It's the Umami – Why the Truth About MSG is So Easy to Swallow
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It's the Umami – Why the Truth About MSG is So Easy to Swallow
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Re: It's the Umami – Why the Truth About MSG is So Easy to Swallow
#2Also, your body is actually better at processing MSG than salt, so supplementing your food with MSG can allow you to get good flavor with a considerable salt reduction.
Re: It's the Umami – Why the Truth About MSG is So Easy to Swallow
#3Sorry if I'm being insensitive, but how is Chinese Restaurant Syndrome "absurdly racist"? If people were having health problems as a consequence of eating corned beef, I would, as a Jew, have no problem with that condition being called "Jewish Deli Syndrome".
Re: It's the Umami – Why the Truth About MSG is So Easy to Swallow
#4I've heard that the sickness associated with MSG is more likely due to ingesting old rice.
If you want to get glutamates in your food, when cooking with meat proteins, add mushrooms, seaweed, or even a single prawn or anchovy.
Re: It's the Umami – Why the Truth About MSG is So Easy to Swallow
#5Also, your body is actually better at processing MSG than salt, so supplementing your food with MSG can allow you to get good flavor with a considerable salt reduction.
> your body is actually better at processing MSG than salt
A citation or source would be much appreciated.
Re: It's the Umami – Why the Truth About MSG is So Easy to Swallow
#6There was a long thread at metafilter about MSG fairly recently, and I found this comment from a biochemist to be a really good, straightforward primer on what exactly MSG is and how it is metabolized:
Re: It's the Umami – Why the Truth About MSG is So Easy to Swallow
#7This article is both accurate and highly misleading. The author is correct that there is very little reliable evidence that links glutamic acid and/or glutamate to health problems. The backlash against MSG as a result of the "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome" craze, was not rooted in scientific inquiry.
However, MSG is not just a source for glutamate like seaweed and tomatoes are. MSG is the sodium salt of glutamic acid and contains not just glutamate but also sodium ions. Having 2000mg of natural glutamate should be harmless. Having enough MSG to give you 2000mg of glutamate means you're getting a shit ton of sodium. That's not good for you, especially if you're one of the many people for whom excess sodium intake adversely affects your blood pressure. So while MSG is presumably no worse than NaCl (and is perhaps better in that the umami flavor means you don't have to use as much sodium to get an equally rich taste), to say that MSG is totally harmless without even mentioning sodium and hypertension is ridiculous. Even in terms of short term effects, I've had plenty of MSG-free hot and sour soups that made my head itch. Not from MSG but from thousands of mg of sodium found in their gratuitously added soy sauce and table salt.
Re: It's the Umami – Why the Truth About MSG is So Easy to Swallow
#8The MSG allergy is a myth, plain and simple. There have been plenty of scientific research studies done on the substance, and they found absolutely nothing. I don't know why this myth has persisted so long in popular culture. I compare it to people who rave about homeopathy. Any (perceived) effect is either anecdotal or placebo in nature.
What most people don't know, is that MSG occurs naturally in many foods. Beef, Chicken, Spinach, Tomatoes, etc... If you don't get an MSG allergy when you eat those foods, you don't have an MSG allergy. Source: http://zidbits.com/2010/12/is-the-msg-allergy-a-myth/
Re: It's the Umami – Why the Truth About MSG is So Easy to Swallow
#9Also, your body is actually better at processing MSG than salt, so supplementing your food with MSG can allow you to get good flavor with a considerable salt reduction.
> your body is actually better at processing MSG than salt A citation or source would be much appreciated.
Sorry about that, from the wikipedia page on MSG:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monosodium_glutamate#Safety
The oral lethal dose to 50% of subjects (LD50) is between 15 to 18 g/kg body weight in rats and mice respectively, five times greater than the LD50 of salt (3 g/kg in rats).
Which references:
Re: It's the Umami – Why the Truth About MSG is So Easy to Swallow
#10My qualm with MSG doesn't involve its health effects, but the fact that MSG makes telling the difference between good food and crap far more difficult.
If you'd like to see a demonstration of what I mean, boil a pound of dried beans, and add some MSG. I find you'll eat the otherwise unflavored, bland beans with the same mechanical compulsion as a bag of potato chips. In that way MSG spoils the sport of preparing delicious food.
That should also raise the issue of portion control and satiety in your mind. If you're reading this, I assume you're more concerned with maintaining a steady weight than tricking your body into desiring greater quantities of food. MSG'll thwart you there, and unfortunately it's usually used on foods that are already pure starch and fat rather than nutritious fare.