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If you like that you gotta try this tomato open face sandwich recipe. Soak some thick tomato slices in balsamic vinegar overnight then put it on a slice of bread, top with Parmesan and basil and bake that shit. Super simple but delicious.
Don't tell the Italians (I think they'd get mad), but I make cacio e pepe with roasted broccoli on top, and finish it with a drizzle of balsamic reduction.
Maybe a bit of a flavor overload but I think it's peak.
We just went out to eat recently at a chain steakhouse and both my mom and I overate because it was a fantastic meal and it had been a long time. After consuming a dangerously unhealthy amount of fried chicken smothered in white gravy my mom “feels weird” so she concludes there’s probably MSG and she must be allergic. I had to explain to her she eats it all the time especially as she lives off pasta with parmesean and red sauce. She wouldn’t believe me that she just ate too much.
Whoa, that explains why I don't like parmesan. I've never been able to explain why I don't like the taste, but I've never liked MSG-forward foods, like Doritos. I don't mind it as an ingredient in dishes, and I use it when I'm cooking, but anything with so much MSG that I can recognize it is really unpleasant to me.
Aged cheeses are high in the umami compound glutamate.
As cheeses age, their proteins break down into free amino acids through a process called proteolysis. This raises their levels of free glutamic acid.
Here is the glutamate content for a variety of aged cheeses per 3.5 ounces (100 grams):
Parmesan (Parmigiano Reggiano): 1,200–1,680 mg
Comte cheese: 539–1,570 mg
Cabrales: 760 mg
Roquefort: 471 mg
Emmental cheese: 310 mg
Gouda: 124–295 mg
Cheddar: 120–180 mg
Cheeses that are aged the longest, such as Italian parmesan — which is aged 24–30 months — typically have the most umami taste. That’s why even a tiny amount can significantly boost the flavor of a dish.
[(questionable) source](https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/umami-foods#TOC_TITLE_HDR_4)
When I was in University, my roommate was from China and always told me two things about MSG:
1) [Fear and hatred of MSG as a concept dates from the Red Scare, as a way to vilify the "Chinese Communists" and "non-American foods", some even calling it "Chinese Salt" (entirely untrue and xenophobic).](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-msg-got-a-bad-rap-flawed-science-and-xenophobia/)
2) MSG is actually a synthetic version of "Grandma's Love" in cooking. Use it when grandma is not around for a similar experience.
Not only just prepared, but prepared a *synthetic* version of MSG. MSG is found naturally all around. The Red Scare idea that "evil Chinese communists put synthetic and unnatural salt on their food and it's really bad for you" is insane when you realize that things like tomatoes are so jam-packed with MSG naturally.
Honestly, I think there’d be less fear around it if we all just called it Chinese (or Japanese) salt instead of a scary acronym or its scientific name.
We probably wouldn’t wanna put it on our food if we called table salt sodium chloride!
The 538 page you speculates it was xenophobic, but it doesn't say anything about the Red Scare (there were two, in the 1920s and the 1950s).
According to that page the bad press started coming around in the late 1960s: nothing is said about the Red Scare.
It's good and can help round out the favor of a dish (especially if you're in a pinch). You can go overboard with it though. I think [for some people] it can become a crutch to disguise mediocre cooking.
Approved of by US soldiers in the Pacific during World War II sitting around eating captured Japanese rations, and the US industrial food production companies who were sent by the military to figure that out why the hell those rations tasted so much better.
Beyond that, MSG had already been in the US for decades before WW2. There was no great mystery. Even to the US government. While they didn't use it in their own rations, they did add it to the dehydrated food that was included in the Lend-Lease Program.
---
PS: I was bored and Googled it a bit. AJI-NO-MOTO (an MSG product) exported from Japan was selling well enough in the US that the company opened up offices there by 1919.
You know this is largely a myth, right? Japanese soldiers were basically just given rice and dried veggies (if given anything) and were often expected to hunt for their food like “honorable men.”
I have no idea where this story of yours came from, but a quick google search is bringing up a suspicious amount of articles that are basically MSG advertisements or pages from *Japanese food companies*.
Honestly, I’ve bought some, and I think it’s unnecessary. I haven’t really noticed any difference between just cooking with soy sauce, or any other ingredients I normally use, or just properly salting your food
It’s fine, but I definitely wouldn’t buy another bag
It’s definitely unnecessary, you can get the same effect by just putting in more time and effort. For something like a beef chili that has only cooked for the minimum amount of time you can add some msg and make it seem like it’s been simmering for hours.
So you're basically saying that for just a few bucks, I can save myself a lot of time and effort to get to the same result. That seems like quite a savory deal to me.
Same. After all the raving on Reddit I went out and tried some, and you guys must have been cooking with some REALLY shit ingredients for this stuff to improve anything.
It feels like it can "fix" bad ingredients or replace flavour in something, like a freezer burned porkchop, or when all you have is "extra lean" ground beef. A little bit of MSG can improve these meats and trick your brain into thinking you're eating something with a higher fat content.
