August 30, 2016 • 54 mins
In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe explore the history and science of MSG and explore just why we demonized it for so long.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how stupworks
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
(00:23):
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 Uh, of those substances that you mentioned, only some
of those are my favorites. So um yeah, I'm I'm
(00:46):
I'm 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 myths and website called
Mercola that is about MSG, the food additive MSG. You've
(01:07):
often 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,
(01:28):
worse than drugs, but surely 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 simuda, which is the the drug that
(01:51):
they that some individuals in the Done universe take and
they listen to some sort of weird music semunda music
that can only really be processed. 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, and you know, a
(02:15):
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? Alright, So growing up I was
I don't remember ever being privy to any direct anti
MSG messaging, Like, nobody have me watch a video, nobody
(02:37):
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. And
(02:59):
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 allow 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 discuss in this episode, there's there's virtually nothing
(03:21):
to any of this. Uh, this fearmongering, decades worth of
fear mongering, but it 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.
(03:46):
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 restaurant 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
(04:09):
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
(04:30):
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 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 tastes better. Yes,
(04:53):
that's what the salt, pepper, everything else like that. Just
the act the art of cooking is, Hey, how can
we make this particular ular 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.
(05:14):
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,
(05:35):
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 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 college
(05:58):
tend to be yeah, 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 called accent.
(06:21):
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 ingredients are actually the one
ingredient in this food flavor alarm clock was monosodium glutamate MSG,
(06:42):
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. Monosodium glutamate
(07:02):
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 with the t roll and
monosodium glutamate. But they it's really an attempt to rebrand
it right instead of MSG, because MSG sounds I mean,
(07:24):
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 we'll 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. Taste
(07:47):
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. Uh. Ways we can. We can reclaim this
chemical UH for our tasting pleasure. Right, so we should
go back and tell the story of MSG, Like where
(08:09):
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 dachi seaweed soup that has a
(08:33):
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 umami exactly what
it was. But ou, mommy, what is it? It's that
deeply savory, meaty flavor. It's not the same as something
(08:57):
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,
umammy and ummmy is such a wonderful one word. The
script is just rolling off your tongue once you've tasted it. Uh,
(09:18):
the two just go perfectly together. Uh. But yeah, you
kind of have to have tasted you mommy, and most
of us have, uh 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
is able to do was to pinpoint the chemical cause
of this flavor, which was this substance that we now
(09:40):
know as glutamate yes um. In particular, he pinpoint pinpointed
glutamic acid. So this is an amino 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 glutam mat one of
(10:01):
the most abundant neurotransmitters 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,
(10:22):
and certainly if you're having some of the more processed
food items out there, various potato chips, etcetera, you're 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.
(10:45):
All that I Keeda did here is he took that
naturally occurring 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 Uh, basically
What he did here is he figured out he could
synthesize the molecule by first extracting the glutamate from seaweed
(11:08):
and the mixing it with water and just common table
salt to stabilize the compound. Thus, mono sodium glutamate M
s G corn, 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
(11:28):
weird magical ritual involved. This is just salt and glutamate
that 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
(11:49):
quote tears holes in your tongue to make you taste
things more intensely. I can't remember where I came across this,
and I know I passed on this piece of false
information to peep whole plenty of time, like it tears
a hole in the fabric of our reality and then
demon taste from another universe kind of I never heard
anything quite that extreme, but I do remember hearing that
(12:10):
it like opens up the taste buds with the with
the emphasis being that it's doing so in an unnatural way,
in 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
(12:34):
to season it. Like you could put parmesan cheese or
or 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 this umami flavor without
adding the other ingredients, right, I mean basically, especially now
with with umm A, I feel like it's been very
(12:54):
much a favorite keyword among foodies of the past decade,
uh 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
(13:15):
is rolled out by the Japanese company uh A Gino Moto,
and it it's you have this instant crystalline powder. That's
that's ready to just sprinkle on your food, and it's
an instant hit. Of course. Uh. They they patent it
it in nineteen o nine, and today the form that
you encounter tends to be made from beats and corn.
(13:37):
It's known as MSG in the States, but Akita's name
still sticks elsewhere in the world. A geno moto or
essence of taste. You can still buy with under that
name at various you know, any 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
(13:58):
like he was tremendously sick, scessful with this. It was
apparently fabulously wealthy, uh in the early twenty century. Japan
died 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
(14:20):
taking over the world. Well, we will answer that question
right after we get back from this break and we're back.
