September 29, 2025 • 17 mins
MSG causes headaches, chest tightness, tingling arms and weakness - or at least that’s what we’ve all been told. For decades, MSG was considered public enemy number one, banned from restaurants and demonised in the media. But why?
MSG is everywhere: in tomatoes, mushrooms, parmesan cheese, soy sauce, even breast milk. So how did it become a “toxic chemical killer” in the public imagination?
Today I’m breaking down the bizarre story of MSG, from its origins in Japan, to its rise across Asia and the West, through to the flawed science and racism that turned it into a food villain.
So, because why are we so afraid of MSG?
In this episode let's unpack:
- The discovery of MSG and the origin of umami
- How MSG spread across Asia and into Western diets
- Why “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome” started from just one letter
- The flawed studies that fuelled the MSG scare
- The racial undertones behind the MSG panic
- Why MSG is actually safer than table salt
- How modern chefs and TikTok are reclaiming MSG as “umami dust”
Thanks for joining me on this episode of Because Why?!
Mā te wā - see you next week.
You can get involved with the podcast online in the meantime, of course.
Find our full podcast via the website here: https://www.nowthatwhatsicall.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/becausewhypod/
You can follow me on socials on the below accounts.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/briannemwest/
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@briannemwest
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/briannemwest/
For our latest big project, find out more about Incrediballs here: https://incrediballs.com/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
MSG causes headaches, tingling arms, chest tightness, and a
general feeling of weakness. And you know that it's bad for
you. It's just one of those things
that we all know that we should avoid, right?
Have you ever really wondered why MSG was once Public Enemy
number one In the 60s? Restaurants banned it.
The media got very dramatic about it.
Brands fell over themselves to show how good they were to you
(00:22):
by ditching it. And all the while, scientists
must have been sitting there thinking, what the fuck?
Because MSG is really common. It's in tomatoes, mushrooms,
parmesan cheese, soy sauce, Marmite.
It's all filled to the absolute tits with it.
And it's made of two things thatyou need to function.
So how did something so ordinaryget turned into this food
(00:43):
villain chemical killer cocktailnightmare?
Well, let's find out, shall we? Welcome back to because why I'm
Brianne West. And today I'm asking because why
are we so afraid of EMSGI? Don't even really remember being
told specifically the EMSG was bad for you.
It was more of like a a thing that was in the ether.
It was common knowledge that we just knew.
(01:05):
Kind of like how everybody knowsthat the most venomous spider on
earth is the daddy long legs. Even though that's not true at
all, I do remember the first time I actively thought about
it. I love Benin.
I know that makes me weird. I know that the gorgeously
curated Instagrammable 0 waste stores are all the rage at the
moment, but I like the original.You can find all sorts of things
in the Benin, things that you never thought you needed until
(01:26):
you saw them. It's low key, it's not designed
to be Instagrammable. And because of I'm I'm I'm sorry
to say, but because it has a least of a wank factor, it's way
more affordable. This episode brought to you by
Benin Striking. I don't do ads.
I used to shop. I'd been in for tea ingredients
back when I was still sitting microwaves on fire by making
shampoo bars in them. And one day I found one of those
things that I didn't know I needed, and that was actually a
(01:47):
barrel of MSGI. Remember seeing this container
of white powder sitting there and thinking, but isn't that
really bad for you? So I was surprised to see it
there, but I'm also quite curious.
So I took some home with me. I bought it.
I didn't just like, put some in my pocket and I did some
research and man, the MSG story is a whole thing.
Prepared to be disappointed in people again, a bit like you may
(02:08):
have been disappointed this weekend in our government again.
MSG's story begins in 1908 in Japan with a chemist named
Kikune Akita. And I really hope I'm saying
that right. He was eating his wife's dashi,
which is a broth made with kombu, which is a type of
seaweed, and he noticed a taste in there that he couldn't really
describe. That is where umami comes from.
It actually means delicious taste in Japanese, but we now
(02:29):
use it as a as a way to broadly describe this sort of savoury
taste. Akita, naturally being a
chemist, wanted to isolate what the deliciousness was by
evaporating, crystallizing the broth.
He found glutamic acid, which isa form of an amino acid that
scientists were already very familiar with.
Now on its own, glutamic acid isn't usable.
It's not in an easy to store crystalline form.
So he bound up with sodium and creating the star of today's
(02:50):
show, MSG. A little while later he formed a
company with his business partner and in 1909 he then
began to sell MSG. It was almost immediately
beloved in Japan. At that point, urbanization and
industrialization was kicking in.
Families were cooking lists fromscratch.
You know, there was list of the all day long cooked soups and
MSG made those foods taste like homemade cooking without all of
the time involved. Over the next few decades, as
(03:12):
the Japanese continued to colonize parts of Asia, they
took MSG with them. In China, MSG became a key
seasoning in street food and home cooking.