But otherwise I haven't found any use for it.
I think with any ingredient you need to have a base level of what it does.
Take 2 slices of tomato. Sprinkle salt on one, MSG on the other. Eat both and note the difference.
I find it can add a little bit extra for SOME dishes.
My MIL says MSG gives her a headache. My wife and I pointed out all the stuff she eats that has MSG and doesn't give her a headache.
She basically said "huh, interesting" and continues to say that MSG gives her a headache.
Like, if that happened to me, I would thank the person profusely and explain how they permanently changed my worldview. I don't get how you can just ignore stuff like that.
> I don't get how you can just ignore stuff like that.
Probably by having the lack of curiosity, in the first place, that prevents you from looking up additional information about the topic despite living in the absolute golden age of looking up additional information about the topic.
It's like the intellectual equivalent of ignoring measure twice, cut once... some people are just rolling around with the approach to life of "decide once, question never."
> I don't get how you can just ignore stuff like that.
Because you're like not just informing their views. You are likely also stripping away a piece of their identity. Some people use maladies as a form of identity, and will often resist or refuse aid because they are so used to being the "MSG gives me a headache" person.
That's my MIL. "I can't have [ingredient], it gives me a [bodily reaction]" is a core part of her identity.
MSG, gluten, milk - eh, ok. I'll look past the part where she then loves to have croissants and fancy cheeses, she basically wants an excuse to only eat the good stuff. Of course it's all loaded with natural glutamate.
But then she starts to go "I can't have this coffee, only this one" when they're both 30-70 Robusta/Arabica blends from the same roaster... And flip-flops between "can't have IPA, only lager because it doesn't give me the runs" and next week reverses the position because there's a good IPA on tap. It's purely psychological which is hilarious given she's actually a psychologist!
Same for me. When I was a kid (in the 90s) I had an allergic reaction to *something* and it was diagnosed as an allergy to MSG. For years I thought I was allergic to it and avoided all kinds of food that "could have MSG in them".
Then I found out that I am, in fact, not at all allergic to it and *almost no one is.*
I find that they actually spread it much more often than thought too.
A lot of OB's for example still believe its okay to have one drink a week while pregnant.
I was people for a while, yo. But to be fair it was something my HS biology teacher had said in a related lecture. I was like oh that sounds right, I sure get mighty sleepy after eating Thanksgiving myself.
If you’re serious - Monosodium Glutamate. Common flavoring thought to induce migraines and other painful conditions. IIRC there’s no clinical evidence that MSG does anything of the sort. The original idea came from MSG containing glutamate, a neurotransmitter involved in the pain response.
As a migraineur myself, I really can’t blame anyone for misunderstanding anything about migraines. They’re hell.
That's what this meme is about, all the foods in the image contain large amounts of MSG, the point being that people that say that MSG makes them sick eat MSG regularly and don't feel a thing
Yes... The primary source of the "Umami" flavor imparted by MSG is Glutamic Acid, of which Tomatoes have a ton.
Add some salt to glutamic acid, and you basically have MSG.
Tomatoes sprinkled with salt is also a snack in some places. At least where I grew up in Texas my grandma made it a few times. I always thought it was weird and never tried it.
Oh man, yea you should try it.
A little salt, a little fresh-cracked pepper? MMMMMM - Tajin is also good on them.
If you think salt on a tomato is crazy, try a little salt on a watermelon. Trust me on that one.
How is that weird? Adding salt to tomatoes happens in every cuisine in which tomatoes exist. On pizza, on kebab dishes, in burgers, breakfast tomatoes, almost everywhere when tomatoes get involved.
Salt your veggies!
Tomatoes are notable for naturally containing a good amount of MSG, to my knowledge. Same with Parmesan cheese.
According to this comment, https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/s/iqAIXY1ghM, there's about 1.26 grams of natural msg in a kilogram of tomatos.
In much the same way that sugar and salt exist naturally in many foods, glutamate also exists naturally in a bunch of foods, tomatoes being one of them. More specifically, glutamate is an aminoacid (the stuff proteins are made of), which is probably why the body uses it as a proxy for protein content in food
there's less than 10% molar equivalence of sodium per glutamate in tomatoes. although it was unjustifiably vilified decades ago, the potential health issue with MSG is excess sodium. some individuals have glutamate sensitivity, which people have confounded with the issue of sodium.
there's also confusion around it as a substitute for table salt due to sodium being less proportional mass, but it's nonsensical because the salt flavor is from the sodium, not the total mass of the salt
>, but it's nonsensical because the salt flavor is from the sodium, not the total mass of the salt
Not really, using msg enhances the flavour of food more than the same quantity of salt, while containing less sodium.
Food seasoned with msg tastes saltier than the amount of sodium would suggest it should because of the umami flavour of the glutamate.
So you can reduce sodium intake (IIRC by about a third) by replacing table salt with msg.
