the savory, umami flavor that comes with it — even if MSG or other compounds aren't specifically added.
I agree with bvinc in this debate: those claiming to be scientific and saying MSG can't cause any reaction are rudely dismissing the real experiences of strangers. There are many reasons for the perceived MSG reactions: other additives in the MSG (like melamine milk in China), other foods at Chinese restaurants (and possible additives in those), all the way to psychosomatic and culture-bound syndromes [1].
There are a lot of "sensitivity" syndromes, and some are associated with genetic issues, some with toxicity, and others with mental health. And then there are questionable diseases [2]. Yes, the sufferers are sometimes vocal and unscientific. Those claiming to follow science shouldn't be.
So because I called out people who misuse science to sneer at weak people, I must be an anti-vaxer.
I don't doubt there are lots of studies showing no MSG effects (not that anyone bothered to link to them). I even believe them, just that there may be other factors at play. Plus they only studied MSG, I doubt they studied the people who claim to be affected by it.
Did you miss the part where I brought up psychosomatic effects, culture-bound syndrome, mental illness, and questionable diseases? Do you want to contribute any hypotheses or just make fun of people?
The article rather understates the use of glutamate in the body.
> it is an essential building block of protein found in muscle tissue, the brain, and other organs.
It's not only found in every organ, it's present in 99.6% of all human proteins, out of 20328 only 72 do not use glutamate, and of those 29 are keratin proteins.
Interestingly, though (just to digress -- your point is quite valid) it's not an essential amino acid for humans. Obviously it's required to make proteins, but if we don't get enough in our diet our bodies will synthesize it.
It's just interesting that the molecule we evolved to recognize as a "protein!" marker in our food turns out not to be one of the protein submolecules we actually need to surive.
I agree with you, but it makes sense that we may have evolved to be able to synthesize it. Since it's such a crucial amino acid, it would be an advantageous adaptation to do so.
I suppose that makes sense if it's one of the easier ones to produce, so many animals can produce it. So it would be a better indicator of general protein than any of the rarer ones would be.
Supposedly, the glutamate you absorb in your intestine from food is an important precursor for glutathione, which protects your mucosa from dietary toxins. It's possible that you need to consume some level of it for healthy digestion.
MSG is fine, but I stubbornly cling to the notion that high quality ingredients should yield umami taste without adding MSG. To me it's similar to using ripe red bell peppers that are sweet, without needing to "fake" it with cane sugar. It's easy to turn dishes into caricatures by taking basic tastes to extremes. I'm no miso soup expert, but shouldn't it naturally have MSG from the seaweed, fermented miso paste, tuna, and tofu?
Still, perhaps it's a bit silly because I don't blink when adding salt.
From a culinary perspective, the flip side of that --- referenced in the article --- is that sometimes you want the umami taste sensation without clouding the flavor of the product you're "seasoning". You can bump umami with soy sauce, parm, or tomato paste, but not without adding soy, parm, or tomato flavor. MSG lets you turn that knob while mostly keeping the pure flavor of the rest of the dish intact.
I identify with both of these issues, and have mixed feelings about MSG.
I'm a sort of accidental vegetarian, in that I never really decided to become one; the rest of my family is vegetarian and I stopped eating meat because it was inconvenient, and then gradually I lost interest in it.
I realized at some point MSG is really useful for adding umami flavor to things without adding other flavors, like seaweed or tomato or mushroom. It is wonderful for certain things, and makes some vegetarian dishes basically indistinguishable from those with meat. I think it's a little odd that people will go out of their way to add unusual strong-flavored ingredients for the umami, when you could just add MSG.
At the same time, MSG on its own to me has a really cheap umami quality. It reminds me of really cheap frozen dinners and bad food from elementary school. For awhile I couldn't get over that, and then eventually realized that when it's used in complement with the right things in the right amounts, it works great--you just need to figure out the right settings.
So sometimes those natural sources of umami just seem contorted and more trouble than they're worth. Other times, they seem to supply umami in a way that doesn't seem cheap or one-dimensional.