So Robert MSG glutamate, big flavor success story in the
history of of food flavoring and additives. Yes, big, big
(14:40):
flavor success story as a huge absolutely huge it. Yeah
it it is immediately a hit just throughout Asia. Allows
that allows people to give a meaty taste to non
meaty dishes. I've read that it was especially a popular
among Buddhists abstaining from meat during periodic absence periods various
meat related fasts and uh in America too, and in Canada.
(15:05):
Elsewhere in the world it really gains popularity. I mean,
you especially have to look back to World 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
(15:26):
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 uh
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
(15:50):
were essentially priming ourselves for such an advancement through the
home economics philosophy. So there was recently a wonderful um
interview on NPRS Fresh Air uh with Terry Gross married
culinary historians Jane Ziegelmann and Andy co appeared to promote
their book A Square Meal, the Culinary History of the
(16:10):
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, they were not really into flavor.
They were 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
(16:33):
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 ractions, often in bizarre dishes, uh,
such as 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 pas vinegar,
(16:56):
and lemon juice. So so oh man, these these old
recipes you see from like magazines from the World War
two era, or 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
(17:17):
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 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
(17:37):
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
were creating all these strange recipes to make the best
out of the available rations they could have, they could
have found a lot of great, healthy and flavorful ways
(17:58):
to get the most out of those rations if they
turn 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 not just
talking about um, you know, certainly Asian immigrants, but even
like Italian immigrants, Um, they they had they had various
(18:20):
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 at One of the examples
they point out is is using dandelion greens. That the
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
(18:43):
more like gelatine and meat and stuff. Yeah. Well, us
who live in big cities in America today were 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, a Mexican restaurant, a Thai restaurant, and an
Italian restaurant and all that, And it can be kind
of hard for us to imagine what it was like
(19:04):
for 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 I remember, I think there
are stories of this with uh grandparents on my on
(19:26):
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 there, ordered an American
hamburger and complain for the rest of his life that
(19:48):
they served him at quote a hot hamburger. Uh. 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 these more flavorful options,
these exotic options, these new options, and you know, it's
(20:11):
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
uh inclined to enjoy those that new baraga flavors. But
of course, as we have warned you at the end
of this great MSG success story, did come some backlash. Yeah,
(20:34):
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
they become a standard part of the industrialization of food.
But also just like just just cooking in your kitchen.
And then we enter a period in the in the
(20:55):
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 and cooking
in general. I mean, I don't think I try to
(21:16):
blame Rachel Carson for irrational chemophobia. Indirectly, it might have
had this unintended influence. It starts this, It starts as
a narrative in 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.
But but as we all know, a little information, uh
(21:40):
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
New England Journal of Medicine in nineteen sixty eight. All right,
(22:01):
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,
more of the spicy punch of Central Chinese cooking, or
(22:22):
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, wheat north.
So he's saying, all right, eight at this North Chinese
food restaurant, and that resulted in quote numbness at the
back of the neck, gradually radiating to both arms and
(22:44):
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
have and paid a price. Yeah you you gorge yourself
(23:06):
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 the one secret ingredient
that caused it. Now, in UH, in Robert holmen Quoc's letter,
(23:26):
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 um as
Ian Moseby points out in his his his excellent paper
(23:48):
that Wanton Soup Headache, the 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 Human croc as then I guess,
like a croc of of h. I guess that's a
(24:10):
play on Homeman quak Homan quak. Yeah. Then 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,
(24:32):
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 delis 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,
(24:53):
I have a hypothesis that I think maybe we should
I don't know if we were tricky enough to test this,
but sometimes time 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 have you ever notice how after you eat
(25:13):
uh lamb 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,
(25:34):
you know, and 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 define the answer on our own
recollection and saying, yeah, that's happened to me. I did
feel a little weird after that last big meal I
(25:56):
ate 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
(26:17):
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,
(26:40):
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 Vick and pharmacologist Herbert H. Schomberg at
Albert Einstein College of Medicine published an article in Science
on February first, nineteen sixty nine. In this experiment, they
(27:03):
administered 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
(27:28):
there that there's their symptoms following consuming Chinese. Wait a minute,
you said administered MSG orally and intravenously. How many foods
can you think of that are fine when you eat
them at them all the time, but if you were
to administer them intravenous lee would be a big problem. Yeah, exactly,
(27:51):
I think with me up to the soy sauce ivy indeed,
and that's uh, that's got That's one of the problems
that continues 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
(28:14):
just straight MSG? And then on top of that, are
you shooting up with MSG something that nobody nobody is doing.
It is not on the menu at any restaurant, 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,
(28:35):
and there's 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
(28:56):
like a had a couple of decades head start anybody?