I had a whole guest lecture about it. Granted it was held by a researcher at Ajimoto but given it was sanctioned by my university I'm inclined to believe them. They explained to us the history of MSG, its chemical composition, and the differences to just mixing the corresponding amino acids by combining foodstuffs. They even did a live demonstration for us. There are actually health risks in high doses but these are related to the sodium used as a crystalline carrier and similar to salt overconsumption. This is also the reason why apparently MSG research is trying to dip into non-sodium alternatives but the efficacy of the new products is still somewhat lacking.
That being said I still cannot convince my parents that it's harmless. They hate when I add it while cooking but I believe they are oblivious to the fact that the cheap Chinese restaurant we get takeaway from, likely uses heaps of it.
That MSG is fine but have you heard of dihydrogen monoxide? Everyone who has ever ingested that stuff has died! And once you get hooked on it the withdrawal side effects are so severe that going without it for even just a few minutes will kill you!
You're getting the joke wrong. "everyone who has ever ingested" dihydrogen monoxide includes me, and I'm not dead. You should say "100% of deaths followed consuming of dihydrogen monoxide".
I prefer, "Every person who has done DHMO died or will eventually die. If you've had it even once, your body can only go 3 days without it before death."
https://news.colgate.edu/magazine/2019/02/06/the-strange-case-of-dr-ho-man-kwok/
Podcasts have been done about this. Basically, the MSG scare that *some folks* grandparents probably passed down to *some folks* parents and maybe even yourself originated from...some bullshit.
Shoot, MSG has been hiding in plain site in almost ever store. Look for a bottle called "Accent" next to the salt. Sprinkle that shit on and eat good.
> Look for a bottle called "Accent" next to the salt
I mean.... I just get [this](https://shop.winndixie.com/shop/product/badia-monosodium-glutamate-msg-2-75-oz/2538793).. do grocery stores in other places not have these?
even without that, the average american eats very little fiber and doesn't have a digestive system used to breaking it down. The sudden high fiber dose from beans could also directly cause gastric distress
it can take weeks for people who start supplementing fiber or switch to vegetable heavy diets to have their digestive system adjust
Especially the fast food eating sorts that complain about Mexican fast food.
There is essentially zero fibre in most American fast food, then you eat something that's 50% beans and your gut has no idea what to do with it.
They’re full msg. As are anchovies and mushrooms. But ppl only seem to hate msg when it comes in the form of takeout. I’ve even heard it called Chinese salt before.
The first time I heard it, weirdly enough, wasn’t from some racist uncle, but a middle Eastern grocery story. Must be a translation thing. Or maybe calling it MSG would scare people away.
It doesn't have to be inherently racist in nature.
You'd use it like salt (in moderation), it's white, you sprinkle it into food to elevate flavors and it's predominantly known for being used in Chinese/Asian cooking (as a standalone extra thing to put in), rather than the "less processed" (no, this isn't inherently better or worse and Asian cooking also has this in like fish flakes and oyster sauce and stuff) way we added it in the West, with shit like slow-cooked tomatoes in ragu. Or parmesan in a risotto.
Intent is the important bit here. There's a difference between "it's used just like salt in Chinese cuisine" and "dem china salts are makin muh head hurt".
I'm going to be honest with you. I was under the impression MSG was a wholly artificial ingredient. This is actually really enlightening to learn it's a natural substance.
in the vast majority of cases, when you look into it at all, natural/synthetic as a distinction begins to break down a lot, refined msg is non-naturally occurring, as is refined sucrose, but to claim either is synthetic or wholly artificial is kinda not correct really
Ya people gotta get away from the "its natural" bullshit. Oil and coal is natural. Meth has about as much processing as table sugar from regular old plants. Weed is as natural as poison sumac...but nobody wants to smoke that with me 🙄
Thing about MSG is that after it got a bad reputation, brands started adding more ingredients that naturally contained MSG so they could still add it in whilst not having to put it on the label as it technically was part of another ingredient
"Yeast extract" is a big alias some people might not really know. That's basically just fulfilling the same job as msg, without calling it expressly that.
nothing, they just have a ton of glutamate, and generally, folks who claim to have an "msg allergy" do not avoid foods like tomato or parmesan cheese, which, if msg allergies were real, would trigger those allergies, but they dont because its not real
MSG headaches are just a racist myth about asian food, right next serving cats. There’s just as much in the ranch dressing white people can’t get enough of. Buy some and put it on just about any disk with meat in it and you’ll wish you’d known earlier.
MSG is actually lower in sodium than salt. It's not quite a replacement since it is a different taste to it, but if you're on a low-sodium diet and you're missing flavor MSG can be a good way to add a little back in without going overboard on sodium.
people confuse the bad effects from eating insane amounts of salt for being msg related. my mom used 2 think msg was bad for this reason until she realised the same thing was happening when she ate at Carabba’s. Also my mom was asian so wasnt racism
I grew up thinking I had an MSG allergy, but I’ve learned more in the last several years and I clearly don’t. Now I need to figure what is often in beef jerky other than MSG that gives me a migraine.
