MSG: Umami and Chinese Restaurant Syndrome

And Uh, of those substances that you mentioned, only some of those are my favorites. So um yeah, I'm I'm 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

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, 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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, 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. 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,

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 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. 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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,

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 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 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, 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.

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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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. 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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, 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 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, 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 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 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,

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 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 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, 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

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, 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 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 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 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 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. 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, 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, 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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,

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 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 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, 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 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

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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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, 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, 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 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 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

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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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. 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 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