From the Vault: A Taste of MSG

In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert Lamb and Joe McCormick explore the history and science of MSG and explore just why we demonized it for so long. (Originally published Aug. 30, 2016) 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Vault time.
It is Saturday. We're going to venture into the vault
for a classic episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind
from August about food additives. Yeah, this is the one
where we talked about MSG and the degree to which
it's been demonized as some sort of you know, nefarious

(00:27):
foreign um substance that's added to food when when really
it's far more mundane than that. As far as I
can recall, this is the only time I have ever
eaten on Mike, so uh, please be be ready to
get grossed out when you hear our chewing sounds. We
sampled some MSG in this episode, and in fact, the

(00:47):
MSG just took a bite out of a big old
hunk of it. Well, the shaker is still in the office.
I actually used it yesterday on some microwave lasagna. Was good. Yeah,
of course, it enhanced the flavor nice. So all right,
if you've listened to this episode before, then prepared to
experience it again. If not, be prepared to have what
you think you know about MSG completely turned on its head.

(01:12):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick and Robert.
What if I told you that a silent killer worse

(01:33):
than alcohol, nicotine, and drugs is likely lurking in your
kitchen cabinets and even your child's school cafeteria. Oh man,
that's that's rough, because silent killers are the worst killers.
I fire prefer the loud ones, so I know they're coming.
And of those substances that you mentioned, only some of
those are my favorites. So um yeah, I'm I'm I'm

(01:56):
instantly concerned. I'm going to start looking around in my
cabinets and trying to figure out where this nefarious force
is hiding. Now, lest I be accused of plagiarism, I
should give attribution. That is a quote from an article
on a on an alternative miss and website called Mercola
that is about MSG, the food additive MSG. You've often

(02:17):
heard of it associated with Chinese food. Probably it's monosodium glutamate,
and that's what we're gonna be talking about today. But
we wanted to start with some of the scare tactics,
because you had to hear it right here that MSG
is quote worse than drugs, worse than drugs. I love
that the blandness of that statement. Worse than all drugs,

(02:38):
worse than drugs, but but truly better than some drugs.
And then also, are we just talking about what drugs right?
The drugs that take our pain away or the drugs
that that ruin us? I mean, it's there. There's so
many different interpretations of that statement. Quick side note, Robert,
what's your favorite fictional drug from a movie or book? Oh?
You know, I have to go with the spice. But
I also like Samuda, which is the drug that they

(03:02):
that some individuals in the Dune universe take and then
they listen to some sort of weird music Simuda music
that can only really be processed while you're taking this
particular drug. Well, MSG is worse than that too, because
what does it do? I don't know, it does a
lot of stuff. Apparently, if you listen to to everyone
who has ever complained about MSG, it has ever proposed,

(03:24):
and you know, a negative symptom of taking MSG, then
it sounds like just the worst thing imaginable. Okay, So Robert,
tell me your MSG story. How did you become acquainted
with this killer? The silent killer chemical? All right, So
growing up I was I don't remember ever being privy
to any direct anti MSG messaging. Like, nobody had me

(03:46):
watch a video, nobody made me read a paper about it.
It was just this thing that you just heard. Oh well,
MSG is to be avoided. You go to the local
Chinese restaurant and your small American town, there's likely to
be a no MSG sign there on the wall, just
to let you know before you even think about coming
in the door that there is going to be no MSG.

(04:08):
And I and not even knowing what it was, I
just kind of had in my mind that it was
some sort of some sort of chemical, some sort of
cheating substance that allowed the the individuals that are making
the food to to trick you into enjoying something. It's
the anabolic steroids of food, the doping of food. But
as we're gonna discussing this episode, there's there's virtually nothing

(04:31):
to any of this. Uh, this fear of moongering, decades
worth of fear mongering that still refuses to completely go away. Yeah,
I think we will in the end. Probably be able
to speculate a good bit on where a lot of
this fear comes from. But I encountered it to when
I was growing up. So I remember one of my
favorite restaurants when I was a kid was this little
brick storefront Chinese restaurant in Chattanooga, Tennessee called China Lee.

(04:55):
I love going there. They made some delicious seguan beef.
I don't know if i'd still think it was good
if I went there today. I don't know if they're
still open. But at the time, I loved it, and
I would go there and I would you know, I
was a kid, but if you had this experience at
Chinese restaurants when you were a little where you just
like eat to the point of pain and then you'd
keep going. But I also remember this slight psychological taint

(05:19):
to the experience because I would hear adults talking about
Chinese food and MSG. There was this clear link in
my mind that I had overheard from adult conversation and
I didn't really understand it. But what I generally did
get was that MSG was some sort of dangerous chemical
and it was all in Chinese food. But if it

(05:40):
was so dangerous, why do we eat it? Why did
my parents take me? Yeah? And then the other side
of it too for me, is that, Okay, it's something
that they're using to cheat you into into the they're cheating,
they're making the food taste better than it is. But
the same thing can be said of pretty much every
food additive that has ever been. Every spice in your
cabinet is a way to cheat and make food taste better. Yes,

(06:03):
that's what that's salt, pepper, everything else like that. Just
the act of the art of cooking is, Hey, how
can we make this particular slab of protein, this particular
heap of vegetables, how can we make this biomass, uh,
you know, taste better and and be more digestible for
the human body. Yeah, But of course I don't know.
I got this message somehow. So when I was a kid,

(06:24):
I do remember one instance where a friend of mine
was sick. He was like laid out on the couch
for a couple of days, and I remember it was
attributed to the msg content of some Chinese food he'd
eaten the day before. I don't know where that idea
came from. I don't know if their doctor told them
that or if that's just what a parent concluded. But yeah,