And in Korea it was added to instant noodles, in the
Philippines to stews and snacks.It was marketed as a modern
flavour enhancer. Ghana, just like salt and sugar.
The West joined in. Of course, we do love delicious
salty things. But this was a cultural thing
because after the attack on Pearl Harbour, there was a huge
(03:35):
surge of hatred towards the Japanese across America.
As you'd expect, right? But this also created a wave of
sympathy for the Chinese, who had been under the Japanese
thumb for decades. This is a huge part of why parts
of Chinese culture is a big thing in America even today.
Things like Chinese restaurants or Chinatowns, because they
became very popular then and arestill today.
And MSG was a part of that and became part of the main diet in
America, too. And then, of course, because
(03:55):
brands follow consumer demand, it was worth remembering we have
the ultimate power. Companies like Campbell's and
Heinz and Kraft all added their products.
And it was even added to MRE's, you know, the stuff given to
soldiers in World War 2. And when those soldiers came
home from war, they were accustomed to that taste.
And so it became more and more embedded in the average daily
diet. But the 1950s and 60s, MSG was
largely everywhere. It was a marvel of modern food
(04:16):
scientist A Genomoto, which was the name of the company selling
MSG. They even ran advertising
campaigns framing it as a scientific breakthrough that
would improve nutrition around the world.
Because this stuff made vegetables tasty.
Just no mean feat. Unfortunately, that didn't age
very well. In 1968, a bloke wrote a letter,
a doctor and researcher called Doctor Ho Man Kwok wrote to the
(04:37):
New England Journal of Medicine.He described how after eating at
Chinese restaurants in the USA, he felt I'll his nick felt numb,
he felt weak. He got a rapid heartbeat.
And in this letter, he wondered if it was the soy sauce or or
the cooking wine or perhaps eventhe MSG.
Now, from what researchers can ascertain, and this is grayer
than you would have thought, they don't think there's any
(04:58):
malice behind this. They don't think this was
something designed to create thealarm that it led to.
He seemed to genuinely want to know the answer.
The article certainly had a particularly inflammatory
heading, though. It was called Chinese restaurant
syndrome. And just as a quick aside here,
because if this story isn't weird enough, another doctor,
Doctor Howard Steele, claimed that he wrote the letter under a
pseudonym after a beat with a friend.
(05:19):
He said the pseudonym was an obvious joke.
Right Ho man Quark, Human crock is in crock of shit.
But it turns out there actually was a doctor Ho man Quark.
And he also claimed he did writethe letter.
So who did? Honestly, no ones.
Totally sure the families both have different stories so who
knows what happened, but weird. Anyway, The New England Journal
was hardly a mass market magazine that everybody read,
(05:40):
but it was highly respected and reporters would do what they do
today, which is badly explain science and their stories,
inadvertently spreading misinformation.
This was one of those instances and within just a couple of
weeks, the phrase Chinese restaurant syndrome was in
newspapers around the country and starting to spread further
afield. That is a perfect example of
just how fast misinformation canspread because remember, this
was just a letter. This wasn't a scientific study,
(06:02):
it wasn't a journal. There was no evidence.
It's just a letter. Then other doctors joined and
they also wrote to the journal as well.
They added their own stories or their friends or their patients.
They they claimed that there wasfainting or headaches, back
spasm, sweating, fatigue, temperatures.
None of the letters listed the same symptoms.
None of them had the same time after eating.
None of them had the same duration of illness.
(06:23):
There's seemingly no links between any of the letters or
any of the concerns, although geography did seem important
because New York restaurants were dodgy, restaurants in
London seemed OK. Again, no measurement, no facts,
no proof, any of the media treated it as fact.
And this was around the same time that the environmental
movement really started to kick off and pesticides and chemicals
(06:44):
were in the news. So people were starting to get
afraid of chemicals and synthetics, Distrust of
ingredients like dyes, artificial sweeteners started to
ramp up. So it was kind of the perfect
storm of timing. But it does seem a little bit
odd, right, that at no point didanybody seriously point this out
and put an end to this absolute nonsense before it got carried
away. Because some of these letters,
man, they were just crying out to be mocked. 1 blamed
(07:05):
chopsticks in the letter. He blamed the fact that
westerners couldn't cope with, quote, the physical strain of
using chopsticks in. Granted, I'm sure we've most of
us have struggled with chopsticks at some point, but
we've not fainted or had some kind of weird generalised
weakness afterwards, have we? Humiliation, Sure.
But I suppose I do prefer his hypothesis over the idea that it
was this foreign chemical that we've been eating for decades
(07:27):
and never had a problem with before.
But all of a sudden we've realized it's Chinese and, you
know, it's probably killing us. Finally somebody stepped in and
said, you know what we need, we need some science and let's
figure out this is an issue or if it's collective hysteria.
Unfortunately, it wasn't very good science.
Obviously I am a big fan of the scientific method.
