Comment by 7bit
4 days ago
"known" is the wrong word. Laymen know a lot of things, like ingesting lead, radium, mercury and arsenic. Up until a couple of years ago, people "knew" that one glass of wine a day was healthy, when infact every drop is poisonous to the body.
In reverse, people thought (and too many still "know") that MSG and pasteurization is bad.
Don't use the word know, when in fact you mean "assume".
Is MSG not bad for you in the way aspartame is not bad for you? I totally get that MSG is naturally present in dashi but the chemistry of dashi (a very messy and complex mix of substances) vs purified msg is going to be different, and the concentrations the japanese consume food containing dashi are very different to the way UPFs and chinese restaurants gratuitously smother your food in it. MSG is to many cuisines what butter is to western cuisine (ie moar is always bettah)
There’s no evidence linking MSG specifically with any chronic health issues and little reason to suspect there would be in healthy people at the quantities generally consumed. Funnily enough many people who are wary of MSG and try to avoid it would be better off looking at their sodium intake, which we know for sure has long term health risks.
I am someone who is sensitive to MSG and the new substitutes they put in food to replace it.
It is not "dangerous", and I think that is the problem with the messaging, but it does increase my anxiety, insomnia and fibromyalgia symptoms. And I also thing for most people it is fine, but it certainly does not work with my family's genetics. My mother had the same issue.
Many things in food now replace MSG. Any time you see a protein isolate, what they are isolating is the glutamate. Malted Barley Flour also contains high levels of glutamate and purines (like inosine) that work synergisticly with it to enhance flavor.
Glutamate is an excitatory neurotransmitter, and it makes your taste buds more "excited". My mouth tastes like metal whenever I have foods with glutamate. It is not pleasant for me at all.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9883458/
https://www.eurofins.com/media-centre/newsletters/food-newsl...
Well it seems pretty accepted that refined sugar is worse for you than consuming sugars locked up in fibrous fruits. From a similar intuition glutamates locked up in natural sources probably has a different bioavailability profile to refined MSG, incidental sodium intake notwithstanding.
In any case, everyone is different and catchall health advice lacks nuance. I have to very consciously consume more and more salt because I habitually cut it out to the point that I now suffer from hyponatremia especially as I exercise and sweat bucket loads.
salt is bad again?
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MSG is only bad for you because it makes things taste amazing so you are going to eat more than you actually should. Nothing wrong with butter btw.
As with most food stuffs if not consumed in moderation it can become a problem.
MSG is very safe in normal quantities with a similar safety profile to salt. You can drink MSG water to kill yourself but it’d be like drinking a gallon of seawater. It’s monosodium glutamate. Monosodium as in NaCl (table salt) and glutamate as in the amino acid and neurotransmitter. Once they disassociate in water, they’re both some of the most basic molecules used by all life, including for protein production.
A glass of wine a day is within epsilon of the most healthy possible option. You're making this out as if this is a big shift, but it isn't. There are just huge error bars on the measurements relative to the effect of the intervention.