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 Mosby pointed out in that article. As early as
(29:16):
nineteen sixty nine, fifty 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
(29:37):
kosher delis. Well, it sounds 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 other studies also came out pretty early to sort
of spin this, uh further out of control. In May
nine sixty nine, psychiatrist John W. Only published a study
(30:01):
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 schaumberger the doom from the previous study.
(30:22):
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 I've read in multiple critiques,
(30:46):
a lot of these early studies of MSG were just
plagued with flawed methodology. So I've seen claims that they
of course 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 it.
I've seen some reviews that also claimed that early studies
were just not properly blinded. You tell people like, hey,
(31:08):
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. The cinnamon challenge. Yeah, cinnamon
challenge is another one. Like these are both substances where
(31:30):
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
all the accounts I've read of nutmeg induced um uh,
(31:53):
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. Uh.
I mean, I don't know that. Basically, bottom line, you
take you take too much salt, you're gonna hurt yourself.
You drink too much water, you're gonna hurt yourself. And
(32:15):
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, not necessarily about the long term effects or
the supposed Chinese restaurants in Rome, but I was like,
(32:37):
what's the acute toxicity of this stuff? Surely it's a
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 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
(33:03):
effects in 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, a typical Chinese restaurant meal contains between ten
and fifteen hundred milligrams of MSG per one hundred grams.
I guess that's the hundred grams of serving. The oral
(33:23):
dose that is lethal to fifty percent of subjects LD
fifty and rats and mice is fifteen thousand to eighteen
thousand milligrams per kilogram of body weight. That's fifteen to
eighteen grams of this stuff for every kilogram of your body.
By comparison, salt, you know, table salt sodium chloride has
(33:46):
an l D fifty of three thousand milligrams per kilogram
of body weights. So as far as acute poisoning goes,
the l D fifty of MSG is more than five
times greater than that of regular table salt. You can
kill 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 kilogram adult,
(34:09):
UH 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,
that's that is a lot of out of accent, certainly.
I mean, how how much is in the continuity you
brought in here? Let's see this is two ounces or
(34:30):
fifty six grams, six grams to one thousand and eighty
I mean, you'd beating a lot of these, all right.
So there's a lot of back and forth that takes
place after these initial studies. Dozens of studies come out
in the nineties seventies, Some confirm, some contest on these findings,
(34:51):
the harshest critics accusing the 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
at for short term uh CRS symptoms. All over the
studies were inconclusive and UH, A strong vein if it's
(35:12):
not Harthie obvious, a strong vein of xenophobia runs through
all of this um and any and Mosby 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 is
is so harmful doesn't really resonate as much um in Canada,
UH and certainly not outside of Chinese restaurants in the
(35:34):
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 misusing it.
Chinese Americans, Chinese immigrants are misusing MSG. Yeah, 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,
(35:56):
they can't be trusted. Yeah, clearly they're they're tricking us
into loving their food some 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 of like CRS were
virtually unknown in China and Japan. Uh. No Chinese cooking
(36:18):
was somehow excessive or bizarre. Both of those UH descriptive
terms were thrown out in some of these these papers,
enough to make MSG seem like a problem along with
the idea that the MSG was used in these establishments
to perhaps conceal inferior food. That's another llobl was that oh,
well they're they're they're cooking bad food. And I think
(36:39):
I got that mean when I was a kid. These
Chinese restaurants they use cheap ingredients 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 restaurants syndrome become. Again, they kind
of run the gamut of anything you might complain of
(37:00):
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 reigned from you know,
mild headache to depression to sexual arousal and quote an
irresistible urge to undress. Now that may have been a
(37:20):
misinterpretation of people unbuckling their belts keeping a large meal
at a Chinese food restaurant. Yeah, if you eat an
enormous plate of General Sace chicken. Once it became established
in the nineteen seventies as the the the American very
with the with the emphasis on American Chinese dish. Uh yeah,
you might have to undress a little bit to make
(37:41):
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. I'm sure
they don't judge you, you know, they're just they're just
happy that I'm there. I'm sure, but but but but still,
(38:02):
they're just to 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,
(38:26):
there's 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 as their political opinions. Oh yeah,
and it doesn't help either that, you know, the scientific
(38:48):
studies continue to look into the the benefits, the pros
and cons of everything from wine to coffee, to salt
to various uh, you know, various types of calories. I
mean it it's hard to keep up, right, because one
thing that's seen, there's a study that concert and there's
one thing is bad for you one year, and then
you just wait a few years and it's flip flopped
(39:08):
in another study that manages to rise to the surface
of media attention. Yeah, and I think you know, we
should also hedge 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
(39:31):
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 if a
(39:52):
racial stereotype pro wrestling manager were to throw it into
your eyes, that would be harmful. But but it's 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 with