It is a very robust way of determining facts, finding
evidence, and despite what loadsof people on the Internet will
(07:49):
tell you, it's actually difficult to just make stuff up
and roll away on your super yacht.
But just because the scientific method is robust doesn't mean
everybody follows seed method. Because the the research
conducted in IMSG was not very good.
It was so flawed, Oh my God. Some studies were not probably
blinded, which means bias can creep in.
Some involved consuming all of the items on a menu for
(08:11):
breakfast, lunch and dinner and then documenting how ill you
felt. Some studies didn't account for
anxiety. And of course, symptoms like
racing heart or dizziness are often symptoms of anxiety.
If you are told you're reading something that may cause you
harm, you might be a little anxious.
Almost all of them had tiny, tiny sample sizes, some as low
as 6, and they were often just given pure MSG on an empty
stomach. And interestingly enough, MSG on
(08:32):
its own tastes horrific. It has to be mixed with
something else to taste delicious.
All of these studies, and I usedthat term very lightly, should
have been thrown straight in thebin.
The studies that were given the most credence were done on mice.
It wasn't the biggest issue. The researchers injected the
equivalent amount of MSG into these mice as if you sat down
and ate half a KG of it, except not so much as if you sat down
(08:55):
and ate half a KG. It's as if you are a mouse,
except of course you are not, and you injected half a KG of
MSG straight into your bloodstream.
Not really representative of real life conditions.
Flawed to the capital left. Again, the study wasn't blind.
So he knew which mice had had the placebo versus the MSG.
And that can really change results.
Because bias is unconscious and even scientists have the best
(09:17):
intentions can unintentionally affect result.
That's why best practice is properly blinded studies.
Basic science. I honestly I don't know what
these people were doing. The head researcher behind the
series of studies didn't really seem to care about that and
continued winding up media and therefore the general public.
There was a talk about national ban in the USA.
Activists started protesting. It became a whole thing all
because one researcher confused mice with people.
(09:40):
And unfortunately, it is these kind of scientists that people
point to when they say that the whole institution is bad.
And to that I say, of course, there is bad eggs everywhere.
And actually, you know, that could be unfair.
I don't know his motivation. He could genuinely have believed
it was a concern and be trying to help people.
But his own bias influences work.
He's only human. And As for the media who
perpetuated that information, it's worth remembering that very
(10:01):
few journalists can actually read a scientific paper because
there's a lot more to it than just reading an abstract.
Now there there is a pretty clear racial undertone here.
MSG has been used in American processed food for decades
without anyone getting overly excited.
But when it was connected to Chinese restaurants and called
Chinese Restaurant Syndrome, then people got very scared
about this foreign chemical. That phrase tied it to an entire
(10:24):
cuisine, an entire group of people, not so much to the
chemical itself. By the early 1970's, the panic
was in full swing. Restaurants very proudly talked
about how they had no MSG in their products, even in places
that had never used it. Yes, same tactic they're doing
now. Food companies jumped on board
by showing how much they cared about you by removing the MSG.
And those actions reinforce thatreputation so it becomes a self
(10:46):
perpetuating cycle. Exactly like the stupid idea of
clean ingredients in the beauty industry.
It's why people are frightened of things like parabens or
sodium Laurel sulfate despite there being no need to.
I spent most of my time at a teak refusing to have anything
to do with spreading this disinformation despite quite a
lot of pressure, and I was always the one made to feel
unreasonable about it. Facts matter, people.
(11:07):
When brands parrot nonsense which they know isn't true
because, and I quote, the customer expects it, they
perpetuate harmful misinformation.
People have a surprisingly high level of trust in brands.
It's lazy marketing. If you can't sell your product
without lying, do you think maybe you need a new career?
Slightly off topic. That winds me up the full that
lasted a long time. It's still going on now.
The media coverage became more and more overtly xenophobic, and
(11:28):
by the 1980s MSG was one of the most vilified things ever.
It didn't matter that at that point there was lots of studies
saying the complete opposite, that MSG was perfectly safe.
It didn't matter that regulatorybodies around the world said it
was perfectly fine. Chinese restaurant syndrome was
a thing and people were scared of it.
Food scientists really must be the most patient people on
earth. So to be super duper clear,
(11:50):
there have been many properly constructed studies since then
all showing the MSG perfectly safe.
Which makes sense because the chemistry doesn't fit this
either. So MSG is actually quite simple.
It stands for monosodium glutamate, SO1, sodium.
Glutamate is made from 2 very ordinary things, sodium, which
is the same element that's in table salt, and glutamate, which
(12:12):
is an amino acid. They're put together simply to
make it a more stable compound that can be used in cooking.
Glutamate isn't rare, it's not exotic.
It's found naturally in a bunch of things like tomatoes and
mushrooms and Parmesan and Marmite and breast milk.
