Ever since the ’60s, MSG has been targeted by studies as being potentially hazardous to consumers. Subsequently, the ingredient was banned from both public and private kitchens. However, new studies show that all the hype has possibly been much ado about nothing.
MSG: Explained
Abbreviated for monosodium glutamate, MSG is a popular food additive found in some commonly used foods. According to Dr. Megan Meyer, the former director of science communications at the International Food Information Council Foundation, “Monosodium glutamate, or its common name of MSG, is simply sodium and glutamate, an amino acid.”
She continues, “It’s produced through a fermentation process using corn, sugars, and starch.” MSG is a form of glutamate that is combined with sodium to stabilize it so it’s shelf-stable. MSG is a sodium salt of glutamic acid, a common amino acid. MSG occurs naturally in many different types of foods, such as mushrooms, scallops, parmesan cheese, clams, and almonds. Fascinatingly, according to a 2020 report in Frontiers in Immunology, glutamate is also one of the most “abundant” amino acids in human breast milk.
The Controversy
According to fivethirtyeight.com, “the idea that MSG causes health problems may have thrived on racially charged biases from the outset. Ian Mosby, a food historian, wrote in a 2009 paper titled “That Won-Ton Soup Headache: The Chinese Restaurant Syndrome, MSG and the Making of American Food, 1968-1980” that fear of MSG in Chinese food is part of the U.S.’s long history of viewing the “exotic” cuisine of Asia as dangerous or dirty.”
This, coupled with the fact that in 1968, the New England Journal of Medicine published a letter from Dr. Robert Ho Man Kwok, in which he claimed that he experienced a “strange syndrome” after eating at Chinese restaurants.
According to Food and Wine magazine, this was later misinterpreted into hard research on monosodium glutamate’s ill effects and spun up into a 1969 hearing of the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, rebranding the ingredient as controversial and unsafe. Chinese restaurant owners began touting “NO MSG” signs in restaurant windows to ward off questions.
The fabled effects of monosodium glutamate were dubbed “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome,” despite the ingredient’s origin in Japan. This fell squarely into the contemporary white American framework of perceiving Chinese things as cheap, dirty, and dangerous, and Japanese ones as more expensive and sophisticated.
Even in the 1990s, the Food and Drug Administration commissioned a group of independent scientists to investigate whether MSG was making people sick. According to a Forbes article, they concluded it’s safe but reported that individuals who consume 3 grams or more of monosodium glutamate without food and are sensitive to the amino acid could have temporary symptoms of discomfort, such as headache, numbness, flushing, tingling, palpitations, and drowsiness.
However, ingesting that much MSG without food would be difficult. In fact, you’d have to put it in a liquid and drink it, as some research participants were asked to do. A 2023 review of available literature estimates the average intake of food with added MSG in the U.S., Europe, and the UK is 0.6 grams per day.
Conclusion
Forbes came to the conclusion, “Studies haven’t been able to reliably replicate the negative symptoms in human studies with people consuming typical amounts of MSG, but individuals who are experiencing an intolerance can work with a registered dietitian or health care provider to determine if MSG is the cause and, if so, reduce the amount in their diets”.
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