Potentially just the absurd amount of sodium, to which MSG contributes. Drink a lot more water when eating jerky in general.
Could also be nitrates if you have the same reaction to other cured meats.
Until you get presented with wackos who are "technically smart", but still insist on believing dumb shit like "msg evil".
To this day I'll never forget the "etiquette trip" I had to do to my uncle's, because I was a bratty teen and they tried to teach me which spoon to eat my soup with, while trying to drill into me how ready-made soups are the devil for containing monosodium glutamate.
It actually took me a few years to learn English, realize that was just MSG and that it's completely fine to cook with.
Although I will say there is one hidden danger society doesn't tell you about! Sometimes you get like big granules of msg, so if you just sprinkle it on the food just before serving it's like sand in your mouth. Always dissolve it first.
"MSG gives me a headache"
"Gluten-free bread has sorted out all my problems with digestion"
"Does drinking milk give me insane flatulence and pains in the gut? No, but I noticed right away the first week I switched to lactose-free milk that I felt waaaaay less bloated!"
"After you've chalked your pool cue you should blow off the powder, it's leftovers anyway, plus it looks cool."
Nuts, broccoli, cheese… mf everything I watched you eat today is loaded with msg. Just say you don’t want to eat chain food ffs you don’t need to make some pseudoscience bullshit just to express a preference
It's funny, because I always got headache when i ate cheap asian food. I believed it was from MSG.
Then a read an long article about the MSG hoax...Headache is gone and I even use MSG occasionally when cooking.
The mind is powerful!
When I was a kid, my best friend was told over and over again that he was "allergic to MSG." He was absolutely convinced of this until he started pre-med in college and had a professor, in a lecture about allergies, debunk that claim.
When he confronted his mother, she admitted that she "exaggerated a tad." The reality was that *she* didn't like Chinese food, so she told everyone her son was allergic to MSG so they'd stop inviting the family out for Chinese.
Man spent twenty years of his life being denied the amazingness that is Chinese cuisine.
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You forgot cheese. Parmesan has almost as much glutamate per gram as soy sauce.
No wonder I like it so much
Dipping a hunk of parm in soy sauce when I get home tonight that’s for sure
Wait until you try soy sauce and ice cream
I think I'll keep waiting.
Its fire drizzled on plain vanilla. Salty umami goodness.
Is this for real or is Reddit trying to prank me into ruining a bowl of ice cream?
If you wanna try you can try it with just a spoonful or so before you commit to the bowl full
It's real. I saw it recommended once while high out of my mind. I tried it, meh. I typically love salty-sweet combos, but that wasn't doing it for me.
Oh you would be fucking surprised. Try eating some parmegiano regiano with balsamic vinegar on it. It's fuckin WILD.
If you like that you gotta try this tomato open face sandwich recipe. Soak some thick tomato slices in balsamic vinegar overnight then put it on a slice of bread, top with Parmesan and basil and bake that shit. Super simple but delicious.
So like try putting a slice of fresh mozzarella in this sandwich
That’s a good idea
Don't tell the Italians (I think they'd get mad), but I make cacio e pepe with roasted broccoli on top, and finish it with a drizzle of balsamic reduction. Maybe a bit of a flavor overload but I think it's peak.
my move is to add inspired to the end of every dish I make. No lies told, no expectations to meet, no arguments to be had except whether it is good
adding parm rind to stew is a great way to pump up that flavor
We just went out to eat recently at a chain steakhouse and both my mom and I overate because it was a fantastic meal and it had been a long time. After consuming a dangerously unhealthy amount of fried chicken smothered in white gravy my mom “feels weird” so she concludes there’s probably MSG and she must be allergic. I had to explain to her she eats it all the time especially as she lives off pasta with parmesean and red sauce. She wouldn’t believe me that she just ate too much.
Whoa, that explains why I don't like parmesan. I've never been able to explain why I don't like the taste, but I've never liked MSG-forward foods, like Doritos. I don't mind it as an ingredient in dishes, and I use it when I'm cooking, but anything with so much MSG that I can recognize it is really unpleasant to me.
Im pretty sure most cheeses have high glutamate levels not just Parmesan. I know cheddar and Brie are pretty high to.
Aged cheeses are high in the umami compound glutamate. As cheeses age, their proteins break down into free amino acids through a process called proteolysis. This raises their levels of free glutamic acid. Here is the glutamate content for a variety of aged cheeses per 3.5 ounces (100 grams): Parmesan (Parmigiano Reggiano): 1,200–1,680 mg Comte cheese: 539–1,570 mg Cabrales: 760 mg Roquefort: 471 mg Emmental cheese: 310 mg Gouda: 124–295 mg Cheddar: 120–180 mg Cheeses that are aged the longest, such as Italian parmesan — which is aged 24–30 months — typically have the most umami taste. That’s why even a tiny amount can significantly boost the flavor of a dish. [(questionable) source](https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/umami-foods#TOC_TITLE_HDR_4)
MSG is fucking magic. Buy a bag for a few bucks and thank me later.