(06:45):
that's what they said. And then later I think I
softened a little bit on MSG, but in a in
another disgusting way, because the next time I remember encountering
it in my life, I was in college and a
friend and roommate of mine at the time time was
teaching me how to make a recipe for this dip
that came from his family. I think his grandmother had
made it or something. All the recipes you learned in

(07:07):
college tend to be going to be a little suspect.
I wouldn't judge this friend of mine by this dip.
But the dip in my memory is a little gross.
So it had Philadelphia cream cheese, chopped up sandwich meat
which I believe was Buddig beef, and then sliced green onions,
and the fourth ingredient was a container of shakon seasoning

(07:29):
called accent. And I was like, what is this? I
think I might have seen this in my grandmother's kitchen cabinet,
but otherwise I didn't know what it was. And it
said wakes up food flavor. Well, that sounds good. You
don't want your food to be asleep, So I looked
at the ingredients, and the primary ingredient are actually the
one ingredient in this food flavor alarm clock was monosodium

(07:50):
glutamate in MSG, the stuff that had supposedly laid out
my childhood friend with a body leveling illness, and the
stuff that that I always heard these creepy rumors about. Yeah,
you actually brought in a little container of accent. And
one of the things I love about it is that
first of all, there's there's no mention of MSG. Uh Um.

(08:11):
Monosodium glutamate is mentioned once on the back, and presumably
they don't have to say contains MSG because it is
pure MSG. You know, they save on the printing for
this thing because they don't have to print ingredients every time.
It just says ingredient and ends of the t pull
and monosodium glutamate. But they it's really an attempt to
rebrand it right accent instead of MSG, because MSG sounds

(08:33):
I mean, it's it's the letters are tainted for us
because of these just decades of negative connotations, which we'll
get into. And I would say it's also by the
general problem of chemophobia, people being afraid of chemical names
of things, which will get to in the end, and
I think we should end by number one having an
accent or monosodium glutamate if you want to avoid the branding,

(08:57):
taste tests on Mike and then see see if anything
horrible happens to us. And then also we should suggest
some rebranding. Yes, so as as we're going start thinking
of new names for MSG. Ways we can we can
reclaim this chemical for our tasting pleasure. Right, so we
should go back and tell the story of MSG, Like

(09:19):
where did this food additive come from? Yeah, let's do it.
Let's get to the origin story here. Mono sodium glutamate.
This chemical was discovered by Japanese chemist Kika Akada back
in nineteen o seven. So he was investigating flavoring and asparagus,
tomatoes and especially uh dashy seaweed soup that has a

(09:43):
strong umami flavor that that pleasant savory taste. Yeah, we're
much more familiar with you, mommy these days. We hear
about it all the time in in cooking shows and
stuff like that. Now. I think decades back, people were
way less familiar with the concept of ou mommy exactly
what it was. But ou mommy, what is it? It's
that deeply savory, meaty flavor. It's not the same as

(10:06):
something being salty, but it's it's that kind of deep
flavor that you get from cheeses and meats and tomatoes.
It's there in anchovies, you know what I mean. Yeah, yeah,
it's almost There's some wonderful descriptions out there for huma umami,
and umami is such a wonderful one word description is
just rolling off your tongue once you've tasted it. Uh,

(10:28):
to just go perfectly together. Uh, but yeah, you kind
of have to have tasted you mommy, and most of
us have to really appreciate it. So Japanese cuisine obviously
had this concept of ou, mommy, they know what this
delicious savory flavor is. But what a Kato was able
to do was to pinpoint the chemical cause of this flavor,
which was this substance that we now know as glutamate

(10:51):
yes um. In particular, he pinpoint pinpointed glutamic acid. So
this isn't a meano acid non essential because the human
body and various plants and animals can produce it on
their own and in the body gluten Glutamic acid is
often found as Glutamate one of the most abundant neurotransmitters

(11:14):
in the body, and it plays an important role in
memory and learning, and according to the FDA, you can
probably consume thirteen grams of it of it a day
in the protein in your food. Right, So glutamate is
already there in your diet almost definitely you're eating foods
with glutamate in them. Yeah, if you're having tomatoes glutamate,
If you haven't parmesan cheese, glutamate um, and certainly if
you're having some of the more processed food items out there,

(11:36):
various potato chips, etcetera, you having glutamate. Glutamate is just
part of eating as humans. Yeah, so there's no there's
no magic going on, right that this is just a
standard dietary chemical and as such we do have receptors
that are sort of programmed to taste it. Yeah. All
that Ikeda did here is he took that naturally occurring

(11:58):
glutamate and he solved the problem of then, well, how
do I how do I synthesize it, how do I
mass produce it? How can I get this in a
form that's stable to the consumer. And basically what he
did here is. He figured out he could synthesize the
molecule by first extracting the glutamate from seaweed and then
mixing it with water and just common table salt to

(12:21):
stabilize the compound. Thus, mono sodium glutamate m s G.
It's born, it's table salt, and it's glutamate. Yeah, we
really can't drive drive that home enough that there's there's
no like extreme chemical um process here. There's no weird
magical ritual involved. This is just salt and glutamate that

(12:44):
come together into a stable form. So I have to
tell you that I don't know where I encountered this idea,
but years ago, what I heard about the way MSG
works in your mouth is that it literally quote tears
holes in your tongue to make you taste things more intensely.

