The great MSG Hoax of 1968

[Bill in Oregon]

Was chatting about tri-tip roasts on another forum and I mentioned a favorite seasoning, a brand called Spade-L Ranch, which has a good share of MSG in it. This led to comments about the "Great MSG Hoax" foisted on America starting with a fake letter to the New England Journal of Medicine by a fake "Chinese" MD investigator for a fake biomedical research center.
The letter to the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine was published, and the orthopedic surgeon from Temple University who wrote it won his $10 bet against a fellow MD who had told him orthopedic surgeons were "too dumb" to get published in the NEJM.
The media bought it hook, line and sinker, and many to this day believe that MSG is bad for you, and that it is especially bad for you in Chinese food. Every bit of it is a crock.
Here's the story:
https://news.colgate.edu/magazine/2019/ ... -man-kwok/

[AJMD429]

.
I am sure there could be whole books written about stuff like that. The medical field is full of egos and corruption, and sometimes there is a total lack of self-awareness.

[jeepnik]

Not all was a crock. I have a sensitivity to MSG. It causes my tongue to swell to a point it presses painfully against my teeth, even leaving indentations on my tongue.

Like pretty much everything, there is someone out there that can’t tolerate it.

[samsi]

.
I am sure there could be whole books written about stuff like that. The medical field is full of egos and corruption, and sometimes there is a total lack of self-awareness.

So you're saying that it's pretty much like the government?

[Bill in Oregon]

Jeep, having an allergy to MSG is another matter. Of course you'd want to avoid it and rightly so.
I bought into the "MSG is bad for you" thing and believed it for years until hearing about the origin of the hoax on a cooking show.
And while I don't go looking for sodium nitrite, the fact that it is naturally present in celery and other supposedly wholesome foods took a little of the hysteria out of that chemical as well.
One shouldn't let one's guard down completely, though.
This is six years old, but I have not really heard any new guidance lately.
https://www.aicr.org/resources/blog/hea ... ncer-risk/

[Old Savage]

And how do you know it isn’t bad for you. It does not logically follow that because a fake letter said it was that it isn’t.

[Rockrat]

and the cyclamate hysteria, and the Contact medicine folly and , and, ect

[Blaine]

Jeep, having an allergy to MSG is another matter. Of course you'd want to avoid it and rightly so.
I bought into the "MSG is bad for you" thing and believed it for years until hearing about the origin of the hoax on a cooking show.
And while I don't go looking for sodium nitrite, the fact that it is naturally present in celery and other supposedly wholesome foods took a little of the hysteria out of that chemical as well.
One shouldn't let one's guard down completely, though.
This is six years old, but I have not really heard any new guidance lately.
https://www.aicr.org/resources/blog/hea ... ncer-risk/

Lots of foods and food additives cause me to wheeze and my throat goes fuzzy and I cough and choke. MSG is not good for me. Too much celery, or melon of any kind ditto. "Fresh" veggies like lettuce in restaurants have been treated with nitrates...ditto.
Everyone is different, but to deny any of it robs an affected person of info that they can use to start an elimination of things causing them aggravation, or even serious side effects.

[JerryB]

my wife has the msg problem real bad.She has put up with it for a long time by checking new products.

[Tycer]

We lived for a while in England. On the food ingredient labels were numbers following certain ambiguous ingredients like broth, stock, natural flavors, yeast extract. Those numbers led to a list on a .gov website that lists the allowed ingredients associated with that number.
I. Was. Effing. Horrified. at what I found.
Basically those are the ingredients the food manufacturers hide the mad food scientists concoctions. I learned the term excitotoxin. A few micrograms of an excitotoxin when paired with a protein causes a physiological response somewhere between fight and flight. Really turns the brain on. Causes salivary glands, immune response systems and histamine response systems to go haywire. I became a food nazi real fast.

N=1: An employee had terrible allergies to MSG. Terrible. He went to Thailand for his honeymoon. They put large amounts of msg on everything. He had zero response. None. Got home and we talked about excitotoxins and he went and bought a shaker of msg(Accent?) and had no response. He was able to get the expected response from the local Asian buffet and some other boxed foods.

[Bill in Oregon]

I think I have a jar of Accent somewhere, but just realized I don't think I have ever even opened it. Maybe I should as I have been losing a lot of taste sensation for the past couple of years.