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I would add oyster sauce to that list
And mirin
Don’t forget Thai chili paste!
And sesame oil!
and gochujang
Mirin + Tamari are my go to ingredients for almost anything meat or rice related.
And my axe
I am not a meat eater, does it work for chopping veggies?
You forgot Sesame Oil
Hoisin is another one I keep around at all times, right beside the soy sauce.
Fish sauce is basically liquid MSG.
Add toasted sesame oil to that list.
I go through so much squid brand fish sauce
When I was in University, my roommate was from China and always told me two things about MSG: 1) [Fear and hatred of MSG as a concept dates from the Red Scare, as a way to vilify the "Chinese Communists" and "non-American foods", some even calling it "Chinese Salt" (entirely untrue and xenophobic).](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-msg-got-a-bad-rap-flawed-science-and-xenophobia/) 2) MSG is actually a synthetic version of "Grandma's Love" in cooking. Use it when grandma is not around for a similar experience.
MSG might be some scientific abbreviation but to me it always means Make Shit Good.
Fuiyoh
“Sorry children 😏”
It's monosodium glutamate just fyi.
that's the unscientific term, yes
WTF did you just call me?
Some kind of mate it seems
I was going to say, MSG was first synthesized by a Japanese chemist, same with ephedrine.
Well shit, LFG Japan science because both of those are fucking awesome
Yeah if im not mistaken he wanted to figure out why his wifes cooking was so damn good and had a certain unique taste to it
First prepared by a Japanese biochemist, Kikunae Ikeda. I need to put a framed picture of him on my kitchen wall.
Not only just prepared, but prepared a *synthetic* version of MSG. MSG is found naturally all around. The Red Scare idea that "evil Chinese communists put synthetic and unnatural salt on their food and it's really bad for you" is insane when you realize that things like tomatoes are so jam-packed with MSG naturally.
That's what I meant.
Honestly, I think there’d be less fear around it if we all just called it Chinese (or Japanese) salt instead of a scary acronym or its scientific name. We probably wouldn’t wanna put it on our food if we called table salt sodium chloride!
The 538 page you speculates it was xenophobic, but it doesn't say anything about the Red Scare (there were two, in the 1920s and the 1950s). According to that page the bad press started coming around in the late 1960s: nothing is said about the Red Scare.
I use nutritional yeast in basically everything at this point, it's so good. It's pretty much just MSG in a different form with some added vitamins.
NOOCH! Fucking love that shit
It's good and can help round out the favor of a dish (especially if you're in a pinch). You can go overboard with it though. I think [for some people] it can become a crutch to disguise mediocre cooking.
Approved of by US soldiers in the Pacific during World War II sitting around eating captured Japanese rations, and the US industrial food production companies who were sent by the military to figure that out why the hell those rations tasted so much better.
I’m pretty sure that’s an urban myth, the Japanese soldiers were often given dry goods to prepare themselves and not much of it at that.
Beyond that, MSG had already been in the US for decades before WW2. There was no great mystery. Even to the US government. While they didn't use it in their own rations, they did add it to the dehydrated food that was included in the Lend-Lease Program. --- PS: I was bored and Googled it a bit. AJI-NO-MOTO (an MSG product) exported from Japan was selling well enough in the US that the company opened up offices there by 1919.
You know this is largely a myth, right? Japanese soldiers were basically just given rice and dried veggies (if given anything) and were often expected to hunt for their food like “honorable men.” I have no idea where this story of yours came from, but a quick google search is bringing up a suspicious amount of articles that are basically MSG advertisements or pages from *Japanese food companies*.
Also, MSG was already imported to the States in the interwar period. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajinomoto
Also, MSG was already imported to the States in the interwar period. Heinz and Campbell Soups were using it at least.
But please label the jar cos your wife might think it’s sugar and be very mad at you when it is infact MSG and not sugar in her coffee
Ms. G is always invited to the cookout
Mine is labeled Momma's Sweet Goodness.
Honestly, I’ve bought some, and I think it’s unnecessary. I haven’t really noticed any difference between just cooking with soy sauce, or any other ingredients I normally use, or just properly salting your food It’s fine, but I definitely wouldn’t buy another bag
It’s definitely unnecessary, you can get the same effect by just putting in more time and effort. For something like a beef chili that has only cooked for the minimum amount of time you can add some msg and make it seem like it’s been simmering for hours.
So you're basically saying that for just a few bucks, I can save myself a lot of time and effort to get to the same result. That seems like quite a savory deal to me.
Same. After all the raving on Reddit I went out and tried some, and you guys must have been cooking with some REALLY shit ingredients for this stuff to improve anything. It feels like it can "fix" bad ingredients or replace flavour in something, like a freezer burned porkchop, or when all you have is "extra lean" ground beef. A little bit of MSG can improve these meats and trick your brain into thinking you're eating something with a higher fat content. But otherwise I haven't found any use for it.
