It's the Umami – Why the Truth About MSG is So Easy to Swallow • Hacker News Board

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

#81

Post by shirro » Sun, Nov 10, 2013, 1:16 AM UTC

It isn't the MSG that will kill you. MSG, sugar and salt are all naturally occurring in health food and the key is moderation and balance.

The problem is we have turned something which is harmless in moderation into a massive food business build on a model of addiction.

The thing that will make you unhealthy is highly processed food devoid of nutrition that is made entirely of starch, vegetable oil, sugar, salt and MSG that has replaced a healthy diet.

If you eat fresh fruit, vegetables and a moderate amount of meat, cooked healthfully and sprinkle a bit of seasoning on it for flavour you will likely be no worse off than consuming the healthy stuff without seasoning. Though if you use good ingredients you probably don't need the extra refined product. There are plenty of natural ingredients rich in glutamate.

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

#82

Post by refurb » Sun, Nov 10, 2013, 1:21 AM UTC

espeed wrote: post #44

dsrguru wrote: post #7

This 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 a…

It's not the sodium, it's the glutamate (the "G" in MSG). Glutamate is an excitotoxin, and it's an additive in almost all processed foods, in various forms with many different names ( http://www.truthinlabeling.org/hiddensources.html ). Excitotoxicity is the "pathological process by which nerve cells are damaged and killed by excessive stimulation by neurotransmitters such as glutamate and similar substances" ( https…

Just because something is a neurotoxin when put on cells in a petri dish, doesn't mean it's toxic to an intact, living organism.

I have seen no proof that glutamate, when ingested orally, has any excitotoxicity activity.

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

#83

Post by eropple » Sun, Nov 10, 2013, 1:22 AM UTC

beachstartup wrote: post #58

isn't it interesting that msg "syndrome" is associated with chinese food, rather than japanese, even though japanese food is also loaded down with it? hmm.

I'd venture a guess that Chinese takeout restaurants are probably more common (or have been for longer) than Japanese places.

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

#84

Post by __david__ » Sun, Nov 10, 2013, 1:27 AM UTC

amscanne wrote: post #47

hristov wrote: post #16

I really do not like these articles that say "science says not to worry, you must be a very stupid and uneducated person to be worried about this." Any honest scientist will tell you that science does not know exactly how the human body processes food and there is no model which will exactly predict the effects of the human body ingesting a certain food. Saying that the experimental results are mixed does not make me…

> I really do not like these articles that say "science says not to worry, you must be a very stupid and uneducated person to be worried about this." Any honest scientist will tell you that science does not know exactly how the human body processes food and there is no model which will exactly predict the effects of the human body ingesting a certain food. It's true that we have a very limited understanding of the hu…

> I'm certainly not discounting personal experience here. Because the body is complicated, I think that's worth more than science. But you've got to be careful about your biases.

An interesting personal anecdote about this: I used to eat that instant Ramen stuff all the time when I was in my 20s. At some point I started getting migraines and I was able to correlate the triggering of them with eating the Ramen (lots of other things triggered them, too). That led me to investigate MSG and become a little paranoid about eating things with it—I figured I might actually have some sensitivity to it.

Later I got diagnosed with hypertension and started taking pills to control that. And once I was on the medication I noticed that I wasn't getting migraines any more. At this point I'm reasonably sure that all my migraines were caused by high blood pressure. In fact, the one or two times I've gotten migraine-ish headaches (nothing ever as bad as I used to get) I've taken my blood pressure and it was high.

So now I'm thinking that the MSG wasn't causing the headaches directly, but it was raising my blood pressure. Or maybe it wasn't actually the MSG doing that, since that Ramen stuff also has a ton of salt in it.

Anyway, our bodies are complicated machines and they're all tuned a little different.