When glutamate is in its free form, as it is in those foods,
it activates receptors on your tongue that tell your brain
you're eating something with like a savoury depth of flavour.
(12:33):
And actually, because it's in breast milk, one of the first
flavours that babies get used tois that depth of savoury taste.
And inside the body, MSG doesn'tbehave any differently from
glutamate that comes from any other food.
Your body doesn't care whether the glutamate came from the
Parmesan or seaweed or a shaker of MSG Glutamate is glutamate.
It all ends up in the same placeonce it's digested.
And just a quick recap, if you're wondering what an amino
acid is, they are the building blocks of protein, if you like.
(12:55):
Proteins are just long chains ofamino acids folded into
different shapes. They do most of the work in your
body. They build muscle, they
transport oxygen, they fight infection, they run chemical
reactions. They are the workhorse of your
body. They are what makes you you.
There are only about 20 amino acids that your body uses to
make all these proteins, which Ithink is kind of amazing.
But that's the magic of mats foryou, I suppose.
And some of those aminos are called essential because you
(13:16):
can't make them. You have to consume them in your
diet. Others, like glutamate, your
body can make. And they are then called non
essential, which makes absolutely no sense to me
because it is still essential. It's just that we can make it
ourselves. They call ones that we can make
non essential, despite the fact that, of course, that it is an
essential amino acid for us, butit's just we don't need to eat
it. Confused.
Good. Yeah, I think they could have
categorized that slightly. So it's just an amino acid
(13:38):
paired with a sodium 2 incredibly ordinary compounds
that you encounter all day, every day and that you use to
fuel biochemical reactions in your body.
So the chemistry lined up with the safety record, right?
It's boring, it's ordinary, it'ssuper safe.
It's something your body knows and needs.
Although yes, of course anythingis toxic in a high enough dose,
but it is interesting to note that you'd have to eat five
times more MSG than table salt to reach toxicity.
(14:02):
So MSG is safer than table salt.And it's worth noting that the
normal level of consumption isn't actually tiny.
The average intake in countries where MSG is widely used, like
Japan and Korea is several gramsa day, no issues.
And in fact, as they're sort of famous for, people who live in
Japan and Korea tend to live longer and healthier lives,
which doesn't really add up withthe whole idea that MSG is a
(14:23):
toxic poison killer death, you know?
And gram for gram, MSG contains less sodium than table salt.
So it's actually one of those things that some doctors
recommend for people who have towatch their sodium intake.
One of my Nan's favorite snacks was salt sandwiches.
Her idea of nutrition was probably different to yours, but
she'd get a piece of bread, slather on some butter, sprinkle
(14:43):
it with salt, another piece of bread, and she'd enjoy that
immensely. I can't say it's overly
appealing, but she did at one point have to watch her salt and
I imagine if she had lived long enough, perhaps her doctor would
have recommended MSG sandwiches instead.
But even if the doctor had, she was part of the generation that
was told MSG was the devil. So you know, it's hard to change
that kind of baked in perception.
(15:03):
Even now you still have restaurants around the world
saying we proudly cook with no MSG.
I was looking at some of the spices in my cupboard this
morning and two of them have no MSG stamped on them very
proudly. And I that kind of puts me off
that brand. The fact that that stigma has
stuck around for so long kind ofspeaks to ignorance and
prejudice, right? Fear of chemicals, fear of
foreign food, fear of other people, anyone who doesn't look
(15:24):
like you. Psychology around discrimination
and racism and xenophobia is obviously more complicated and
it's definitely its own episode with a proper expert, but it's
pretty evident that othering andpointing the finger is a very
effective way of firing people up and changing the narrative.
Today there is a counter movement which is quite cool.
Asian American chefs and writersare reclaiming MSG as part of
their culinary identity. They're pointing out the
(15:46):
hypocrisy that parmesan and soy sauce are praised with their
flavour and yet Chinese food is demonized for the same
ingredient. TikTok cooks are sprinkling MSG
on things. They're calling it Umami Dust,
which is a way better name that they should 100% have gone with
originally. And maybe we wouldn't be talking
about it right now, but younger audiences are seeing it in this
format. They're seeing it spoken about
in a positive way so they will not be as easily mislead as the
(16:09):
billions of us were. Now this story of MSG is
becoming more well known, probably because of how bizarre
parts of it are. But it's a neat little example
of how ignorance leads to huge shifts and everything from
business and culture to law and regulations.
That's why taking a stand against misinformation does not
make you unreasonable. You're awesome.
If you wanted to worry about food, there are much better
options to choose from. The lack of fibre in the average
(16:31):
person's diet and how there is astrong link to bowel cancer and
some other pretty horrible issues.
Just how bad sugary drinks like Coke are actually for you.
Like they are much worse than you think.
It's not just the sugar, it's also how you consume it.
Or if you want a really juicy one.
How superfoods are making staplefoods unaffordable for the
communities that depend on them around the world.