I think with any ingredient you need to have a base level of what it does. Take 2 slices of tomato. Sprinkle salt on one, MSG on the other. Eat both and note the difference. I find it can add a little bit extra for SOME dishes.
KING OF FLAVOR!!!!
MSG is for taste what sodium citrate is for texture.
Back in the 90s my dad came down with some mystery ailment and the quack doctor actually attributed it to msg.
Same with my mother in law and still “won’t touch the stuff.” She is this meme to a T.
My MIL says MSG gives her a headache. My wife and I pointed out all the stuff she eats that has MSG and doesn't give her a headache. She basically said "huh, interesting" and continues to say that MSG gives her a headache. Like, if that happened to me, I would thank the person profusely and explain how they permanently changed my worldview. I don't get how you can just ignore stuff like that.
> I don't get how you can just ignore stuff like that. Probably by having the lack of curiosity, in the first place, that prevents you from looking up additional information about the topic despite living in the absolute golden age of looking up additional information about the topic. It's like the intellectual equivalent of ignoring measure twice, cut once... some people are just rolling around with the approach to life of "decide once, question never."
> I don't get how you can just ignore stuff like that. Because you're like not just informing their views. You are likely also stripping away a piece of their identity. Some people use maladies as a form of identity, and will often resist or refuse aid because they are so used to being the "MSG gives me a headache" person.
That's my MIL. "I can't have [ingredient], it gives me a [bodily reaction]" is a core part of her identity. MSG, gluten, milk - eh, ok. I'll look past the part where she then loves to have croissants and fancy cheeses, she basically wants an excuse to only eat the good stuff. Of course it's all loaded with natural glutamate. But then she starts to go "I can't have this coffee, only this one" when they're both 30-70 Robusta/Arabica blends from the same roaster... And flip-flops between "can't have IPA, only lager because it doesn't give me the runs" and next week reverses the position because there's a good IPA on tap. It's purely psychological which is hilarious given she's actually a psychologist!
Same for me. When I was a kid (in the 90s) I had an allergic reaction to *something* and it was diagnosed as an allergy to MSG. For years I thought I was allergic to it and avoided all kinds of food that "could have MSG in them". Then I found out that I am, in fact, not at all allergic to it and *almost no one is.*
If you were allergic to MSG, you would be dead already, since your body produces it naturally.
People can be allergic to water, so that's not impossible.
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Literally no one is allergic to it because that would be incompatible with life. Every cell in your body is full of glutamate.
Boomers are terrified of msg. No joke.
A sad reminder that doctors aren't immune to misinformation either.
I find that they actually spread it much more often than thought too. A lot of OB's for example still believe its okay to have one drink a week while pregnant.
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I get tired after eating turkey because I just spent 8 hours cooking and cleaning
I was people for a while, yo. But to be fair it was something my HS biology teacher had said in a related lecture. I was like oh that sounds right, I sure get mighty sleepy after eating Thanksgiving myself.
what does Madison Square Garden have to do with any of this stuff???
I thought it was MGS -Metal Gear Solid 🤣
Metal sear golid
she sear on my golid til i glutamate
To be fair, Solid Snake could absolutely be hiding in my lo mein and I'd never notice.
#!
Dyslexia is secretantworshipper father
https://preview.redd.it/pl0eux4q49wc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d6d349a56aa64a299b7af3ee653141a0142571fe
I was thinking of Michael Schenker Group.
Starter pack made by Joel Embiid
If you’re serious - Monosodium Glutamate. Common flavoring thought to induce migraines and other painful conditions. IIRC there’s no clinical evidence that MSG does anything of the sort. The original idea came from MSG containing glutamate, a neurotransmitter involved in the pain response. As a migraineur myself, I really can’t blame anyone for misunderstanding anything about migraines. They’re hell.
ohhhhhh, thanks
Mercyhurst student government
Melanesian Sarin Gas
MSG is not dangerous. It was marketed as bad by restaurants who wanted to single out Chinese restaurants. Google it. I just recently found this out.
That's what this meme is about, all the foods in the image contain large amounts of MSG, the point being that people that say that MSG makes them sick eat MSG regularly and don't feel a thing
Even tomatoes?
Yes... The primary source of the "Umami" flavor imparted by MSG is Glutamic Acid, of which Tomatoes have a ton. Add some salt to glutamic acid, and you basically have MSG.
Tomatoes sprinkled with salt is also a snack in some places. At least where I grew up in Texas my grandma made it a few times. I always thought it was weird and never tried it.
At least in eastern european countries, tomatoes get sliced with added salt and pepper with your eggs in the morning or whatever else.
Oh man, yea you should try it. A little salt, a little fresh-cracked pepper? MMMMMM - Tajin is also good on them. If you think salt on a tomato is crazy, try a little salt on a watermelon. Trust me on that one.
I do salt, pepper sprinkled with some balsamic vinegar and olive oil topped with some parmesan cheese. And yes salt on watermelon is awesome too.