(13:05):
I can't remember where I came across this, and I
know I passed on this piece of false information to
people plenty of time, like it tears a hole in
the fabric of our reality and then demon taste from
another universe comming. I never heard anything quite that extreme,
but I do remember hearing that it like opens up
the taste buds with the with the emphasis being that
it's doing so in an un natural way. In it

(13:26):
almost like a drug induced way, right. It would be
fascinating to find out where these rumors started about its
its mechanism of action. But anyway, so it went on
to become a popular commercial food additive. It wasn't just
anymore people putting glutamate rich foods into their foods to
season it. Like you could put parmesan cheese or or

(13:48):
seaweed or something like that into your food to boost
the glutamate content. Or you could just isolate monosodium glutamate
and add that to increase the zumami flavor without adding
the other ingredients. I mean basically, especially now with with
your mom a, I feel like it's been very much
a favorite keyword among foodies over the past decade, uh

(14:10):
you know, and maybe longer. But there are plenty of
ways to to glued up your food to get that
glue to mate in there without MSG. MSG is just
kind of a a quick and easy way to do it.
Um So, this this quick and easy way is rolled
out by the Japanese company h a Geno motto and
it it's you have this instant crystalline powder. That's uh,

(14:34):
that's ready to just sprinkle on your food, and it's
an instant hit. Of course, Uh. They they patented it
in nineteen o nine, and today the form that you
encounter tends to be made from beats and corn. It's
known as MSG in the States, but a Keita's name
still sticks elsewhere in the world. A geno moto or

(14:54):
essence of taste. You can still buy with under that
name at various you know, an anywhere you buy, you know,
your local Asian market should have it, uh with that title.
And I should also point out that that Akito was
like he was tremendously successful with this, It was apparently
fabulously wealthy uh in the early twentie century. Japan died

(15:16):
in the nineteen thirties, but this was his He really
hit it out of the park with this fabulous flavor enhancer.
So what could possibly go wrong? What could what could
possibly stop this juggernaut of taste from just taking over
the world. Well we will answer that question right after
we get back from this break and we're back. So

(15:43):
Robert MSG glutamate big flavor success story in the history
of of food flavoring and additives. Yes, big big flavor
success story as a huge age, absolutely huge it. Yeah,
it it is immediately a hit just throughout Asia. Allows
that allows people to get of a meaty taste to
non meaty dishes. I've read that it was especially a

(16:04):
popular among Buddhists abstaining from meat during periodic absence periods
various meat related fasts and uh in America too and
in Canada. Elsewhere in the world it really gains popularity.
I mean, you especially have to look back to World

(16:24):
War two era post and pre war America to see
just how ready we were for a flavor enhancer like this.
On one hand, you had you had the military industrial
complex here all right. You had the US military needing
to to boost the flavor and otherwise dull soldier rations.
So they turned to MSG easy way just to enhance

(16:46):
some some limited food options there, easier than adding bacon
to everything, right, and then industrialization of of all that food.
It comes home with them after the war into the
American household. But even before World War Two, we were
essentially priming ourselves for such an advancement through the home
economics philosophy. So there was recently a wonderful um interview

(17:10):
on NPRS Fresh Air uh with Terry Gross married culinary
historians Jane Ziegelman and Andy co appeared to promote their
book A Square Meal, the Culinary History of the Great Depression,
which it's a great, great interview, definitely check it out. Um.
But they point out that the home economists of the
age that they were not really into flavor. They were

(17:32):
they were saying, all right, you needed, you need to
be fed, you need to be healthy. Uh, you have
limited means of pulling that off. Here are some strategies
to do it. You can worry about spice when when
when things are going a little better for you. So
they pushed pushed American science based ways to get the
best out of available food rations, often in bizarre dishes, uh,

(17:54):
such as the one that they discussed on in the
interview as being quote wrong in every possible way, was
a recipe that featured canned corn, beef, plain gelatine, can pies, vinegar,
and lemon juice. Oh boy, so so oh man. These
these old recipes you see from like magazines from the

(18:16):
World War two era where it's like, yeah, poor candle
lima beans and spam together there. But but you can
see where it's like they're engineering a meal. It's an
engineering approach to the American meal. And so MSG is
is perfect for that crystals that you sprinkle on there. Yeah,
it's modernism brought to food. Yeah. And it was apparently

(18:36):
when it was first marketed, uh, to the American housewife,
it was in this slender little bottle, you know, full
of the flavor crystals. It seemed like the future had
arrived in the form of this, uh, this wonderful enhancer UM.
And here's another important little little fact that Ziegelman and co.
Point out. Though the home economist of the day, who

(18:58):
were creating all these strange rests a piece to make
the best out of the available rations they could have,
they could have found a lot of great, healthy and
flavorful ways to get the most out of those rations
if they turned to America's immigrant communities. But of course,
for a number of reasons, including implicit or even overt
racial bias or xenophobia, they didn't do it. And I'm

(19:20):
not just talking about um, you know, certainly Asian immigrants,
but even like Italian immigrants, Um, they they had they
had various tactics to to make the best out of
the available rations so with the with Italian immigrants, of course,
you know, depending up more on pasta. One of the
examples they point out is is using dandelion greens. That

(19:43):
Italian immigrants carried that tradition with them, and that would
have been a wonderful, uh, a wonderful tactic to to
educate the American public about, but they didn't. Instead, it's
more like gelatine and meat. So yeah, well, us who
live in big cities in America today, we're just so
used to international cuisine. I think it's a thing that's
become thoroughly part of American culture to have a Chinese restaurant,

(20:07):
a Mexican restaurant, a Thai restaurant in an Italian restaurant
and all that, and it can be kind of hard
for us to imagine what it was like firm, I
don't know, maybe a lot of Midwesterners or something like that,
to to see these strange foods from exotic lands. Yeah, well,
I feel like we can all um. In many cases,
we can. We can look to older members of our family, particularly,

(20:30):
I remember, I think there are stories of this with
uh grandparents on my on both my side and my
wife's side of the family. Both of them had very
similar stories about going to an ethnic restaurant. Uh. In
my own grandfather's case, it was a Mexican restaurant, and
I didn't want to try any of the more exotic food.