(40:14):
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
(40:34):
Societies for Experimental Biology UH and an international research review
in nine seven 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
(40:55):
additives out there. People have differing reactions to certain things,
but but yeah, you'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,
(41:18):
and more of them are popping up these days as
more people come to understand the 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,
(41:40):
I mean it's even if every we're not putting MSG
directly in, 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 know, 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
(42:01):
the 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 u. 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
(42:25):
found in products like cantuna. Vegetable broth is listed as
an ingredient. It contains hydralicized soy protein, can 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 convenience store. Grab a tube of
pringles or a bologna sandwich, and glutamic acid is most
(42:49):
likely lurking there somewhere. This whole thing about the labeling
of MSG 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 been genetically
(43:10):
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 don't know,
(43:32):
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, it's
(43:54):
almost as if the government is telling you, like, this
is something that's maybe dangerous and should be concerned, when
there's no indication that's the case. And the same thing
is true 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 kind of
(44:16):
special label, it stigmatizes it in a way that you know,
it 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 word
(44:37):
where we're ignoring the fact that, of course all food
is made of chemicals. We are chemical beings. We live
in a chemical world. Um, our terms have a way
of getting ahead of us and 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
(45:00):
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, these we
(45:21):
know that these chemical names bring a lot of stigma
with them. Like, here's a good one. Do you know
the U I U P A C name for lactose
milk sugar U lactose milk sugar, just milk sugar, lactose.
It's beta de galacto pyrando sill one four D glucose. Oh,
(45:42):
that sounds like something that would infect an astronaut when
they landed 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 the it can allow people to consume it without
(46:02):
this chemical stigma. Right, So you just called the hydrogen
monoxide water. Of course the hydrogen 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 rebranding
(46:24):
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 chopstips sticks here.
If you want to get to you know, semi authentic. Well,
let's cut a couple of pieces of avocado here and
(46:46):
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 slice here. It's good. It's in buttery, definitely,
definitely right, Avocado is always good. Now I'm going to
(47:06):
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 one
(47:28):
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
(47:50):
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. That's what we need
if we 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? I think that
(48:12):
my normal, like 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. That's the yoga
(48:34):
and you talking. Is there a special word for this
naked yoga? Naked yoga? Uh, there's like hot yoga. I
don't know. Yeah there, I mean, I've seen it. You
can go to naked yoga classes here in Atlanta. Um,
I'd never be the one, but you can go. I
mean it. Uh, you know issues of um, you know,
(48:54):
shared nudity, nudity in a semi public and environment aside.
I'd like, if you want to really feel what your
body is doing and see what your body is doing
in these various poses, 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
(49:15):
better one. So the one I tried to do was savor.
Kind of makes sense. It's savory, put some savor on
your food. But we can see it an advertisement to
savor savor. My wife Rachel suggested, ummi salt. I think
that's perfect. That's the best one. I mean, I think
to all the fancy salts you can buy the day,
like the Himalayan pink salt. At our house we have
(49:37):
this like mushroom infused salt, saltry salt. Yeah, so why
not just marketed as ou mom a 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.
(49:58):
Is it are you defineding it by you know, it's
it's exotic aspects and and then drawing in whatever you're
your opinions are regarding the 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
(50:21):
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 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. Yea, like schiel sounds great, right, it's fun
(50:45):
that doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, but it's a
fun word sounds better than like meat that has been
beaten and fried and smothered. 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 UH really drives
that home. Now. I know, in the wake of this
(51:05):
episode a lot of people are going to be very
angry with us because we we have not accurately described
how all the scientists are bought off shills and how
h 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
(51:29):
fake the rapture so that believers would would ignore the
second of the savior. You're you're getting us back into
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
(51:52):
Trek Mission New York. Yeah, that's gonna go from September
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
(52:13):
be fun. It's gonna be a little star treky, but
not like so star trek e that that you're going
to know all the answers already. Personally, I'm afraid that
we are not star treky enough for the start treking,
just the right level of Star trekking us. You know.
It's like people go into a dessert bar, right and
we are offering something where people look at and they're like, huh,
(52:33):
well that I didn't expect to see that in the
dessert bar. 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 butternut 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's seems like the place to be
(52:55):
because tons of tons of gas, tons of cool panels
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.