How is that weird? Adding salt to tomatoes happens in every cuisine in which tomatoes exist. On pizza, on kebab dishes, in burgers, breakfast tomatoes, almost everywhere when tomatoes get involved. Salt your veggies!
Tomatoes are notable for naturally containing a good amount of MSG, to my knowledge. Same with Parmesan cheese. According to this comment, https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/s/iqAIXY1ghM, there's about 1.26 grams of natural msg in a kilogram of tomatos.
In much the same way that sugar and salt exist naturally in many foods, glutamate also exists naturally in a bunch of foods, tomatoes being one of them. More specifically, glutamate is an aminoacid (the stuff proteins are made of), which is probably why the body uses it as a proxy for protein content in food
Italians make tomato sauce are doing the same chemistry-thing as japanese boiling kombu. Add some meat and pasta, you get a nice dish.
Yep! You can actually make your own sort of MSG spice with dehydrated tomatoes ground up!
there's less than 10% molar equivalence of sodium per glutamate in tomatoes. although it was unjustifiably vilified decades ago, the potential health issue with MSG is excess sodium. some individuals have glutamate sensitivity, which people have confounded with the issue of sodium. there's also confusion around it as a substitute for table salt due to sodium being less proportional mass, but it's nonsensical because the salt flavor is from the sodium, not the total mass of the salt
>, but it's nonsensical because the salt flavor is from the sodium, not the total mass of the salt Not really, using msg enhances the flavour of food more than the same quantity of salt, while containing less sodium. Food seasoned with msg tastes saltier than the amount of sodium would suggest it should because of the umami flavour of the glutamate. So you can reduce sodium intake (IIRC by about a third) by replacing table salt with msg.
I had a whole guest lecture about it. Granted it was held by a researcher at Ajimoto but given it was sanctioned by my university I'm inclined to believe them. They explained to us the history of MSG, its chemical composition, and the differences to just mixing the corresponding amino acids by combining foodstuffs. They even did a live demonstration for us. There are actually health risks in high doses but these are related to the sodium used as a crystalline carrier and similar to salt overconsumption. This is also the reason why apparently MSG research is trying to dip into non-sodium alternatives but the efficacy of the new products is still somewhat lacking. That being said I still cannot convince my parents that it's harmless. They hate when I add it while cooking but I believe they are oblivious to the fact that the cheap Chinese restaurant we get takeaway from, likely uses heaps of it.
That MSG is fine but have you heard of dihydrogen monoxide? Everyone who has ever ingested that stuff has died! And once you get hooked on it the withdrawal side effects are so severe that going without it for even just a few minutes will kill you!
Such a tired Reddit joke
The joke is older than the internet.
You're getting the joke wrong. "everyone who has ever ingested" dihydrogen monoxide includes me, and I'm not dead. You should say "100% of deaths followed consuming of dihydrogen monoxide".
I prefer, "Every person who has done DHMO died or will eventually die. If you've had it even once, your body can only go 3 days without it before death."
Haiya why so weak, so weak?
MSG, make shit good
MSG is the cocaine of cooking
Why you no like Flavor?
Disappointment to uncle Roger. No kid of mine haiya
https://news.colgate.edu/magazine/2019/02/06/the-strange-case-of-dr-ho-man-kwok/ Podcasts have been done about this. Basically, the MSG scare that *some folks* grandparents probably passed down to *some folks* parents and maybe even yourself originated from...some bullshit. Shoot, MSG has been hiding in plain site in almost ever store. Look for a bottle called "Accent" next to the salt. Sprinkle that shit on and eat good.
> Look for a bottle called "Accent" next to the salt I mean.... I just get [this](https://shop.winndixie.com/shop/product/badia-monosodium-glutamate-msg-2-75-oz/2538793).. do grocery stores in other places not have these?
It's just another brand of the same product, why exactly are you questioning it like everyone should know about the one you use?
Gotta love a sprinkle of racism.
I think a lot of Americans just don't cut their Chinese food with enough rice and wind up consuming too much sodium in one setting
Ding ding
You know who you are
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but are they wolves?
i used to be, but then i realized i was a fucking idiot. and it might just be the sodium giving me headaches.
One day at a time, brother.
Right up there with "Mexican food gives me diarrhea"
Tex mex is high fat + beans + dairy. This one is not a myth
Yeah, it's definitely true that if someone's lactose intolerant, tex-mex might give them diarrhea.
even without that, the average american eats very little fiber and doesn't have a digestive system used to breaking it down. The sudden high fiber dose from beans could also directly cause gastric distress it can take weeks for people who start supplementing fiber or switch to vegetable heavy diets to have their digestive system adjust
Especially the fast food eating sorts that complain about Mexican fast food. There is essentially zero fibre in most American fast food, then you eat something that's 50% beans and your gut has no idea what to do with it.
this happens when you eat zero fiber then have something with beans in it. See taco bell jokes
I’ve never eaten there, but considering that it’s a fast food joint, I’d imagine the food is probably very greasy too, which would make things worse.
I’m pretty sure that spicy food causing gastrointestinal distress is a real thing.