(20:53):
They're ordered an American hamburger and complain for the rest
of his life that they served him at quote a
hot hamburger. It was a harrowing experience. But but I
feel like this is kind of a universal experience among
of among a lot of older Americans and now in
many cases deceased Americans, where suddenly there were all these

(21:16):
these more flavorful options, these exotic options, these new options,
and you know, it's only natural to approach those, uh,
those new flavors with a certain amount of skepticism, to
say nothing of you know, your your your own taste,
your own palate, being less inclined to enjoy those that
new Baraga flavors. But of course, as we have warned

(21:39):
you at the end of this great MSG success story,
did come some backlash. Yeah, and when we say success story,
we're not just talking about other Chinese restaurants. But it's
in it's being used in everything, it's in, it's in
children's cereals, soup, it's in soup, It's just all over
the place. It's just a become a standard part of
the industrialization of food. But also it's like just just

(22:01):
cooking in your kitchen. And then we enter a period
in the in the early sixties where people began to
uh to to question some of the chemicals in their food. Uh.
There's a big book that came out in sixty two
by Rachel Carson titled Silent Spring that kicked off a
lot of a great deal of backlash just against chemicals

(22:23):
and cooking in general. I mean, I don't think i'd
try to blame Rachel Carson for irrational chemophobia. Indirectly, it
might have had this unintended influence. It starts this, It
starts as narrative in many people's minds. It forces us
to to to to ask some good, some important questions
about how our foods coming together and where it's coming from.

(22:45):
But but as we all know, a little information, uh
can can sometimes be just enough to spin off some
of some paranoia. Okay, Robert, where did this narrative of
Chinese restaurants syndrome come from? Well, it's everyone seems to
trace it back to one particular letter published in the

(23:06):
New England Journal of Medicine in nineteen all right, and
uh it's it's actually written by a Chinese American doctor
by the name of Robert home Man Quawk. And he
claimed that twenty minutes after eating at a Northern Chinese
food restaurant. So we're talking, you know, strong flavoring, seasoning,
wheat flour, as opposed to as opposed to, you know,

(23:29):
more of the spicy punch of Central Chinese cooking, or
or any of the other various culinary traditions to be
found in China. I think a Northern Chinese cooking is
less rice centric, right, it has more like wheat noodles
and things like that. Yeah, yeah, rice South, know, wheat North.
So he's saying, all right, eight at this North Chinese
food restaurant, and that resulted in quote numbness at the

(23:51):
back of the neck, gradually radiating to both arms and
the back, general weakness and palpitation. Okay, so he ate
a big meal. That's the that's the thing, and that's
the That's one of the questions that keeps coming up
for me as I read any of these accounts, is like,
who among us has not eaten restaurant food, and in
many cases eating far more restaurant food than we should

(24:13):
have and paid a price. Yeah. You you gorge yourself
on some salty delights and then you felt kind of
bad afterwards. Yeah. Yeah, Oh it was salty and it
was rich and it was I mean, yeah, I mean,
we we all have those stories. It's a little much
to start looking around for the one secret ingredient that
caused it. Now, in uh, in Robert holmen Quo's letter,

(24:36):
he's had a couple of theories. He said, Well, maybe
it's a certain cooking line that they're using. Maybe it's
just that high sodium content, which certainly would not be
unheard of in North Chinese cooking. Or perhaps it's that MSG.
Now not everyone bought this right away, as as Ian
Moseby points out in his his his excellent paper that

(24:59):
Wanton sup Headache for Chinese Restaurant Syndrome MSG and the
Making of American Food. Uh. There was actually one reader
who wrote in and congratulated the journal for fooling its
readers and suggested that the real author of the letter
was surely one Dr hu Man croc As. Then I guess,
like a croc of of uh. I guess that's a

(25:20):
play on Homeman quak homan quak. Yeah, but instead of like, yeah,
it's it's not a great joke. I'm not putting it
out as a great joke. But certainly here's an example
of someone saying, hey, this is this sounds like malarkey, Um,
why did you even print this letter? Well, even if
this guy was correct, that's no need to make fun
of somebody's name exactly. Yeah. Um. But the thing is,

(25:42):
this is not the only person who wrote back in.
Others wrote in with shared experiences, though not all about
Chinese or even Japanese cuisine. There were even some who
wrote in about kosher Deli's where they were having this
this experience. So almost immediately there's this just this sense
of of other there's a sense of xenophobia in the equation. Now, Robert,

(26:03):
I have a hypothesis that I think maybe we should
I don't know if we were tricky enough to test this,
but sometime we should try out something like this. Just
say like, hey, have you ever noticed after you and
then name some common but not all too common phenomenon,
like you ever notice how after you eat uh lamb

(26:24):
or you know something like that. I guess I thought
of that because your name, uh you you have this
strange feeling. We will get people writing in saying like, oh, yeah,
I've had that before. Whatever it is, I'm pretty sure
we'll get it. Like I anytime I drink a lot
of fizzy water, I feel like I am going to
float up towards the ceiling and uh, you know, and

(26:45):
grind up in a fan. Have you ever noticed that
every time you drink one of those energy drinks that
has taurine in it, you start to see over the
dunes of time. Yeah? Yeah, I mean if enough people
just sort of raised the question, then we we begin
to to define the answer on our own recollection. And
I'd say, yeah, that's happened to me. I did feel
a little weird after that last big meal I ate