All in the name of Instagram. That was last week's episode, if
(16:53):
you missed it. So because why are we all scared
of MSG? Because of bad actors, bad
faith, and really bad science. Next week, I'm talking all about
germ warfare because you know how much I love microbiology.
But it's perhaps a bit differentto what you're expecting because
I'll be talking about all the people who don't believe they
exist because this is a whole thing.
So I will see you next week, Kyodo Katiaki.
MSG causes headaches, tingling arms, chest tightness, and a
general feeling of weakness. And you know that it's bad for
you. It's just one of those things
that we all know that we should avoid, right?
Have you ever really wondered why MSG was once Public Enemy
number one In the 60s? Restaurants banned it.
The media got very dramatic about it.
Brands fell over themselves to show how good they were to you
(00:22):
by ditching it. And all the while, scientists
must have been sitting there thinking, what the fuck?
Because MSG is really common. It's in tomatoes, mushrooms,
parmesan cheese, soy sauce, Marmite.
It's all filled to the absolute tits with it.
And it's made of two things thatyou need to function.
So how did something so ordinaryget turned into this food
(00:43):
villain chemical killer cocktailnightmare?
Well, let's find out, shall we? Welcome back to because why I'm
Brianne West. And today I'm asking because why
are we so afraid of EMSGI? Don't even really remember being
told specifically the EMSG was bad for you.
It was more of like a a thing that was in the ether.
It was common knowledge that we just knew.
(01:05):
Kind of like how everybody knowsthat the most venomous spider on
earth is the daddy long legs. Even though that's not true at
all, I do remember the first time I actively thought about
it. I love Benin.
I know that makes me weird. I know that the gorgeously
curated Instagrammable 0 waste stores are all the rage at the
moment, but I like the original.You can find all sorts of things
in the Benin, things that you never thought you needed until
(01:26):
you saw them. It's low key, it's not designed
to be Instagrammable. And because of I'm I'm I'm sorry
to say, but because it has a least of a wank factor, it's way
more affordable. This episode brought to you by
Benin Striking. I don't do ads.
I used to shop. I'd been in for tea ingredients
back when I was still sitting microwaves on fire by making
shampoo bars in them. And one day I found one of those
things that I didn't know I needed, and that was actually a
(01:47):
barrel of MSGI. Remember seeing this container
of white powder sitting there and thinking, but isn't that
really bad for you? So I was surprised to see it
there, but I'm also quite curious.
So I took some home with me. I bought it.
I didn't just like, put some in my pocket and I did some
research and man, the MSG story is a whole thing.
Prepared to be disappointed in people again, a bit like you may
(02:08):
have been disappointed this weekend in our government again.
MSG's story begins in 1908 in Japan with a chemist named
Kikune Akita. And I really hope I'm saying
that right. He was eating his wife's dashi,
which is a broth made with kombu, which is a type of
seaweed, and he noticed a taste in there that he couldn't really
describe. That is where umami comes from.
It actually means delicious taste in Japanese, but we now
(02:29):
use it as a as a way to broadly describe this sort of savoury
taste. Akita, naturally being a
chemist, wanted to isolate what the deliciousness was by
evaporating, crystallizing the broth.
He found glutamic acid, which isa form of an amino acid that
scientists were already very familiar with.
Now on its own, glutamic acid isn't usable.
It's not in an easy to store crystalline form.
So he bound up with sodium and creating the star of today's
(02:50):
show, MSG. A little while later he formed a
company with his business partner and in 1909 he then
began to sell MSG. It was almost immediately
beloved in Japan. At that point, urbanization and
industrialization was kicking in.
Families were cooking lists fromscratch.
You know, there was list of the all day long cooked soups and
MSG made those foods taste like homemade cooking without all of
the time involved. Over the next few decades, as
(03:12):
the Japanese continued to colonize parts of Asia, they
took MSG with them. In China, MSG became a key
seasoning in street food and home cooking.
And in Korea it was added to instant noodles, in the
Philippines to stews and snacks.It was marketed as a modern
flavour enhancer. Ghana, just like salt and sugar.
The West joined in. Of course, we do love delicious
salty things. But this was a cultural thing
because after the attack on Pearl Harbour, there was a huge
(03:35):
surge of hatred towards the Japanese across America.
As you'd expect, right? But this also created a wave of
sympathy for the Chinese, who had been under the Japanese
thumb for decades. This is a huge part of why parts
of Chinese culture is a big thing in America even today.
Things like Chinese restaurants or Chinatowns, because they
became very popular then and arestill today.
And MSG was a part of that and became part of the main diet in
America, too. And then, of course, because
(03:55):
brands follow consumer demand, it was worth remembering we have
the ultimate power. Companies like Campbell's and
Heinz and Kraft all added their products.
And it was even added to MRE's, you know, the stuff given to
soldiers in World War 2. And when those soldiers came
home from war, they were accustomed to that taste.