(53:16):
All the joys of a new website. Uh. And also
you will find links out to our very social media
accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, uh, Tumbler, Instagram. We are
blow the Mind on both on all pretty much all
of those. But you can also generally find us on
those platforms by just searching for Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
And as always, if you want to get in touch
with this directly, you can email us at blow the
(53:36):
Mind at how stuff works dot com for more on
this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
works dot com? Or four? Start about the first f
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how stupworks
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
(00:23):
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 Uh, of those substances that you mentioned, only some
of those are my favorites. So um yeah, I'm I'm
(00:46):
I'm 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 myths and website called
Mercola that is about MSG, the food additive MSG. You've
(01:07):
often 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,
(01:28):
worse than drugs, but surely 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 simuda, which is the the drug that
(01:51):
they that some individuals in the Done universe take and
they listen to some sort of weird music semunda music
that can only really be processed. 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, and you know, a
(02:15):
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? Alright, So growing up I was
I don't remember ever being privy to any direct anti
MSG messaging, Like, nobody have me watch a video, nobody
(02:37):
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. And
(02:59):
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 allow 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 discuss in this episode, there's there's virtually nothing
(03:21):
to any of this. Uh, this fearmongering, decades worth of
fear mongering, but it 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.
(03:46):
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 restaurant 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
(04:09):
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
(04:30):
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 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 tastes better. Yes,
(04:53):
that's what the salt, pepper, everything else like that. Just
the act the art of cooking is, Hey, how can
we make this particular ular 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.
(05:14):
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,
(05:35):
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 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 college
(05:58):
tend to be yeah, 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 called accent.
(06:21):
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 ingredients are actually the one
ingredient in this food flavor alarm clock was monosodium glutamate MSG,
(06:42):
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. Monosodium glutamate
(07:02):
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 with the t roll and
monosodium glutamate. But they it's really an attempt to rebrand
it right instead of MSG, because MSG sounds I mean,
(07:24):
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 we'll 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. Taste
(07:47):
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. Uh. Ways we can. We can reclaim this
chemical UH for our tasting pleasure. Right, so we should
go back and tell the story of MSG, Like where
(08:09):
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 dachi seaweed soup that has a
(08:33):
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 umami exactly what
it was. But ou, mommy, what is it? It's that
deeply savory, meaty flavor. It's not the same as something
(08:57):
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,
umammy and ummmy is such a wonderful one word. The
script is just rolling off your tongue once you've tasted it. Uh,
(09:18):
the two just go perfectly together. Uh. But yeah, you
kind of have to have tasted you mommy, and most
of us have, uh 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
is able to do was to pinpoint the chemical cause
of this flavor, which was this substance that we now
(09:40):
know as glutamate yes um. In particular, he pinpoint pinpointed
glutamic acid. So this is an amino 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 glutam mat one of
(10:01):
the most abundant neurotransmitters 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,
(10:22):
and certainly if you're having some of the more processed
food items out there, various potato chips, etcetera, you're 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.
(10:45):
All that I Keeda did here is he took that
naturally occurring 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 Uh, basically
What he did here is he figured out he could
synthesize the molecule by first extracting the glutamate from seaweed
(11:08):
and the mixing it with water and just common table
salt to stabilize the compound. Thus, mono sodium glutamate M
s G corn, 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
(11:28):
weird magical ritual involved. This is just salt and glutamate
that 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
(11:49):
quote tears holes in your tongue to make you taste
things more intensely. I can't remember where I came across this,
and I know I passed on this piece of false
information to peep whole plenty of time, like it tears
a hole in the fabric of our reality and then
demon taste from another universe kind of I never heard
anything quite that extreme, but I do remember hearing that
(12:10):
it like opens up the taste buds with the with
the emphasis being that it's doing so in an unnatural way,
in 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
(12:34):
to season it. Like you could put parmesan cheese or
or 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 this umami flavor without
adding the other ingredients, right, I mean basically, especially now
with with umm A, I feel like it's been very
(12:54):
much a favorite keyword among foodies of the past decade,
uh 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
(13:15):
is rolled out by the Japanese company uh A Gino Moto,
and it it's you have this instant crystalline powder. That's
that's ready to just sprinkle on your food, and it's
an instant hit. Of course. Uh. They they patent it
it in nineteen o nine, and today the form that
you encounter tends to be made from beats and corn.
(13:37):
It's known as MSG in the States, but Akita's name
still sticks elsewhere in the world. A geno moto or
essence of taste. You can still buy with under that
name at various you know, any 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
(13:58):
like he was tremendously sick, scessful with this. It was
apparently fabulously wealthy, uh in the early twenty century. Japan
died 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
(14:20):
taking over the world. Well, we will answer that question
right after we get back from this break and we're back.