(27:06):
at that Chinese restaurant. But that's one level, right, just
a bunch of people talking about it and saying, hey,
did that did you? Did you feel weird after you
had general sauce chicken, which they wouldn't have at this point,
I don't think, uh is it had not quite been
infitted yet if I'm remembering the timeline correctly. But But
what complicates things is that science then enters the scenario

(27:27):
as well it should, right, I mean, science enters the
scenario to answer questions, to get to the bottom of what,
if anything, is going on here? Right, So it looks
like we needed to to have some some studies, some
organized scientific investigation of whether MSG is really causing people's
eyes to fall out and they're to bleed from the
ears and their arms to leap out of their sockets. Well,

(27:51):
I mean, you're you're exaggerating, but not but not too much. Um. Yeah,
So that basically the whole episode here gains legitimacy when
nero neurologist Robert Bick and pharmacologist Herbert H. Schomberg at
Albert Einstein College of Medicine published an article in Science
on February nineteen sixty nine. In this experiment, they administered

(28:14):
MSG orally and intravenously to test subjects and then concluded
that MSG could produce the Chinese restaurants syndrome in typical
recipe dosages. So that's essentially the big first scientific shot
fired here where suddenly there's a study that seems to
back up what everyone is feeling and reporting about their

(28:39):
there's their symptoms following consuming Chinese food. Wait a minute,
you said administered MSG orally and intravenously. Yeah, how many
foods can you think of that are fine when you
eat them and meet them all the time, But if
you were to administer them intravenous lee would be a
big problem. Yeah, exactly. It's not hooked me up to

(29:02):
the soy sauce ivan indeed. And that's uh, that's that's
one of the problems that continues to to to to
raise its head throughout the scientific investigation of MSG is
like what kind of dosages are we talking about? And
then how is it being consumed? Is it being consumed
at an empty stomach? Is it because it's on food
you wouldn't like really be taking just straight MSG? And

(29:25):
then on top of that, are you shooting up with
MSG something that nobody nobody is doing it. It's not
on the menu at any restaurant, I guarantee. I guess
they're trying to, I don't know, anticipate the scenario where
somebody accidentally stabs himself with a fork and then an
MSG container spills into the wound, and well, and there's

(29:46):
there's also a larger problem here, and that is as
as they laid out, MSG was widely used in Asian cooking,
but it was also all over the U S food industry.
So where we're why were there not widespread accounts of
these symptoms um popping up because someone had a bowl
of soup? Why are there not cases all over Asia
where the stuff had already had like a had a

(30:07):
couple of decades head start, right, body, you know, why
why didn't Why didn't everybody in China? Why did everyone
in Japan suffer these symptoms when they were eating food
with MSG in it? And why not the foods naturally
containing glutamate? Yeah? And is is that? Ian Moseby pointed
out in that article. As early as nineteen nine, fifty

(30:28):
eight million pounds of MSG were being produced per year
in the United States. So it's in every It's in breakfast, cereal,
TV dinners, frozen vegetables, condiments, baby food, can soup, it's
it's everywhere, and nobody's talking about it except in reference
to Chinese restaurants and occasionally kosher delis. Well, it sounds

(30:49):
at that point like some cultural concerns might be as
strongly motivating this this worry as any scientific or health concerns.
Oh yeah, And of course their studies also came out
pretty early to sort of spend this uh further out
of control. In May nine, psychiatrist John W. Only published

(31:11):
a study in Science that saw large doses of MSG
and injected into mice, which subsequently suffered a host of
distressing symptoms. Yeah. I bet they did. Yeah, And he
specifically raised the question of MSG and human pregnancy, and
by July only Bick and Schaumberg to Schomberger, the two

(31:31):
gentleman from the previous study. They joined up with the
consumer advocate and future presidential candidate Ralph Nader to urge
a Senate committee to ban the use of MSG in
baby foods, and they got a number of companies to
drop MSG that way, but the National Research Council ruled
that it was fit for human consumption, but not necessarily
by infants. Yeah, so we want to emphasize that, as

(31:54):
I've read in multiple critiques, a lot of these early
studies of MSG were just plagued with flawed method knowledge.
So I've seen claims that they, of course that there's
the problem of injecting it intravenously in huge quantities into
mice and then saying like this seems like what would
happen if you ate some with you. I've seen some
reviews that also claimed that early studies were just not

(32:16):
properly blinded. You tell people like, hey, we're gonna give
you some of this creepy chemical called MSG. Tell me
how you feel after you eat it? Yeah, and and
plus you know, just think again, think of your your
spice rack, your spice cabinet, virtually anything in there. If
you're taking a high enough dosage, you're gonna hurt yourself.
I mean nutmeg for instance. Cinnamon challenge. Yeah, cinnamon challenge

(32:38):
is another one. Like these are both substances where if
you take the right amount, then it's either that it's
just tasty, maybe it's even has some slight beneficial qualities,
but if you take a lot of it, you're gonna
make yourself sick. In the case of nutmeg, you might
have like the worst high of your life. Do not
try it, really the worst, one of the worst, Like

(32:59):
all the ounce I've read of nutmeg induced um uh,
you know, psychological effects. They it's it's dreadful, it's not
worth worth trying. But it's been pointed out so when
they say MSG is worse than drugs, is it worse
than nutmeg? I can't see that it would be. I mean,
I don't know that. Basically, bottom line, you take you

(33:21):
take too much salt, you're gonna hurt yourself. You drink
too much water, you're gonna hurt yourself. And certainly if
you take too too much monosodium glutamate you are probably
gonna hurt yourself. But it comes down to the question, though,
how are typical amounts of MSG impacting people? Well, this
does bring me to a question that I was curious about,

(33:41):
not necessarily about the long term effects or or the
supposed Chinese restaurants in Rome, but I was like, what's
the acute toxicity of this stuff? Surely it's food additive,
this has to have been studied. Uh. So acute toxicity
is expressed in terms of LD fifty. You know, what's
the dosage per body weight that kills fifty of lab

