MSG is most certainly harmful in the quantity we add to food, not in the way rat poison is but in the way obesity is, it tricks your brain into thinking it’s eating protein which is a problem since it’s usually put on empty carbs like Doritos or noodles a food with it’s own problems.
your body naturally wants to eat to much and they are slow to metabolize and we take the fiber out.
All that combined with the fact you think you are satisfying your need for protein but you’ll literally never get enough because you aren’t eating protein means it has killed more people than rat poisoning or HIV or tuberculosis or most other things.
I don’t think some of these things are true. I found a lengthy review from a few years ago. This is by no means a debunking because the science may have changed since then, and it’s only one source:
MSG is found in high-protein food products, such as meat or fish, and also in certain types of cheese (Roquefort and Parmesan) or vegetables (tomatoes, mushrooms, broccoli)
It’s not just meat, but many foods contain MSG. I don’t think our body has any reason to associate it with one specific source.
MSG is supplemented in many processed foods (Conn, 1992; Scopp, 1991), with an estimated average daily human intake of around 0.3–1.0 g in European industrialized countries (Beyreuther et al., 2007).
The review offers the following table:
Table 1. Food additives NOAEL and ADI values
Food additive
NOAEL
ADI
MSG
3200 mg/kg
30 mg/kg
This means that a small adult of 70 kg would need to ingest 2.1 g to surpass the recommended dose. That’s 3 times the Acceptable Daily Intake and about 80 times below the toxic level to begin feeling intoxicated. The study also notes that you need to eat it a lot for long periods to have an effect. They even conclude:
we posit that many of the reported negative health effects of MSG have little relevance for chronic human exposure to low doses.
Not to mention that not all of the MSG you consume gets into your system:
Only a very small quantity is subsequently found in the portal blood and, most likely, this originates from glutamine catabolism as a result of intestinal glutaminase activity, rather than from the absorption of dietary glutamate (Battezzati, Brillon, & Matthews, 1995).
In healthy human volunteers, nearly all of the enterally delivered glutamate is removed by the splanchnic bed on the first pass (Matthews, Marano, & Campbell, 1993)
This means that your body filters MSG as it’s absorbed, and that most of the glutamate found in the blood is a byproduct of what’s already in your body.
Another point to note is that its effect is largely dependent on the type of food you eat. You can’t generalize that it’ll have the same effect every time.
Besides its well-known impact on food palatability, MSG enhances salivary secretion and interferes with carbohydrate metabolism, while the impact on satiety and post-meal recovery of hunger varied in relation to meal composition.
(Note that the interference with sugar metabolism may be related to higher doses, according to preclinical studies summarized in Table 4)
And yes, it has a great effect on taste.
In addition to its basic specificity, the umami taste can enhance overall flavor intensity and improve food palatability. This effect is dependent on a variety of factors, the most important being the concentration of umami molecule and the food matrix (Masic & Yeomans, 2013).
This is probably because it’s incorporated as an additive and adsorbed onto the surface of food, which means the molecules are free to interact with your taste receptors first, but this is only my opinion.
This is completely false - MSG (monosodium glutamate) doesn’t “trick” your brain into thinking you’re eating protein, it’s just a sodium salt of glutamic acid which is already present in many foods and our bodies can’t tell the diffrence between naturally occurring and added glutamate.
The fact that our bodies can’t tell the difference is the problem because the food that doesn’t naturally have it in it isn’t meat so it “Tricks our brain”*
You agreed with my every statement the only difference is you come to a contrary conclusion… For reasons, because it’s natural?
*(if we want to be completely technical it’s our brain tricking itself because it evolved to associate MSG with high protein which is true in nature but it is technically an over generalization)
It makes food taste good without bringing the feeling of satiety. People can eat a whole bag of Doritos without feeling full, despite consuming a full day’s worth of calories.
The taste vs satiety hacking of modern fast food is a reasonable hypothesis on the cause of the obesity crisis.
It’s not just MSG though. It’s also disodium inosinate and disodium guanylate which work together with MSG to produce the most profound umami response.
No, those salts don’t affect satiation at all. They just affect taste. The satiety part has to do with food bulk.
Potatoes are a good example. Very high in carbs, like Doritos, but also very bulky. The bulk makes you feel full, unlike the Doritos, so you cannot eat a huge amount. Potatoes also don’t come with the flavour enhancing salts so people don’t want to stuff themselves anyway (unless they add the ingredients themselves, such as with loaded baked potatoes).