So Robert MSG glutamate, big flavor success story in the
history of of food flavoring and additives. Yes, big, big
(14:40):
flavor success story as a huge absolutely huge it. Yeah
it it is immediately a hit just throughout Asia. Allows
that allows people to give a meaty taste to non
meaty dishes. I've read that it was especially a popular
among Buddhists abstaining from meat during periodic absence periods various
meat related fasts and uh in America too, and in Canada.
(15:05):
Elsewhere in the world it really gains popularity. I mean,
you especially have to look back to World 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
(15:26):
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 uh
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
(15:50):
were essentially priming ourselves for such an advancement through the
home economics philosophy. So there was recently a wonderful um
interview on NPRS Fresh Air uh with Terry Gross married
culinary historians Jane Ziegelmann and Andy co appeared to promote
their book A Square Meal, the Culinary History of the
(16:10):
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, they were not really into flavor.
They were 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
(16:33):
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 ractions, often in bizarre dishes, uh,
such as 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 pas vinegar,
(16:56):
and lemon juice. So so oh man, these these old
recipes you see from like magazines from the World War
two era, or 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
(17:17):
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 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
(17:37):
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
were creating all these strange recipes to make the best
out of the available rations they could have, they could
have found a lot of great, healthy and flavorful ways
(17:58):
to get the most out of those rations if they
turn 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 not just
talking about um, you know, certainly Asian immigrants, but even
like Italian immigrants, Um, they they had they had various
(18:20):
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 at One of the examples
they point out is is using dandelion greens. That the
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
(18:43):
more like gelatine and meat and stuff. Yeah. Well, us
who live in big cities in America today were 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, a Mexican restaurant, a Thai restaurant, and an
Italian restaurant and all that, And it can be kind
of hard for us to imagine what it was like
(19:04):
for 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 I remember, I think there
are stories of this with uh grandparents on my on
(19:26):
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 there, ordered an American
hamburger and complain for the rest of his life that
(19:48):
they served him at quote a hot hamburger. Uh. 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 these more flavorful options,
these exotic options, these new options, and you know, it's
(20:11):
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
uh inclined to enjoy those that new baraga flavors. But
of course, as we have warned you at the end
of this great MSG success story, did come some backlash. Yeah,
(20:34):
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
they become a standard part of the industrialization of food.
But also just like just just cooking in your kitchen.
And then we enter a period in the in the
(20:55):
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 and cooking
in general. I mean, I don't think I try to
(21:16):
blame Rachel Carson for irrational chemophobia. Indirectly, it might have
had this unintended influence. It starts this, It starts as
a narrative in 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.
But but as we all know, a little information, uh
(21:40):
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
New England Journal of Medicine in nineteen sixty eight. All right,
(22:01):
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,
more of the spicy punch of Central Chinese cooking, or
(22:22):
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, wheat north.
So he's saying, all right, eight at this North Chinese
food restaurant, and that resulted in quote numbness at the
back of the neck, gradually radiating to both arms and
(22:44):
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
have and paid a price. Yeah you you gorge yourself
(23:06):
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 the one secret ingredient
that caused it. Now, in UH, in Robert holmen Quoc's letter,
(23:26):
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 um as
Ian Moseby points out in his his his excellent paper
(23:48):
that Wanton Soup Headache, the 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 Human croc as then I guess,
like a croc of of h. I guess that's a
(24:10):
play on Homeman quak Homan quak. Yeah. Then 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,
(24:32):
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 delis 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,
(24:53):
I have a hypothesis that I think maybe we should
I don't know if we were tricky enough to test this,
but sometimes time 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 have you ever notice how after you eat
(25:13):
uh lamb 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,
(25:34):
you know, and 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 define the answer on our own
recollection and saying, yeah, that's happened to me. I did
feel a little weird after that last big meal I
(25:56):
ate 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
(26:17):
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,
(26:40):
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 Vick and pharmacologist Herbert H. Schomberg at
Albert Einstein College of Medicine published an article in Science
on February first, nineteen sixty nine. In this experiment, they
(27:03):
administered 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
(27:28):
there that there's their symptoms following consuming Chinese. Wait a minute,
you said administered MSG orally and intravenously. How many foods
can you think of that are fine when you eat
them at them all the time, but if you were
to administer them intravenous lee would be a big problem. Yeah, exactly,
(27:51):
I think with me up to the soy sauce ivy indeed,
and that's uh, that's got That's one of the problems
that continues 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
(28:14):
just straight MSG? And then on top of that, are
you shooting up with MSG something that nobody nobody is doing.
It is not on the menu at any restaurant, 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,
(28:35):
and there's 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
(28:56):
like a had a couple of decades head start anybody?
