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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

#71

Post by gwern »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #66
gwern wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've heard that the sickness associated with MSG is more likely due to ingesting old rice. Yes, I remember there being a British, I think, study in 2011 or 2012 that bought samples of cooked rice from various oriental food sellers and found that some were contaminated (moist warm food left out for hours); the reasoning is that when people report sickness or allergy to the MSG that oriental food in the West is notor…

Off-topic, but in case you're not using British English, please be aware that "oriental" is largely considered pejorative and offensive.

It's funny you flag that, because that was the part I spent the most time pondering how to word. 'Japanese'? No, because it's more Chinese restaurants I think of as being the problem. 'Chinese'? Except, well, the food served there isn't a whole lot like actual Chinese food, I am given to understand, and this problem applies to anyone who uses a lot of rice, so Korean or Thai food seem like they might have problems. 'East Asian'? But is Thailand really 'East Asian'? And again, none of this stuff is particularly authentic... Ah, fuck it: 'oriental'. It even conveys correctly that this is all food as warped by Western consumers' preferences and demands and not necessarily reflective of the original countries.

Re: It's the Umami – Why the Truth About MSG is So Easy to Swallow

#72

Post by Daniel_Newby »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #66
gwern wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've heard that the sickness associated with MSG is more likely due to ingesting old rice. Yes, I remember there being a British, I think, study in 2011 or 2012 that bought samples of cooked rice from various oriental food sellers and found that some were contaminated (moist warm food left out for hours); the reasoning is that when people report sickness or allergy to the MSG that oriental food in the West is notor…

Off-topic, but in case you're not using British English, please be aware that "oriental" is largely considered pejorative and offensive.

[citation desired] I'd love to know who dislikes "oriental". And do they like or dislike "occidental"?

Re: It's the Umami – Why the Truth About MSG is So Easy to Swallow

#73

Post by itchitawa »

Brakenshire wrote: post #43
mbreese wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way your body would know or care if it was consuming a genetically modified food was if that modification produced something toxic (poisonous). Barring than that, to your body, it's all proteins, carbohydrates, fats, etc... If you are concerned about genetically modified foods, you should probably also be concerned with domesticated foods, since those have been selected by their farmers for many generations…

> you should probably also be concerned with domesticated foods, since those have been selected by their farmers for many generations to produce specific things - bigger fruits, better tasting meats This is sort of true, but also not at all. Natural selection deals with incremental changes over the course of decades, or generations. The likelihood that, for instance, Omega 3 production will spontaneously arise in a t…

In a way it's glaringly true. Most Americans will die from eating too much domesticated meat which is known to cause heart disease. If you're already overweight or have high cholesterol/etc then any undetected possible effect from additives/GM is irrelevant.

Re: It's the Umami – Why the Truth About MSG is So Easy to Swallow

#74

Post by sjwright »

hristov wrote: post #55
akiselev wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like your eyes refused to show your brain the words that you didn't want to read. "Subsequent studies, however, provided mixed results: some confirmed findings of brain lesions in animals or symptoms in humans, but other studies were unable to replicate the results. Double-blind studies often showed little correlation between MSG and adverse symptoms. Parties on both sides of the debate slung accusations at the…

I very clearly mentioned in my original comment that there are other studies that show no effects. My point was and still is that if there are some studies that show negative effects and some studies that show no negative effects, the latter do not (for me at least) cancel out the former. It is entirely possible that there are negative effects that are not picked up by some studies. The fact that the FDA believes tha…

Your attempt at a rationalization is logically flawed to the point of embarrassment.

Re: It's the Umami – Why the Truth About MSG is So Easy to Swallow

#75

Post by ars »

jonknee wrote: post #45

I use MSG in cooking and it's a great way to lower salt while dramatically increasing flavor. It doesn't make bad food magically good, but it makes good food great. Especially good in soups and stews. I bought a bulk container in the ethnic food aisle of a grocery and it has lasted a couple of years and is now just about gone. It's amazing how much a little pinch goes. Amazon has a 1LB bag available for $6.50 and is…

> I use MSG in cooking and it's a great way to lower salt

It might lower salt a bit, but it's hardly a great way, the S stands for sodium, which is exactly what you want to avoid. Perhaps the trade off is worth it if you can use less, but you need to calculate it carefully.

Re: It's the Umami – Why the Truth About MSG is So Easy to Swallow

#76

Post by ars »

ricardobeat wrote: post #52
Aloisius wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh. I actually have an MSG sensitivity which took me forever to figure out what it was. For decades I'd occasionally be eating in a restaurant and my lips, tongue and/or back of my throat would go numb. It wasn't until I bought MSG and started putting it on pretty much everything in larger doses that I realized it was the culprit. I can reproduce it pretty easily by simply putting nothing but MSG on my tongue. It tak…

It is said that the human body itself produces up to 50g of glutamate every day ; an allergy to it should result in much more terrible effects than superficial numbness. Someone already posted a longer explanation: http://www.metafilter.com/131105/Dorito-Powder#5147903

> produces up to 50g of glutamate every day

But not as free glutamic acid, and that makes a HUGE difference.

Re: It's the Umami – Why the Truth About MSG is So Easy to Swallow

#77

Post by 21echoes »

Camillo wrote: post #65

I still think "umami" looks out of place next to the other basic taste words. All the others come in adjective/noun pairs: sweet/sweetness, salty/saltiness, etc. Where's the adjective for "umami"? "Umami" again? "Umami-tasting"? It doesn't work well (and importing the Japanese adjective "umai" would make things worse, not better). Instead, I highly prefer the adjective sapid with its corresponding noun sapidity. Swee…

probably because it's a japanese word and the rest are english?

Re: It's the Umami – Why the Truth About MSG is So Easy to Swallow

#78

Post by sjwright »

bookface wrote: post #3

Sorry 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".

I completely agree with the OP; there's no reason to suggest there is anything racist about the label Chinese Restaurant Syndrome. It appears a few people have been hyper-sensitized to a bad definition of racism.

Re: It's the Umami – Why the Truth About MSG is So Easy to Swallow

#79

Post by sjwright »

jules wrote: post #38
etler wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10736380

This is only one half of the story. To make an apples-to-apples comparison you also have to consider how much you need for the same effect on taste. Hypothetically, if you need 10 times as much glutamate as salt to achieve an equally tasty food, then salt would be a better option. Also LD50 only takes into account short term effects. This is the same story with aspartame vs sugar. Aspartame has an LD50 of around 5 g/…

> sugar 29.7 g/kg

So if I ate 2.6 kg of sugar in one sitting, I have a 50 percent chance of dying as a result? Mmmm, could be worth it.

Re: It's the Umami – Why the Truth About MSG is So Easy to Swallow

#80

Post by eropple »

ars wrote: post #75
jonknee wrote: post #45

I use MSG in cooking and it's a great way to lower salt while dramatically increasing flavor. It doesn't make bad food magically good, but it makes good food great. Especially good in soups and stews. I bought a bulk container in the ethnic food aisle of a grocery and it has lasted a couple of years and is now just about gone. It's amazing how much a little pinch goes. Amazon has a 1LB bag available for $6.50 and is…

> I use MSG in cooking and it's a great way to lower salt It might lower salt a bit, but it's hardly a great way, the S stands for sodium, which is exactly what you want to avoid. Perhaps the trade off is worth it if you can use less, but you need to calculate it carefully.

MSG has something like a third of the sodium content of an equivalent volume of salt.
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