(34:02):
animals that take it? Uh? And so I looked that
up and there there is, indeed a study on the
acute toxicity of MSG from called Monosodium glutamate Toxic effects
and their implications for human intake. A review and I
just want to read quote. According to a joint inquiry
by the Governments of Australia New Zealand in two thousand three,

(34:23):
a typical Chinese restaurant meal contains between ten and fifteen
hundred milligrams of MSG per one grams. I guess that's
the hundred grams of serving. The oral dose that is
lethal to fifty percent of subjects l l D fifty
and rats and mice is fifteen thousand to eighteen thousand
milligrams per kilogram of body weight. That's fifteen to eighteen

(34:47):
grams of this stuff for every kilogram of your body.
By comparison, salt, you know, table salt sodium chloride has
an l D fifty of three thousand milligrams per kilo
a body weight, So as far as acute poisoning goes,
the LD fifty of MSG is more than five times
greater than that of regular table salt. You can kill

(35:09):
yourself with a fifth as much salt, and at this rate.
I did a little math. I hope my math is
right here. If it is a one hundred and sixty
pound or seventy two point five kim adult, h would
have to eat at least one thousand, eighty eight grams
or about two point four pounds of MSG to attain
lethal toxicity. Okay, so that's a lot of accent. Yeah,

(35:34):
that's that is a lot of av accent, certainly. I mean,
how how much is in the continuity you brought in here?
Let's see this is two ounces or fifty six grams,
six grams to one thousand and eighty I mean, you'd
be eating a lot of these, alright. So there's a

(35:57):
lot of back and forth. It takes place after these
initial old studies. Dozens of studies come out in the
nineties seventies, some confirm, some contest on these findings. The
harshest critics accused him of fearmongering and exaggerating his findings. Uh.
And you also see a split overall, with some studies
looking at supposed long term consequences of MSG, others looking

(36:19):
at for short term uh CRS symptoms. All over the
studies were inconclusive. And uh, A strong vein, if it's
not a hardie obvious of strong vein of xenophobia runs
through all of this. Um and any and mostly does
a great job pointing this out in his article, which
i'll link to on the landing page for this episode.
UH says that, you know, the notion here that MSG

(36:43):
is is so harmful doesn't really resonate as much um
in Canada, UH, and certainly not outside of Chinese restaurants
in the in the United States. And you see this
tangent that runs through some of the studies, some of
the critics who are saying, well that the Chinese are
just miss using it, Chinese Americans, Chinese immigrants are misusing MSG. Yeah,

(37:06):
if the Campbell's company wants to put a little MSG
in the soups, I'm sure they're doing responsibly. But I mean,
those Chinese restaurants, they can't be trusted. Yeah, clearly they're
they're tricking us into loving their food so much by
using a reckless amount of this this this additive so
I mean, which is just completely nuts. Um. You know,
I forget the fact that cases of of any kind

(37:28):
of like CRS were virtually unknown in China and Japan. Uh.
No Chinese cooking was somehow excessive or bizarre. Both of
those UH descriptive terms were thrown out in some of
these these papers, enough to make ms G seem like
a problem. Along with the idea that the MSG was
used in these establishments to perhaps conceal inferior food. That's

(37:52):
another labo is that, oh, well they're they're they're cooking
bad food. And I think I got that mean when
I was a kid. These Chinese restaurants they use cheap
and greedy ins and people put MSG on it in
order to trick you into thinking it's good. Yeah. Plus,
just to give you an idea just how varied the
the symptoms of Chinese restaurant syndrome become. Again, they kind

(38:13):
of run the gamut of anything you might complain of
after a meal at a restaurant. Um, it was, you know,
just depended on who was reporting the symptoms. According to
to Mosby is the paper, they range from you know,
mild headache to depression to sexual arousal and quote an
irresistible urge to undress. Now that may have been a

(38:37):
misinterpretation of people unbuckling their belts after taking a large
meal at a Chinese food restaurant. Yeah, if you eat
an enormous plate of general sauce chicken. Once it became
established in the nineteen seventies as the the the American
vary with the with the emphasis on American Chinese dish. Uh. Yeah,
you might have to undress a little bit to make

(38:58):
it home, You may sweat a little bit. You may
in some cases feel a little ashamed, as I have
at times for eating a dish uh so inauthentic at
a restaurant that has more authentic dishes available. Uh. I'm
sure they don't judge, you know, they're just they're just
happy that I'm there. I'm sure, but but but but still,

(39:19):
they're just just to drive from the fact that just
about anything you might experience after a meal was thrown
at this just sort of elusive amorphic idea of Chinese
restaurant syndrome. So to this day, studies continue to be
inconclusive regarding the the the additive health effects here. Um,

(39:43):
there's a passionate debate on either side of the issue,
and that's true. I mean, food is one of those
things that gets people really animated, especially online. I just
noticed people have incredibly intense opinions about food and food additives,
maybe even as much is their political opinions. Oh yeah,
and it doesn't help either that, you know, the scientific

(40:05):
studies continue to look into the the benefits, the pros
and cons of everything from wine to coffee, to salt
to various you know, various types of calories. I mean
it it's hard to keep up, right, because one thing
that seems there's a study that comes out and says
one thing is bad for you one year, and then
you just wait a few years and it's flip flopped

(40:25):
in another study that manages to rise to the surface
of media attention. Yeah, and I think you know, we
should also headge here and say that any food substance,
anything that's part of your diet, may have interesting effects,
good or bad, that we can find out about. Now
us saying that there is not a clear picture that
there's anything to worry about with normal levels of intake