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 Mosby pointed out in that article. As early as
(29:16):
nineteen sixty nine, fifty 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
(29:37):
kosher delis. Well, it sounds 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 other studies also came out pretty early to sort
of spin this, uh further out of control. In May
nine sixty nine, psychiatrist John W. Only published a study
(30:01):
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 schaumberger the doom from the previous study.
(30:22):
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 I've read in multiple critiques,
(30:46):
a lot of these early studies of MSG were just
plagued with flawed methodology. So I've seen claims that they
of course 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 it.
I've seen some reviews that also claimed that early studies
were just not properly blinded. You tell people like, hey,
(31:08):
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. The cinnamon challenge. Yeah, cinnamon
challenge is another one. Like these are both substances where
(31:30):
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
all the accounts I've read of nutmeg induced um uh,
(31:53):
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. Uh.
I mean, I don't know that. Basically, bottom line, you
take you take too much salt, you're gonna hurt yourself.
You drink too much water, you're gonna hurt yourself. And
(32:15):
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, not necessarily about the long term effects or
the supposed Chinese restaurants in Rome, but I was like,
(32:37):
what's the acute toxicity of this stuff? Surely it's a
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 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
(33:03):
effects in 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, a typical Chinese restaurant meal contains between ten
and fifteen hundred milligrams of MSG per one hundred grams.
I guess that's the hundred grams of serving. The oral
(33:23):
dose that is lethal to fifty percent of subjects LD
fifty and rats and mice is fifteen thousand to eighteen
thousand milligrams per kilogram of body weight. That's fifteen to
eighteen grams of this stuff for every kilogram of your body.
By comparison, salt, you know, table salt sodium chloride has
(33:46):
an l D fifty of three thousand milligrams per kilogram
of body weights. So as far as acute poisoning goes,
the l D fifty of MSG is more than five
times greater than that of regular table salt. You can
kill 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 kilogram adult,
(34:09):
UH 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,
that's that is a lot of out of accent, certainly.
I mean, how how much is in the continuity you
brought in here? Let's see this is two ounces or
(34:30):
fifty six grams, six grams to one thousand and eighty
I mean, you'd beating a lot of these, all right.
So there's a lot of back and forth that takes
place after these initial studies. Dozens of studies come out
in the nineties seventies, Some confirm, some contest on these findings,
(34:51):
the harshest critics accusing the 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
at for short term uh CRS symptoms. All over the
studies were inconclusive and UH, A strong vein if it's
(35:12):
not Harthie obvious, a strong vein of xenophobia runs through
all of this um and any and Mosby 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 is
is so harmful doesn't really resonate as much um in Canada,
UH and certainly not outside of Chinese restaurants in the
(35:34):
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 misusing it.
Chinese Americans, Chinese immigrants are misusing MSG. Yeah, 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,
(35:56):
they can't be trusted. Yeah, clearly they're they're tricking us
into loving their food some 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 of like CRS were
virtually unknown in China and Japan. Uh. No Chinese cooking
(36:18):
was somehow excessive or bizarre. Both of those UH descriptive
terms were thrown out in some of these these papers,
enough to make MSG seem like a problem along with
the idea that the MSG was used in these establishments
to perhaps conceal inferior food. That's another llobl was that oh,
well they're they're they're cooking bad food. And I think
(36:39):
I got that mean when I was a kid. These
Chinese restaurants they use cheap ingredients 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 restaurants syndrome become. Again, they kind
of run the gamut of anything you might complain of
(37:00):
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 reigned from you know,
mild headache to depression to sexual arousal and quote an
irresistible urge to undress. Now that may have been a
(37:20):
misinterpretation of people unbuckling their belts keeping a large meal
at a Chinese food restaurant. Yeah, if you eat an
enormous plate of General Sace chicken. Once it became established
in the nineteen seventies as the the the American very
with the with the emphasis on American Chinese dish. Uh yeah,
you might have to undress a little bit to make
(37:41):
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. I'm sure
they don't judge you, you know, they're just they're just
happy that I'm there. I'm sure, but but but but still,
(38:02):
they're just to 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,
(38:26):
there's 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 as their political opinions. Oh yeah,
and it doesn't help either that, you know, the scientific
(38:48):
studies continue to look into the the benefits, the pros
and cons of everything from wine to coffee, to salt
to various uh, you know, various types of calories. I
mean it it's hard to keep up, right, because one
thing that's seen, there's a study that concert and there's
one thing is bad for you one year, and then
you just wait a few years and it's flip flopped
(39:08):
in another study that manages to rise to the surface
of media attention. Yeah, and I think you know, we
should also hedge 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
(39:31):
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 if a
(39:52):
racial stereotype pro wrestling manager were to throw it into
your eyes, that would be harmful. But but it's 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 with
(40:14):
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
(40:34):
Societies for Experimental Biology UH and an international research review
in nine seven 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
(40:55):
additives out there. People have differing reactions to certain things,