I suspect that there's some other component of many "umami" flavors we haven't discovered yet, or other tastes that technically aren't umami but would be identified as such currently. It's difficult for me to believe that MSG is really capturing most of what I like about savory dishes; I feel like something else is missing. I'm waiting for other amino acid salt receptors to be identified; I wouldn't be surprised if they're somehow linked in their activity to glutamate receptors or something of that sort.
True enough. But at the same time having complicated controls can lead to more experimentation. Literally this very subject (wanting to experiment with alternative glutamate sources) led me to a bunch of stuff you can do with yeast extracts. Marmite/vegemite make great additions to sauces, acting a lot like boullion does.
I just checked the ingredients on my organic Costco chicken stock. The ingredients do not contain MSG. I found a website that asked Costco about their "natural flavors" and got a response that it does not contain soy, or dairy, and no MSG is added.
Chicken stock contains natural glutamate because chicken itself contains it. It’s what gives chicken stock its savory flavor. Moreover, your body makes its own glutamate, too. So yes, it’s that simple. That’s why they say “no MSG is _added_”. This is similar to how a lot of meat products say “no nitrites are added”, yet use celery juice which is naturally rich in nitrites to prevent meat from turning brown.
The stock contains sodium and it contains glutamate from the protein in the chicken. It therefore contains MSG in the same way that salt water contains salt.
The article mentioned that glutamate is currently produced by fermentation with molasses as the main feedstock. I found a fascinating open access article about the history of glutamate production here:
The author is an employee of Ajinomoto Co, Inc., the same company that the author of the New Yorker article visited.
Abstract:
In 1907 Kikunae Ikeda, a professor at the Tokyo Imperial University, began his research to identify the umami component in kelp. Within a year, he had succeeded in isolating, purifying, and identifying the principal component of umami and quickly obtained a production patent. In 1909 Saburosuke Suzuki, an entrepreneur, and Ikeda began the industrial production of monosodium L-glutamate (MSG). The first industrial production process was an extraction method in which vegetable proteins were treated with hydrochloric acid to disrupt peptide bonds. L-Glutamic acid hydrochloride was then isolated from this material and purified as MSG. Initial production of MSG was limited because of the technical drawbacks of this method. Better methods did not emerge until the 1950s. One of these was direct chemical synthesis, which was used from 1962 to 1973. In this procedure, acrylonitrile was the starting material, and optical resolution of DL-glutamic acid was achieved by preferential crystallization. In 1956 a direct fermentation method to produce glutamate was introduced. The advantages of the fermentation method (eg, reduction of production costs and environmental load) were large enough to cause all glutamate manufacturers to shift to fermentation. Today, total world production of MSG by fermentation is estimated to be 2 million tons/y (2 billion kg/y).
She basically takes it for granted that MSG causes headaches and is looking at the mechanisms.
A recent study found that a single oral dose of 150mg/kg taken consecutively for five days resulted in headache and muscle tenderness when given to healthy young men
(Shimada et al. 2013). Older work concluded that MSG consumption did not induce symptoms of pain or sensitivity but many of these studies have been scrutinized for their poor methodology (Tarasoff and Kelly 1993). Without definitive proof that MSG is harmful, it has been cleared in the United States and Canada as safe for human consumption and can be added to foods without regulation from Health Canada.
I have only ever seen the first kind of Accent before (crystals of pure MSG) so I too was initially confused about what the author meant when writing
I picked up a dusty bottle of Ac’cent-brand MSG at my corner bodega. I brought it home, made dinner, and stepped into the light. After a few months of passionate use, I levelled up from Ac’cent, which includes other flavorings besides MSG, to the more pure and exquisite Ajinomoto...
Here's a thought. People who have persistent "diet related" health problems who also tried every single known dietary avoidance strategy (often with little success) could also get tested for H.pylori.
Chef's are superstitious and misinformed about food science at only slightly lower rates than average, in my experience. Most of fine cooking is based on tradition and received wisdom rather than evidence.
This can come from the food itself, and many recipes—in fact, almost all recipes that aren’t either fast food or molecular gastronomy—were crafted to derive umami flavours from their ingredients, rather than being “boosted” after the fact.