(40:47):
of MSG. Uh. That that isn't to say that you
can't use MSG in ways that could be harmful. We
don't know. I mean, maybe if you're eating huge quantities
of this stuff, or maybe future research will will discover
effects we don't know about yet, but as of today
that there is no special reason to be concerned about
moderate intake of MSG, right, I mean, maybe of a

(41:09):
racial stereotype pro wrestling manager were to throw it into
your eyes, that would be harmful, but but as far
as anyone anyone can tell, the consensus seems to be
that a very few select individuals may react to large
quantities of MSG on an empty stomach, but otherwise it
is safe for the vast majority of people. So stop

(41:30):
with those spoonfuls of MSG before breakfast. It's just not good. Yeah,
but yeah, the major food and health organizations don't say
that there's anything to worry about, right The f d
A and World Health Organization too. Yeah, In FDA issued
a large scale review by the Federal Federation of American

(41:51):
Societies for Experimental Biology UH and an international research review
in ven by the World Health Organization and the Food
and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations all ruled on
this as well, and they said, yeah, it's safe for
the vast majority of people, which is you know, something
that you can say for a vast number of additives

(42:12):
out there. People have differing reactions to certain things. But
but yeah, we're not throwing out the salt because of it,
and UH and and we want to drive home again
to that glutamates are in other foods. There are other
ways to glute up a food product that don't involve
actually using monosodium glutamate. If you've seen recipes, and more

(42:35):
of them are popping up these days as more people
come to understand food science. You know that beef up
a pot of soup or something like that, by adding
one of these glutamate rich ingredients to it. They say,
you know, add anchovies or add marmite, or add soy
sauce or something like that, you're adding glutamates. Yeah. So,

(42:57):
I mean it's even if every we're not putting ms
you directly, and you're doing pretty much the same thing, right,
And there's and as far as we can tell, there's
nothing significantly different about about it being carried by the
salt crystals as opposed to you being in the food
in other ways. Uh. Julia Moskin wrote an excellent article
on MSG for The New York Times back in two
thousand and eight, and she pointed out that while the

(43:18):
USDA U s d A requires labeling for MSG, they
don't for all other glutamates in your food, especially processed
foods like chips um. She uh, there's a quote from
her article. She says, alternatively, there may also be included.
There may also be included under certain terms like vegetable
broth or chicken broth. Thus, these ingredients are now routinely

(43:42):
found in products like Cantuna vegetable broth is listed as
an ingredient. It contains hydralicized soy protein, caned soup, low
fat yogurts and ice creams, chips, and virtually everything ranch
flavored or cheese flavored. Thus, the richest source of your
mommy remains your local convey in its store. Grab a
tube of pringles or a bologna sandwich, and glutamic acid

(44:06):
is most likely lurking there somewhere. This whole thing about
the labeling of ms G it kind of makes me
think about the GM foods labeling issue because in both cases,
so some people want there to be a law where
any food that is produced by an organism that has

(44:26):
been genetically modified in well through laboratory procedures, because of
course all crops have been genetically modified through agriculture is
just a less accurate form of genetic modification. Uh So
people want these foods labeled, right, so you you label
them so people know what they're getting. And on one hand,
I kind of can't be opposed to that because I

(44:48):
don't know I mean having giving people more information about
the products that they're consuming. I mean that seems like
there's hard it's hard to disagree with that right right
transparency information. The only hesitation I would have to it
is that it does tend to send a signal that
there's something inherently to be worried about. With genetically modified foods,

(45:11):
it's almost as if the government is telling you, like,
this is something that's maybe dangerous and you should be concerned,
when there's no indication that's the case. And the same
thing is true with with MSG. I mean, I guess
I'm in favor of labeling just because I'm in favor
of all forms of transparency. But I do kind of
worry that when you make foods containing MSG have some

(45:32):
kind of special label, it stigmatizes it in a way
that you know is unfair. There are other food additives
we have no indication or any safer than MSG that
don't require a special label. Oh yeah, I agree. I mean,
I mean certainly too, when you get into like the
fear of chemicals with MSG, chemical itself becomes this bad

(45:53):
word where we're ignoring the fact that, of course all
food is made of chemicals. We are chemical beings. We
live in chemical world. Um our terms have a way
of getting ahead of us, rolling out of control. Now, Robert,
here's the thing. Would you ever eat a piece of
chicken fowl flesh that has been saturated in a bath

(46:16):
of dihydrogen monoxide and sodium chloride. Well you put it
like that? Um, Then I started asking questions. Yeah, I
mean that sounds pretty sick. But obviously what I've just
described as chicken that has been brined in water and
table salt. And you know most good chicken is brine.
It helps it stay juicy when you cook it. So yeah,

(46:37):
these we know that these chemical names bring a lot
of stigma with them. Like, here's a good one. Do
you know the I U P A C name for
lactose milk sugar, Uh, lactose milk sugar, just milk sugar, lactose.
It's beta de galacto pyrano sill one four D glucose.