but but yeah, you'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,
(41:18):
and more of them are popping up these days as
more people come to understand the 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,
(41:40):
I mean it's even if every we're not putting MSG
directly in, 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 know, 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
(42:01):
the 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 u. 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
(42:25):
found in products like cantuna. Vegetable broth is listed as
an ingredient. It contains hydralicized soy protein, can 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 convenience store. Grab a tube of
pringles or a bologna sandwich, and glutamic acid is most
(42:49):
likely lurking there somewhere. This whole thing about the labeling
of MSG 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 been genetically
(43:10):
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 don't know,
(43:32):
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, it's
(43:54):
almost as if the government is telling you, like, this
is something that's maybe dangerous and should be concerned, when
there's no indication that's the case. And the same thing
is true 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 kind of
(44:16):
special label, it stigmatizes it in a way that you know,
it 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 word
(44:37):
where we're ignoring the fact that, of course all food
is made of chemicals. We are chemical beings. We live
in a chemical world. Um, our terms have a way
of getting ahead of us and 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
(45:00):
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, these we
(45:21):
know that these chemical names bring a lot of stigma
with them. Like, here's a good one. Do you know
the U I U P A C name for lactose
milk sugar U lactose milk sugar, just milk sugar, lactose.
It's beta de galacto pyrando sill one four D glucose. Oh,
(45:42):
that sounds like something that would infect an astronaut when
they landed 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 the it can allow people to consume it without
(46:02):
this chemical stigma. Right, So you just called the hydrogen
monoxide water. Of course the hydrogen 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 rebranding
(46:24):
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 chopstips sticks here.
If you want to get to you know, semi authentic. Well,
let's cut a couple of pieces of avocado here and
(46:46):
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 slice here. It's good. It's in buttery, definitely,
definitely right, Avocado is always good. Now I'm going to
(47:06):
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 one
(47:28):
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
(47:50):
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. That's what we need
if we 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? I think that
(48:12):
my normal, like 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. That's the yoga
(48:34):
and you talking. Is there a special word for this
naked yoga? Naked yoga? Uh, there's like hot yoga. I
don't know. Yeah there, I mean, I've seen it. You
can go to naked yoga classes here in Atlanta. Um,
I'd never be the one, but you can go. I
mean it. Uh, you know issues of um, you know,
(48:54):
shared nudity, nudity in a semi public and environment aside.
I'd like, if you want to really feel what your
body is doing and see what your body is doing
in these various poses, 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
(49:15):
better one. So the one I tried to do was savor.
Kind of makes sense. It's savory, put some savor on
your food. But we can see it an advertisement to
savor savor. My wife Rachel suggested, ummi salt. I think
that's perfect. That's the best one. I mean, I think
to all the fancy salts you can buy the day,
like the Himalayan pink salt. At our house we have
(49:37):
this like mushroom infused salt, saltry salt. Yeah, so why
not just marketed as ou mom a 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.
(49:58):
Is it are you defineding it by you know, it's
it's exotic aspects and and then drawing in whatever you're
your opinions are regarding the 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
(50:21):
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 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. Yea, like schiel sounds great, right, it's fun
(50:45):
that doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, but it's a
fun word sounds better than like meat that has been
beaten and fried and smothered. 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 UH really drives
that home. Now. I know, in the wake of this
(51:05):
episode a lot of people are going to be very
angry with us because we we have not accurately described
how all the scientists are bought off shills and how
h 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
(51:29):
fake the rapture so that believers would would ignore the
second of the savior. You're you're getting us back into
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
(51:52):
Trek Mission New York. Yeah, that's gonna go from September
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
(52:13):
be fun. It's gonna be a little star treky, but
not like so star trek e that that you're going
to know all the answers already. Personally, I'm afraid that
we are not star treky enough for the start treking,
just the right level of Star trekking us. You know.
It's like people go into a dessert bar, right and
we are offering something where people look at and they're like, huh,
(52:33):
well that I didn't expect to see that in the
dessert bar. 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 butternut 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's seems like the place to be
(52:55):
because tons of tons of gas, tons of cool panels
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.
(53:16):
All the joys of a new website. Uh. And also
you will find links out to our very social media
accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, uh, Tumbler, Instagram. We are
blow the Mind on both on all pretty much all
of those. But you can also generally find us on
those platforms by just searching for Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
And as always, if you want to get in touch
with this directly, you can email us at blow the
(53:36):
Mind at how stuff works dot com for more on
this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
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