Which is not to say the result isn’t the same as if they just added the MSG. It’s just a different approach to adding it.
TIL glutamate is one of four amino acids that also functions as a neurotransmitter. Obviously, this does not refute any of the science disproving "MSG sensitivity" but I still find it interesting. Further, I wonder if there are people out there that claim sensitivity to aspartate or serine given that they too are both neurotransmitters and amino acids.
From what I've read, no level of glutamate intake in humans allows it to cross the blood-brain barrier, or, for that matter, even substantially increase the serum glutamate level.
I've yet to see one that showed actual adverse effects of eating MSG via food, regardless of claimed sensitivities. I think this is the heart of the "racist" claim - there's no study that supports the existence of that sort of MSG sensitivity out there yet (that I've heard about)
That could describe the situation when you're drinking MSG-laced soup. The liquid will race ahead of the solids ingredients like noodles and get absorbed first.
If MSG is sprinked onto something dry, like some types of snack food, which is then washed down with a drink, it could also be absorbed fast.
This is first-principles message board hypothesizing. In fact, there's enormous incentive in academic science to actually demonstrate a reliable adverse MSG effect, and there has been for decades. Why has no reputable study done so? Is it really your argument that no food scientist has ever thought of the study design questions you're alluding to here?
The "large" dose they use (5g) seems very small. By comparison, just 1 teaspoon of MSG is 8g. I could easily imagine some restaurant dishes containing more than that.
If you can imagine a single dish containing more than 1 teaspoon of pure MSG, then either you haven't used it or your tastebuds are challenged. 1Tsp of MSG is more than enough to flavor a several pounds of ground meat, or a quart of tomato sauce. You're not getting 1tsp of MSG in a single dish that tastes anywhere near edible.
> They are willing to bring MSG into their homes as a component in other foods—more than happy to accept it as a flavoring powerhouse in Doritos, instant ramen, canned soup, and bouillon cubes, or at least happy to accept its euphemisms, like “hydrolized soy protein” and “autolyzed yeast.”
Those are strawman avoiders of MSG, not everyone. I avoid stuff which lists MSG under these names. As well as disodium inosinate or disodium guanylate.
I can tolerate some MSG, but if there is too much, I get headache/nausea. That is, it's not like I can't have a few chips at a party.
People say things like this about gluten sensitivity, too, often with very detailed self-reporting. But in a controlled setting, outside of celiac, there's not a lot of evidence for NCGS, and it's very likely that a significant fraction of people who report NCGS are not in fact gluten-sensitive. As with MSG, people also have weird ideas about their gluten intake, and as with MSG there's widespread and easily illustrated sensitivity to other aspects of gluten-rich food (for instance, for a lot of people, rapid intake of lots of refined carbs will have immediate insulin effects).
The difference, of course, is that there is an underlying condition that makes gluten problematic for a small number of people --- celiac disease. There is no known "celiac of MSG", despite decades of searching for it.
Anything is possible, but the evidence overwhelmingly suggest that if you're having a reliable reaction to foods with MSG in them, it's something else in those foods you're sensitive to --- most likely salt! --- not MSG.
Just to expand on one of the parent's points, Celiac is pretty rare, and affects under 1% of the population. However, Fructose Malabsorption is much less rare, and affects closer to 5% in the US. In spite of the name, Fructose Malabsorption has little to do with dietary fructose, and instead has to do with a class of molecules called fructooligosaccharides (FOS).
Overconsumption of FOS causes bloating, nausea, "brain fog," lower GI upset, and a whole raft of other symptoms that sound an awful lot like what many self-diagnosed NCGS folks report. For folks with Fructose Malabsorption, the threshold consumption of FOS that causes symptoms is less than 10% the level that causes symptoms in the general population.
The confounding thing is that wheat is rich is FOS. So folks who believe they have NCGS stop eating wheat and sometimes feel better. They probably have Fructose Malabsorption, or are suffering from insulin spiking effects from refined carbs, or some other effect. But they heard gluten was bad for you, and when they ate the package of bread that said "gluten free," and stopped eating the normal wheat bread, they started feeling better.