And so it became more and more embedded in the average daily
diet. But the 1950s and 60s, MSG was
largely everywhere. It was a marvel of modern food
(04:16):
scientist A Genomoto, which was the name of the company selling
MSG. They even ran advertising
campaigns framing it as a scientific breakthrough that
would improve nutrition around the world.
Because this stuff made vegetables tasty.
Just no mean feat. Unfortunately, that didn't age
very well. In 1968, a bloke wrote a letter,
a doctor and researcher called Doctor Ho Man Kwok wrote to the
(04:37):
New England Journal of Medicine.He described how after eating at
Chinese restaurants in the USA, he felt I'll his nick felt numb,
he felt weak. He got a rapid heartbeat.
And in this letter, he wondered if it was the soy sauce or or
the cooking wine or perhaps eventhe MSG.
Now, from what researchers can ascertain, and this is grayer
than you would have thought, they don't think there's any
(04:58):
malice behind this. They don't think this was
something designed to create thealarm that it led to.
He seemed to genuinely want to know the answer.
The article certainly had a particularly inflammatory
heading, though. It was called Chinese restaurant
syndrome. And just as a quick aside here,
because if this story isn't weird enough, another doctor,
Doctor Howard Steele, claimed that he wrote the letter under a
pseudonym after a beat with a friend.
(05:19):
He said the pseudonym was an obvious joke.
Right Ho man Quark, Human crock is in crock of shit.
But it turns out there actually was a doctor Ho man Quark.
And he also claimed he did writethe letter.
So who did? Honestly, no ones.
Totally sure the families both have different stories so who
knows what happened, but weird. Anyway, The New England Journal
was hardly a mass market magazine that everybody read,
(05:40):
but it was highly respected and reporters would do what they do
today, which is badly explain science and their stories,
inadvertently spreading misinformation.
This was one of those instances and within just a couple of
weeks, the phrase Chinese restaurant syndrome was in
newspapers around the country and starting to spread further
afield. That is a perfect example of
just how fast misinformation canspread because remember, this
was just a letter. This wasn't a scientific study,
(06:02):
it wasn't a journal. There was no evidence.
It's just a letter. Then other doctors joined and
they also wrote to the journal as well.
They added their own stories or their friends or their patients.
They they claimed that there wasfainting or headaches, back
spasm, sweating, fatigue, temperatures.
None of the letters listed the same symptoms.
None of them had the same time after eating.
None of them had the same duration of illness.
(06:23):
There's seemingly no links between any of the letters or
any of the concerns, although geography did seem important
because New York restaurants were dodgy, restaurants in
London seemed OK. Again, no measurement, no facts,
no proof, any of the media treated it as fact.
And this was around the same time that the environmental
movement really started to kick off and pesticides and chemicals
(06:44):
were in the news. So people were starting to get
afraid of chemicals and synthetics, Distrust of
ingredients like dyes, artificial sweeteners started to
ramp up. So it was kind of the perfect
storm of timing. But it does seem a little bit
odd, right, that at no point didanybody seriously point this out
and put an end to this absolute nonsense before it got carried
away. Because some of these letters,
man, they were just crying out to be mocked. 1 blamed
(07:05):
chopsticks in the letter. He blamed the fact that
westerners couldn't cope with, quote, the physical strain of
using chopsticks in. Granted, I'm sure we've most of
us have struggled with chopsticks at some point, but
we've not fainted or had some kind of weird generalised
weakness afterwards, have we? Humiliation, Sure.
But I suppose I do prefer his hypothesis over the idea that it
was this foreign chemical that we've been eating for decades
(07:27):
and never had a problem with before.
But all of a sudden we've realized it's Chinese and, you
know, it's probably killing us. Finally somebody stepped in and
said, you know what we need, we need some science and let's
figure out this is an issue or if it's collective hysteria.
Unfortunately, it wasn't very good science.
Obviously I am a big fan of the scientific method.
It is a very robust way of determining facts, finding
evidence, and despite what loadsof people on the Internet will
(07:49):
tell you, it's actually difficult to just make stuff up
and roll away on your super yacht.
But just because the scientific method is robust doesn't mean
everybody follows seed method. Because the the research
conducted in IMSG was not very good.
It was so flawed, Oh my God. Some studies were not probably
blinded, which means bias can creep in.
Some involved consuming all of the items on a menu for
(08:11):
breakfast, lunch and dinner and then documenting how ill you
felt. Some studies didn't account for
anxiety. And of course, symptoms like
racing heart or dizziness are often symptoms of anxiety.
If you are told you're reading something that may cause you
harm, you might be a little anxious.
Almost all of them had tiny, tiny sample sizes, some as low
as 6, and they were often just given pure MSG on an empty
stomach. And interestingly enough, MSG on
(08:32):
its own tastes horrific. It has to be mixed with
something else to taste delicious.