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

#85

Post by nitrogen » Sun, Nov 10, 2013, 1:28 AM UTC

refurb wrote: post #14

dsrguru wrote: post #7

This 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 a…

If you do the math, 2000 mg of MSG would give you the same amount of sodium as (2/169.11 * 58.44) 690 mg of table salt. In other words, the sodium intake from eating MSG is about 1/3 that of table salt on a per weight basis.

The OP didn't say 2000mg of MSG, they said 2000mg of glutamate. So you'd have to modify your calculation a bit to know how much MSG contains 2000mg of glutamate, and from there how much sodium that would contain.

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

#86

Post by hristov » Sun, Nov 10, 2013, 1:30 AM UTC

sjwright wrote: post #74

hristov wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you think there is a logical flaw in my argument say what it is. If you do not feel like saying what it is, then do not post. You must be very proud of yourself for composing a sentence with several big words in it, but it means absolutely nothing.

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

#87

Post by coopaq » Sun, Nov 10, 2013, 2:01 AM UTC

You know what? This generalization of what is good and bad for you - is just a generalization to find a common food product which is easily mass producible and consumable by the entire planetary populace. However, just as shirts are tailored, I believe we may be entering an age of tailored foods for 7 billion + individuals. MSG can depend on who you are, how old, what else do you eat, are you on a plane. We will get there. Quick! Somebody make an app and Hadoop it.

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

#88

Post by ars » Sun, Nov 10, 2013, 2:11 AM UTC

eropple wrote: post #80

ars wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Is volume the right way to measure this? To provide equivalent flavor you use equal volume of salt or MSG?

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

#89

Post by coldcode » Sun, Nov 10, 2013, 2:22 AM UTC

If you think MSG is fine, try eating a tablespoon of it with nothing else.

Then another time try eating a bunch of mushrooms or similar by themselves with a similar quantity.

Likely not the same feeling. Digestion and absorption of food changes with how you consume it. Eating a sweet potato or a bunch of sugar doesn't hit the bloodstream the same way.

In my teens and twenties I found I got migraine headaches after eating certain foods; with a little experimentation I found foods (all kinds, not just Chinese) containing added MSG gave me a headache within 2-4 hours. Eliminating those foods eliminated the headaches. Later in life I found I was less effected though with sufficient quantities I could still get one. It was pretty clear the only food that affected me this way had MSG in it. Most people seem not to be affected.

Personally I don't mind if people add it to foods as long as it's labeled honestly so I can choose to avoid it. No different than with peanut allergies or sodium content or trans-fats. Adding yeast extract or hydrolyzed vegetable protein (proteins broken down into amino salts including the glutamate) to foods to avoid mentioning you did it for the MSG is the only thing that bugs me. It's like saying a food is low-salt because you added Natural Ocean Water instead of salt.

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

#90

Post by TruthElixirX » Sun, Nov 10, 2013, 2:29 AM UTC

coldcode wrote: post #89

If you think MSG is fine, try eating a tablespoon of it with nothing else. Then another time try eating a bunch of mushrooms or similar by themselves with a similar quantity. Likely not the same feeling. Digestion and absorption of food changes with how you consume it. Eating a sweet potato or a bunch of sugar doesn't hit the bloodstream the same way. In my teens and twenties I found I got migraine headaches after ea…

Adequately controlling for experimental bias includes a double-blind placebo-controlled experimental design (DBPC) and the application in capsules because of the strong and unique after-taste of glutamates.[21] In a study performed by Tarasoff and Kelly (1993) 71 fasting participants were given 5 g of MSG and then administered a standard breakfast. There was only one reaction, and it was to the placebo in a self-identified MSG-sensitive individual.[18] In a different study done by Geha et al. (2000), they tested the reaction of 130 subjects who reported sensitivity to MSG. Multiple DBPC trials were performed and only subjects with at least two symptoms proceeded. Only two people out of the whole study responded in all four challenges. Because of this low prevalence, the researchers concluded that the response to MSG was not reproducible.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monosodium_glutamate#Safety