"Middlebrow dismissals" of their condition don't really help them either. True, gluten is almost certainly not their problem. But gluten free food, as a side effect of lacking wheat, often helps them feel better! What are the chances that something similar is happening with MSG? Perhaps added MSG is often found along side other ingredients/contaminants that cause headaches and other reported "MSG symptoms"?
> Perhaps added MSG is often found along side other ingredients/contaminants that cause headaches and other reported "MSG symptoms"?
MSG is a clear common denominator. Many people report that if they avoid anything with MSG (under any of its names), they avoid the associated problems. That doesn't mean it's MSG.
Why do studies focus on the MSG? Because they are sparked by the motivation to clear MSG's name (which could actually be right). They don't care about finding the root cause of these symptoms.
The proper scientific approach is to ignore the MSG hypothesis of the self-reported sufferers and get to the root cause, not simply to test that hypothesis and be done.
> "Middlebrow dismissals" of their condition don't really help them either.
> Something else in those foods you're sensitive to --- most likely salt! --- not MSG.
Can you point to studies which confirm salt as the cause of these symptoms that MSG is unfairly blamed for?
I can eat consume copious amounts of salt without any ill effects, like finishing huge bowls of soup to the last drop.
I exercise a lot so I use salt liberally, and add it to water. If I don't supplement the salt intake, I start getting muscle cramps and a kind of lethargic feeling, particularly in hot weather.
I did an experiment, though, about 8 months ago: I started drinking bouillon. I prepared about a mug of hot water with a teaspoon of the soup stock. On one mug per day, I was okay. When I went up to three, the headaches and nausea showed up. I felt like crap, so I cut it short.
There is salt in that stuff, but that can't be it.
The symptoms you're describing are also primary symptoms of dehydration.
A more reliable exploration would be, after diligently logging your food and drink intake (with time and quantities) along with your physical feelings for a couple months, add a daily regime of a specific amount of pure MSG. Start small, and increase the MSG intake until you start feeling adverse symptoms. Assuming symptoms manifest, then increase your daily hydration levels (obviously not to the point of giving yourself hyperhydration) and note when/if the adverse symptoms previously noted diminish.
You would think so, but somehow the artificial stuff is different or in greater concentration.
Here's how I discovered my MSG intolerance:
I made a bunch of onion soup (from onion soup mix), and ate a ton of it. I then spent the next 24 hours feeling terrible, downing pepto, etc.
A few weeks later I made a recipe that included onion soup mix as an ingredient. Again I felt terrible.
I though, Aha, I must have an onion allergy, this onion soup mix keeps making me sick.
So I started checking if onions themselves made me sick. But onions were no problem.
Then I looked at the other ingredients on the onion soup mix. Monosodium glutamate stood out. I remembered hearing that could cause problems. So I started learning more about it, and as I did much of my digestive life came into focus. I remembered moments of intestinal agony ever since I was a teenager that I couldn't explain. I paid attention to what bothered my stomach, and always there was some form of MSG---autolyzed yeast, etc.
Since making an effort to avoid MSG I almost never encounter those symptoms. And when I do it's usually attributable to food prepared by others whose ingredients I can't strictly account for.
People claim MSG intolerance isn't a real thing, but my experience has shown me otherwise.
Yes, and we've repeatedly researched MSG on the basis of experiences like yours. It turns out there is no evidence that people who self-report as sensitive actually are. Yes, even if they're really, really sure.
Maybe you are some sort of undiscovered outlier? That may be compelling to you, but it seems unlikely to me... the research indicates you're far more likely to be among those who have misidentified a cause for their symptoms, one conveniently pointed out to them by urban legend. It's completely unsurprising, and I've done the same many times before.
My recollection from looking into the research myself was that though a large proportion of those who claimed MSG intolerance ended up having none, some proportion _did_ have the intolerance. The conclusion that MSG intolerance isn't real on that basis was overstated. Similarly, though many people who claim gluten intolerance have no such thing, some in fact do.