(46:58):
That sounds like something that would in effect an astronaut
when they learned it on a on a doomed world. Right,
it's this, It's this demonic preon that comes out of
the rocks to take over your brain. So anyway, I
think we should try to come up with a simple
rebranding of glutamate that can allow people to consume it

(47:19):
without this chemical stigma. Right, so you just called hydrogen
monoxide water. Of course, dehydrogen monoxide isn't the primary name
anybody uses. It's like a it's a hoax name that
people came up with to make a joke, but of
course it does accurately describe the content of water. Yeah,
I think to to come up with some some some

(47:41):
rebranding here to come up with a better, better name
for msg. Uh. We should we should sample some we
have We have some here on the table. While you
were a speaking, I just cut up an avocada here,
so uh and I and hey, I even have some
shops tips sticks here if you want to get you know,
semi authentic. Well, let's cut a couple of pieces of

(48:01):
avocado here and then put let's have a regular piece first,
and then put some accent. All right, I'm gonna I'm
gonna go ahead and eat the second one. Eat a
normal piece and unaugmented flice here. It's good. Some buttery
definitely definitely right, Avocado is always good. Now I'm going

(48:22):
to sprinkle some of our additive on there. Mm hmm.
Now you know it's we didn't properly blind this test,
did We know that this is not a very scientific
so we know the difference. But I I would say
that I think I can naturally taste the difference. The

(48:44):
one with the accent on it has a kind of deeper,
richer meteor flavor. Yeah, there's there's definitely a salt salt
nous to it as well, though less salty than if
I had just poured salt on it. It makes sense, Um,
yeah it is. I mean, I'm definitely getting a sense
of the mommy and the salt as if it has

(49:07):
almost been like almost like it's been misted with soy
sauce in some almost invisible way. No, I'm sure you
can edit out some of these gross mouth noises. No,
no more more gross mouth noises. It's what we need
if he can can find someone one of those websites. Okay, Robert,
any irresistible urges to undress or how long do we
have to wait irresistible urge to undress? My normal, like

(49:30):
my base level of of of feeling like I need
to take my clothes off is it remains the same
as virtually virtually not changed at all thanks to the
MSG scale of one to ten. What is that base
level um in the summer? I guess it tends to
be like a five. You know. That's the yoga and

(49:51):
you talking. Is there a special word for this naked yoga?
Naked yoga? There's like hot yoga. I don't know together.
I mean, I've seen it. You can go to naked
yoga classes here in Atlanta. Um, I've never been the one,
but you can go. I mean it. Uh, you know,
issues of you know, shared nudity, nudity in a semi

(50:15):
public and environment aside, Like if you want to really
feel what your body is doing and see what your
body is doing in these various posses, it makes sense, right, Okay,
So rebranding of ms G. What's your word? I came
up with one, but my wife actually came up with
a better one. So the one I've tried to do
was savor. Kind of makes sense. It's savory, put some

(50:38):
savor on your food. But we can see it in
the advertisement to savor savor, my wife Rachel suggested, umami salt.
I think that's perfect. That's the best one. I mean,
I think to all the fancy salts you can buy
these day, like the Himalayan pink salt. At our house
we have this like mushroom and fuse salt salt, so
mary salt. Yeah, so why not just marketed as mommy

(51:00):
infused salt? Like that sounds perfect. It sounds a little
bit uh, a little bit sciency, but steeped in in
culinary terms, not chemical terms. And I think that's that's
what a lot of it comes down to, Like the
terminology for your food. Is it are you defining it
by you know, it's it's exotic aspects and and then

(51:21):
drawing in whatever you're your opinions are regarding the the
foreign nature of the food or is it or is
it based in in in human chemicals or is it
something compy and and uh and mouth shaped like o mommy. Well,
food always tastes better when it's got a nickname, right,
you know, you never want the name of your food
to be all that descriptive, like just accurately descriptive food

(51:45):
names or not appetizing. You don't want chicken packs with broth,
you know you want I don't know, uh uh uh
happy foul package like schnitzel sound is great, right, it's
fun that doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, but it's
a fun word. Sounds better than like meat that has

(52:06):
been beaten and fried and smothered. Right. So yeah, there's
a lot there's a lot in in in the words
we choose to describe our food. And I think that
the story of MSG are continuing story of MSG really
drives that home. Now. I know, in the wake of
this episode a lot of people are going to be
very angry with us because we we have not accurately

(52:27):
described how all the scientists are bought off Hills and
how it's there's some evil industry that wants to poison
our bodies to get us addicted to drugs that they
also sell. I don't know what is the conspiracy theory
with MSG um the Illuminati created MSG in order to
fake the rapture so that believers would would ignore the

(52:51):
second coming of the Savior. You're you're getting us back
into surgery of getting my notes confused a little bit here. Well,
if you do actually want to get in contact with us,
you can always do so as usual. And hey, pretty
soon we're going to be in New York we should
mention this. That's right. We're going to be at Star
Trek Mission New York. Yeah, that's gonna go from September

(53:12):
two to four. It's going to be in New York City,
and our panel is going to be on Friday afternoon.
So if you're interested in seeing us, you can come
check us out there. Yeah yeah, see us here us
and you know, there'll be an opportunity to chat with
us um after the presentation as well. And it's gonna
be fun. It's gonna be a little star treky, but

(53:32):
not like so star treky that that you're going to
know all the answers already. Personally, I'm afraid that we
are not star trekky enough for the stark just the
right level of star trekking us. You know, it's like
people going to a dessert bar, right and we are
offering something where people look at they're like, huh, well
that I didn't expect to see that in the dessert bar.

(53:52):
I will get that instead of putting that's the way
I'm kind of looking at it. We're like the surrounded
by cookies. We're gonna be the brown ut or nut muffin. Yeah. Yeah,
we're the fig the fig bar of of dessert delights
at this particular conference, and there, you know, if you're
into Star Trek, it seems like the place to be
because tons of tons of gas, tons of cool panels

(54:15):
and talks definitely worth checking out, all right, So Robert,
in the meantime, if they want to find us, where
can they do that? Oh, head on over to Stuff
to Blow your Mind dot com, which should have a
facelift by the time this episode comes out. Come check out,
see how it's all working, let us know what's not working.
All the joys of a new website. Uh. And also

(54:36):
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Mind at how stuff Works dot com for more on

(55:05):
this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
works dot com? Little Big Believe, I think the differ