I believe a prison actually experimented with this. Gave the prisoners all you can eat plain boiled potatoes with nothing to dress them up. The prisoners actually lost weight because they only ate enough to feel full, not to gorge themselves. On the other hand, rats will become obese on all you can eat Doritos but not on plain rat food.
MSG is most certainly harmful in the quantity we add to food, not in the way rat poison is but in the way obesity is, it tricks your brain into thinking it’s eating protein which is a problem since it’s usually put on empty carbs like Doritos or noodles a food with it’s own problems.
your body naturally wants to eat to much and they are slow to metabolize and we take the fiber out.
All that combined with the fact you think you are satisfying your need for protein but you’ll literally never get enough because you aren’t eating protein means it has killed more people than rat poisoning or HIV or tuberculosis or most other things.
I don’t think some of these things are true. I found a lengthy review from a few years ago. This is by no means a debunking because the science may have changed since then, and it’s only one source:
It’s not just meat, but many foods contain MSG. I don’t think our body has any reason to associate it with one specific source.
The review offers the following table:
Table 1. Food additives NOAEL and ADI values
This means that a small adult of 70 kg would need to ingest 2.1 g to surpass the recommended dose. That’s 3 times the Acceptable Daily Intake and about 80 times below the toxic level to begin feeling intoxicated. The study also notes that you need to eat it a lot for long periods to have an effect. They even conclude:
Not to mention that not all of the MSG you consume gets into your system:
This means that your body filters MSG as it’s absorbed, and that most of the glutamate found in the blood is a byproduct of what’s already in your body.
Another point to note is that its effect is largely dependent on the type of food you eat. You can’t generalize that it’ll have the same effect every time.
(Note that the interference with sugar metabolism may be related to higher doses, according to preclinical studies summarized in Table 4)
And yes, it has a great effect on taste.
This is probably because it’s incorporated as an additive and adsorbed onto the surface of food, which means the molecules are free to interact with your taste receptors first, but this is only my opinion.
A review of the alleged health hazards of monosodium glutamate (Zanfirescu et. al 2019)
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6952072/
But I’m still curious, where did you learn about this mechanism related to meat?
This is completely false - MSG (monosodium glutamate) doesn’t “trick” your brain into thinking you’re eating protein, it’s just a sodium salt of glutamic acid which is already present in many foods and our bodies can’t tell the diffrence between naturally occurring and added glutamate.
Yes, the foods it is found naturally in is Meat.
The fact that our bodies can’t tell the difference is the problem because the food that doesn’t naturally have it in it isn’t meat so it “Tricks our brain”*
You agreed with my every statement the only difference is you come to a contrary conclusion… For reasons, because it’s natural?
*(if we want to be completely technical it’s our brain tricking itself because it evolved to associate MSG with high protein which is true in nature but it is technically an over generalization)
It’s harmful because it makes food taste good? Lol
It’s harmful because it lies to your brain.
Your body literally starves of protein while you think you are eating it, that is a medical system.
It makes food taste good without bringing the feeling of satiety. People can eat a whole bag of Doritos without feeling full, despite consuming a full day’s worth of calories.
The taste vs satiety hacking of modern fast food is a reasonable hypothesis on the cause of the obesity crisis.
It’s not just MSG though. It’s also disodium inosinate and disodium guanylate which work together with MSG to produce the most profound umami response.
Or is it because you ate something that’s low on protein so your body needs a key macronutrient?
Would you feel more satiated if Doritos had no MSG in it? I doubt it
No, those salts don’t affect satiation at all. They just affect taste. The satiety part has to do with food bulk.
Potatoes are a good example. Very high in carbs, like Doritos, but also very bulky. The bulk makes you feel full, unlike the Doritos, so you cannot eat a huge amount. Potatoes also don’t come with the flavour enhancing salts so people don’t want to stuff themselves anyway (unless they add the ingredients themselves, such as with loaded baked potatoes).
I believe a prison actually experimented with this. Gave the prisoners all you can eat plain boiled potatoes with nothing to dress them up. The prisoners actually lost weight because they only ate enough to feel full, not to gorge themselves. On the other hand, rats will become obese on all you can eat Doritos but not on plain rat food.
I mean the issue there is the empty carbs it’s put on. Not the MSG itself. It’s definitely not a problem when I season my chicken and veggies with it.
no, no, no, the problem is your brain thinks it’s eating something it’s not that is the chemical itself causing a neurological imbalance.
What’s this “we” shit? I only use MSG on meat.
Then congratulations it simply doesn’t matter… in any way because meat already has MSG naturally so it doesn’t enhance the taste.
Oh you sweet summer child.
Wait…. relevant username? I love my MSG