Given the nigh-infinite space of possibilities that is the human genome and the various environments and experiences of seven billion human beings, in my mind it's almost guaranteed that every human being will experience at least one medical condition that is insufficiently frequent in the population that it is "unknown to science". When your personal experience deviates from the common interpretation of scientific findings, what do you do?
I could be wrong. Maybe it's all in my head somehow? But that's a sort of real effect, too.
What I do know is that by avoiding MSG the quality of my diet has improved immeasurably, and my intestines aren't in agony. It's just an anecdote. An anecdote that happens to be my own life.
Scientists who have performed controlled measurements on peoples reactions to MSG.
As usual in human experience, without having specialized knowledge obtained via controlled, repeatable measurements, it is wildly difficult to accurately observe an informational correlation between two out of the literally millions of influential events on your body. Your conviction that MSG causes headaches and nausea is directly analogous to people who are convinced that proximity to arbitrary electromagnetic fields causes acute physical distress. This is standard confirmation bias. We all do it, it's a natural consequence of our brains' imprecise pattern matching combined with the extremely limited perspective any individual human has. The reliable way to mitigate this human flaw is to perform good science.
The parts of humanity involved in figuring it out, and those laymen which have bothered to follow along. I'm in the latter group, so yes, feel free to ignore me. (Just don't ignore the actual research, eh?)
LeVar Burton: you don't have to take my word for it!
So, if you were to obtain autolyzed yeast, and eat it, you'd experience the symptoms? Basically all modern packaged food with umami flavor includes it (it's the go-to-method for adding umami to processed foods).
Personally, I'd say that you may have an allergy or immune reaction to yeast, rather than MSG intolerance.
"The daily intake is estimated to be between 50 and
200mg/kg/day in industrialized countries"
Wow, indeed. An estimate of between 3.4g - 13.6g per day for a person that weighs 150lb is wrong by a magnitude. The upper end of that estimate has people burning through a 16oz packet of MSG in one month.
When I was little, back in the 70's, my mom used these bouillons: Knorr and whatnot. We had no idea what is MSG, but somehow I clued in to the idea that I was feeling sick from that soup and was dreading the "headache soup".
In the late 80's, I once so ill from a cup of instant noodles that I had to go home.
Not long after that, I finally learned about MSG from a book I stumbled upon in the library (circa 1989, I think). It all clicked.
I understood mom's soup and the instant noodles incident.
I started avoiding everything with MSG and have scarcely had any apparently food-related headaches since: all the ones I've had over have been from eating out.
One particular series fell into a clear pattern. A new Chinese restaurant opened near where I work. I ate there on three separate occasions over the course of six months, around lunch time. Each time, I felt some discomfort in the abdomen toward the evening and headache/nausea the following morning lasting into the afternoon. Each time, exactly the same repetition.
Some eight months ago, I reproduced these effects in myself by drinking a hot water solution of something called "Better Than Bouillon". I put about a teaspoon into a mug of hot water. On one mug per day, I was okay, but if I drank three per day, I got the headaches.
The listed ingredients of this paste are: roasted beef with concentrated beef stock, salt, hydrolyzed soy protein, sugar, corn syrup solids, flavour (dried onion and garlic, spice extracts), dried whey (milk), potato flour, caramel, corn oil, xanthan gum.
Must be the dried onion? :)
I've consumed beef, salt, corn syrup, onion, garlic, spices, whey powder, caramel, corn oil in the past in much larger amounts. Xanthan gum is just a thickener; I've used it! No problems. The only thing that stands out there is the "hydrolyzed soy protein".
I get that you say onion is fine for you, but it's amazing how non-obvious and common the actual culprit could be, whatever it is in your case: I have a relative who has, through trial and error, determined that tomatoes, onions, and garlic are among his migraine triggers - but shallots are fine despite being quite similar to onions. Bodies are weird. :)
Response to EDIT: I tolerate milk products well, including cheese. I have used whey powder for supplementation (not in recent years). We're talking big quantities consumed at once. I noticed it's used in some baked goods and I tried it that way; it adds a certain milky "body" to the flavor.