All of these studies, and I usedthat term very lightly, should
have been thrown straight in thebin.
The studies that were given the most credence were done on mice.
It wasn't the biggest issue. The researchers injected the
equivalent amount of MSG into these mice as if you sat down
and ate half a KG of it, except not so much as if you sat down
(08:55):
and ate half a KG. It's as if you are a mouse,
except of course you are not, and you injected half a KG of
MSG straight into your bloodstream.
Not really representative of real life conditions.
Flawed to the capital left. Again, the study wasn't blind.
So he knew which mice had had the placebo versus the MSG.
And that can really change results.
Because bias is unconscious and even scientists have the best
(09:17):
intentions can unintentionally affect result.
That's why best practice is properly blinded studies.
Basic science. I honestly I don't know what
these people were doing. The head researcher behind the
series of studies didn't really seem to care about that and
continued winding up media and therefore the general public.
There was a talk about national ban in the USA.
Activists started protesting. It became a whole thing all
because one researcher confused mice with people.
(09:40):
And unfortunately, it is these kind of scientists that people
point to when they say that the whole institution is bad.
And to that I say, of course, there is bad eggs everywhere.
And actually, you know, that could be unfair.
I don't know his motivation. He could genuinely have believed
it was a concern and be trying to help people.
But his own bias influences work.
He's only human. And As for the media who
perpetuated that information, it's worth remembering that very
(10:01):
few journalists can actually read a scientific paper because
there's a lot more to it than just reading an abstract.
Now there there is a pretty clear racial undertone here.
MSG has been used in American processed food for decades
without anyone getting overly excited.
But when it was connected to Chinese restaurants and called
Chinese Restaurant Syndrome, then people got very scared
about this foreign chemical. That phrase tied it to an entire
(10:24):
cuisine, an entire group of people, not so much to the
chemical itself. By the early 1970's, the panic
was in full swing. Restaurants very proudly talked
about how they had no MSG in their products, even in places
that had never used it. Yes, same tactic they're doing
now. Food companies jumped on board
by showing how much they cared about you by removing the MSG.
And those actions reinforce thatreputation so it becomes a self
(10:46):
perpetuating cycle. Exactly like the stupid idea of
clean ingredients in the beauty industry.
It's why people are frightened of things like parabens or
sodium Laurel sulfate despite there being no need to.
I spent most of my time at a teak refusing to have anything
to do with spreading this disinformation despite quite a
lot of pressure, and I was always the one made to feel
unreasonable about it. Facts matter, people.
(11:07):
When brands parrot nonsense which they know isn't true
because, and I quote, the customer expects it, they
perpetuate harmful misinformation.
People have a surprisingly high level of trust in brands.
It's lazy marketing. If you can't sell your product
without lying, do you think maybe you need a new career?
Slightly off topic. That winds me up the full that
lasted a long time. It's still going on now.
The media coverage became more and more overtly xenophobic, and
(11:28):
by the 1980s MSG was one of the most vilified things ever.
It didn't matter that at that point there was lots of studies
saying the complete opposite, that MSG was perfectly safe.
It didn't matter that regulatorybodies around the world said it
was perfectly fine. Chinese restaurant syndrome was
a thing and people were scared of it.
Food scientists really must be the most patient people on
earth. So to be super duper clear,
(11:50):
there have been many properly constructed studies since then
all showing the MSG perfectly safe.
Which makes sense because the chemistry doesn't fit this
either. So MSG is actually quite simple.
It stands for monosodium glutamate, SO1, sodium.
Glutamate is made from 2 very ordinary things, sodium, which
is the same element that's in table salt, and glutamate, which
(12:12):
is an amino acid. They're put together simply to
make it a more stable compound that can be used in cooking.
Glutamate isn't rare, it's not exotic.
It's found naturally in a bunch of things like tomatoes and
mushrooms and Parmesan and Marmite and breast milk.
When glutamate is in its free form, as it is in those foods,
it activates receptors on your tongue that tell your brain
you're eating something with like a savoury depth of flavour.
(12:33):
And actually, because it's in breast milk, one of the first
flavours that babies get used tois that depth of savoury taste.
And inside the body, MSG doesn'tbehave any differently from
glutamate that comes from any other food.
Your body doesn't care whether the glutamate came from the
Parmesan or seaweed or a shaker of MSG Glutamate is glutamate.
It all ends up in the same placeonce it's digested.
And just a quick recap, if you're wondering what an amino
acid is, they are the building blocks of protein, if you like.
(12:55):
Proteins are just long chains ofamino acids folded into
different shapes. They do most of the work in your
body. They build muscle, they
transport oxygen, they fight infection, they run chemical
reactions. They are the workhorse of your
body. They are what makes you you.
There are only about 20 amino acids that your body uses to
make all these proteins, which Ithink is kind of amazing.
