MSG or Monosodium Glutamate is one of the chemical compounds that create the umami or the savoury taste of our foods. While the MSG in the powder form is indeed synthetically produced in the lab, it can also occur naturally in our foods. Just like salt, sugar and acid do.
It naturally occurs in meat (especially cured one), cheese (especially the stinkier one), mushroom, and even vegetables like cabbage and tomatoes (especially if they are fermented and sun-dried, respectively). Everything savoury has MSG in it.
There is no shortage of Youtubers who dispel myths about MSG…. and in every single comment section of those videos, you can find commenters who insist MSG is bad and sneer at the idea that anti-MSG sentiment was driven by racism.
First of all, that 1968 study published in New England Journal of Medicine? It was a prank, it was intended to be an inside racial joke between certain medical professionals.
And because it was meant to be an inside joke that somehow got itself published in a prestigious medical journal, people took it very seriously….. and they still do.
When you ask those commenters to cite evidences, some of them will cite the goddamn prank paper. When they do say there are other studies, they refuse to cite any specific ones; they expect you to find them yourself.
And then, there are the anecdotes.
They claim to feel dizzy and nauseous every time they consume foods with MSG. While I do believe they have the sickness, I am skeptical about what they claim to be the cause.
It could have been the excess sodium and grease, it could have been their bodies are too sensitive to MSG (and it is more indicative of their health conditions rather the substance’s supposed harmfulness) and it could have been placebo effects.
But, no. They insist their sickness is caused by MSG, which supposedly doesn’t have any safe amount, even though there are people who can consume MSG with no issues.
They claim they have been tested. No, not by actual medical professionals, but by themselves.
Okay, if they really care about the truths, they would have asked professionals for help. They would have acknowledged their own lack of qualifications make them unreliable. For God’s sake, even seasoned researches with actual doctoral degrees need to have their works peer-reviewed!
But, nope. Those cretins insist we must take their words for granted and we have zero good reasons to not trust them. They genuinely believe their anecdotes are legitimately objective scientific data.
If you point out MSG can naturally occur in foods, they either ignore you, think the scientific fact is bullshit…… or change their goal post, claiming the synthetic MSG is the problem. When you tell them MSG powder is comparable to table salt, they refute it, asserting how table salt is actually “natural”.
Ah yes, a good case of people using the words “chemical” and “natural” haphazardly.
Oxygen – the gas we breath in to survive – is a chemical. Salt is a chemical. Water – yes, the one we need to drink to survive – is also a chemical; why do you think it has its own chemical formula, the H20?
While salt does naturally occur in nature, it is not readily available in the powder form. We have to intentionally extract it from sea water: the two methods I can think of right involve boiling the water and evaporating it in man-made salt farms.
Pharmaceutical products wouldn’t exist without researches on the chemicals within plants and fungi. Penicillin antibiotics would not exist without moulds.
Crude oil is indeed an ingredient of many of our synthetic products. But, where do you think we get it from? Nature. To put over-simplistically, it is made out of long-dead dinosaurs. Technically, crude oil and its products are “natural”.
MSG powder? It is made from fermented sugar beets and sugar canes. You know, two perfectly edible things.
And yes, fear of MSG – in the west, at least – is driven by racism. If it isn’t, then why is the so-called disease called Chinese Restaurant Syndrome? Why isn’t it MSG Syndrome or Processed Food Syndrome? Why are Chinese cuisines the only ones targeted? Why don’t western processed foods receive equal amount of vilification despite the added synthetic MSG?
I have encountered so many people who love clinging onto their proven-wrong preconceived beliefs and, I do have to say, MSG fear-mongers are among the worst.
Obviously, they are not comparable to people who demonise Muslims, Arabs, Jews, South Asians (they are often mistaken as Arabs) and Queer people. But, they are certainly comparable to anti-vaxxers and chemtrail believers.
For me, there is an actual good reason to oppose synthetic MSG: it incentivises bad cooks to stay bad.
Instead of exploring ingredients which enhance the savouriness of a dish while ensuring they compliment each other, bad cooks may simply resort to using MSG powder as their cheat code. They may end up not learning anything.
They may also overuse it, to the point where their foods having “processed” tastes.
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The Stammering Dunce 