But that's the magic of mats foryou, I suppose.
And some of those aminos are called essential because you
(13:16):
can't make them. You have to consume them in your
diet. Others, like glutamate, your
body can make. And they are then called non
essential, which makes absolutely no sense to me
because it is still essential. It's just that we can make it
ourselves. They call ones that we can make
non essential, despite the fact that, of course, that it is an
essential amino acid for us, butit's just we don't need to eat
it. Confused.
Good. Yeah, I think they could have
categorized that slightly. So it's just an amino acid
(13:38):
paired with a sodium 2 incredibly ordinary compounds
that you encounter all day, every day and that you use to
fuel biochemical reactions in your body.
So the chemistry lined up with the safety record, right?
It's boring, it's ordinary, it'ssuper safe.
It's something your body knows and needs.
Although yes, of course anythingis toxic in a high enough dose,
but it is interesting to note that you'd have to eat five
times more MSG than table salt to reach toxicity.
(14:02):
So MSG is safer than table salt.And it's worth noting that the
normal level of consumption isn't actually tiny.
The average intake in countries where MSG is widely used, like
Japan and Korea is several gramsa day, no issues.
And in fact, as they're sort of famous for, people who live in
Japan and Korea tend to live longer and healthier lives,
which doesn't really add up withthe whole idea that MSG is a
(14:23):
toxic poison killer death, you know?
And gram for gram, MSG contains less sodium than table salt.
So it's actually one of those things that some doctors
recommend for people who have towatch their sodium intake.
One of my Nan's favorite snacks was salt sandwiches.
Her idea of nutrition was probably different to yours, but
she'd get a piece of bread, slather on some butter, sprinkle
(14:43):
it with salt, another piece of bread, and she'd enjoy that
immensely. I can't say it's overly
appealing, but she did at one point have to watch her salt and
I imagine if she had lived long enough, perhaps her doctor would
have recommended MSG sandwiches instead.
But even if the doctor had, she was part of the generation that
was told MSG was the devil. So you know, it's hard to change
that kind of baked in perception.
(15:03):
Even now you still have restaurants around the world
saying we proudly cook with no MSG.
I was looking at some of the spices in my cupboard this
morning and two of them have no MSG stamped on them very
proudly. And I that kind of puts me off
that brand. The fact that that stigma has
stuck around for so long kind ofspeaks to ignorance and
prejudice, right? Fear of chemicals, fear of
foreign food, fear of other people, anyone who doesn't look
(15:24):
like you. Psychology around discrimination
and racism and xenophobia is obviously more complicated and
it's definitely its own episode with a proper expert, but it's
pretty evident that othering andpointing the finger is a very
effective way of firing people up and changing the narrative.
Today there is a counter movement which is quite cool.
Asian American chefs and writersare reclaiming MSG as part of
their culinary identity. They're pointing out the
(15:46):
hypocrisy that parmesan and soy sauce are praised with their
flavour and yet Chinese food is demonized for the same
ingredient. TikTok cooks are sprinkling MSG
on things. They're calling it Umami Dust,
which is a way better name that they should 100% have gone with
originally. And maybe we wouldn't be talking
about it right now, but younger audiences are seeing it in this
format. They're seeing it spoken about
in a positive way so they will not be as easily mislead as the
(16:09):
billions of us were. Now this story of MSG is
becoming more well known, probably because of how bizarre
parts of it are. But it's a neat little example
of how ignorance leads to huge shifts and everything from
business and culture to law and regulations.
That's why taking a stand against misinformation does not
make you unreasonable. You're awesome.
If you wanted to worry about food, there are much better
options to choose from. The lack of fibre in the average
(16:31):
person's diet and how there is astrong link to bowel cancer and
some other pretty horrible issues.
Just how bad sugary drinks like Coke are actually for you.
Like they are much worse than you think.
It's not just the sugar, it's also how you consume it.
Or if you want a really juicy one.
How superfoods are making staplefoods unaffordable for the
communities that depend on them around the world.
All in the name of Instagram. That was last week's episode, if
(16:53):
you missed it. So because why are we all scared
of MSG? Because of bad actors, bad
faith, and really bad science. Next week, I'm talking all about
germ warfare because you know how much I love microbiology.
But it's perhaps a bit differentto what you're expecting because
I'll be talking about all the people who don't believe they
exist because this is a whole thing.
So I will see you next week, Kyodo Katiaki.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist
It’s 1996 in rural North Carolina, and an oddball crew makes history when they pull off America’s third largest cash heist. But it’s all downhill from there. Join host Johnny Knoxville as he unspools a wild and woolly tale about a group of regular ‘ol folks who risked it all for a chance at a better life. CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist answers the question: what would you do with 17.3 million dollars? The answer includes diamond rings, mansions, velvet Elvis paintings, plus a run for the border, murder-for-hire-plots, and FBI busts.