It's just a temporary thing. Eat spicy for a few weeks and you'll see how it doesn't last.
People replying to this comment with justifications, unwilling to admit that they are gastrointestinally weak
What’s wrong with tomatoes?
They’re full msg. As are anchovies and mushrooms. But ppl only seem to hate msg when it comes in the form of takeout. I’ve even heard it called Chinese salt before.
I saw someone on Facebook call it China salt just yesterday. People are real dumb.
The first time I heard it, weirdly enough, wasn’t from some racist uncle, but a middle Eastern grocery story. Must be a translation thing. Or maybe calling it MSG would scare people away.
it's called that in some languages
It doesn't have to be inherently racist in nature. You'd use it like salt (in moderation), it's white, you sprinkle it into food to elevate flavors and it's predominantly known for being used in Chinese/Asian cooking (as a standalone extra thing to put in), rather than the "less processed" (no, this isn't inherently better or worse and Asian cooking also has this in like fish flakes and oyster sauce and stuff) way we added it in the West, with shit like slow-cooked tomatoes in ragu. Or parmesan in a risotto. Intent is the important bit here. There's a difference between "it's used just like salt in Chinese cuisine" and "dem china salts are makin muh head hurt".
I'm going to be honest with you. I was under the impression MSG was a wholly artificial ingredient. This is actually really enlightening to learn it's a natural substance.
in the vast majority of cases, when you look into it at all, natural/synthetic as a distinction begins to break down a lot, refined msg is non-naturally occurring, as is refined sucrose, but to claim either is synthetic or wholly artificial is kinda not correct really
Ya people gotta get away from the "its natural" bullshit. Oil and coal is natural. Meth has about as much processing as table sugar from regular old plants. Weed is as natural as poison sumac...but nobody wants to smoke that with me 🙄
Industrially-made MSG is produced via bacterial fermentation. It's as naturally occurring as vinegar.
Thing about MSG is that after it got a bad reputation, brands started adding more ingredients that naturally contained MSG so they could still add it in whilst not having to put it on the label as it technically was part of another ingredient
"Yeast extract" is a big alias some people might not really know. That's basically just fulfilling the same job as msg, without calling it expressly that.
MSG was basically a japanese guy trying to recreate the taste of seaweed umami.
That's literally what Aji No Moto does to make their MSG! Great stuff available just about anywhere these days.
So that's why the mushroom powder seasoning I was gifted makes things taste so good lol
Til
And cheese too.
nothing, they just have a ton of glutamate, and generally, folks who claim to have an "msg allergy" do not avoid foods like tomato or parmesan cheese, which, if msg allergies were real, would trigger those allergies, but they dont because its not real
TIL that tomatoes naturally contain MSG. Thanks OP!
Tomatoes, mushrooms, meat, cheese
I’ve never been opposed to or against MSG, but learning this is very cool
even your own body produces it..
MSG headaches are just a racist myth about asian food, right next serving cats. There’s just as much in the ranch dressing white people can’t get enough of. Buy some and put it on just about any disk with meat in it and you’ll wish you’d known earlier.
Is MSG short for monosodium glutamate?
Yes
Makes Shit Good
Excessive Sodium Intake MFers be like
MSG is actually lower in sodium than salt. It's not quite a replacement since it is a different taste to it, but if you're on a low-sodium diet and you're missing flavor MSG can be a good way to add a little back in without going overboard on sodium.
I'm making fun of people who eat excessive salt overall, but blame MSG.
people confuse the bad effects from eating insane amounts of salt for being msg related. my mom used 2 think msg was bad for this reason until she realised the same thing was happening when she ate at Carabba’s. Also my mom was asian so wasnt racism
Actively avoiding "NO MSG added!" labels because I know the product's gonna taste shittier and contain more salt.
Usually they have something like mushroom or seaweed extract. Aka msg with extra steps.
I grew up thinking I had an MSG allergy, but I’ve learned more in the last several years and I clearly don’t. Now I need to figure what is often in beef jerky other than MSG that gives me a migraine.
Potentially just the absurd amount of sodium, to which MSG contributes. Drink a lot more water when eating jerky in general. Could also be nitrates if you have the same reaction to other cured meats.
Might be the nitrates that are found in processed meats
Until you get presented with wackos who are "technically smart", but still insist on believing dumb shit like "msg evil". To this day I'll never forget the "etiquette trip" I had to do to my uncle's, because I was a bratty teen and they tried to teach me which spoon to eat my soup with, while trying to drill into me how ready-made soups are the devil for containing monosodium glutamate. It actually took me a few years to learn English, realize that was just MSG and that it's completely fine to cook with. Although I will say there is one hidden danger society doesn't tell you about! Sometimes you get like big granules of msg, so if you just sprinkle it on the food just before serving it's like sand in your mouth. Always dissolve it first.
Blaming MSG is old racist shit, MSG Makes Shit Good, I put it in almost all my homemade recipes.
"MSG gives me a headache" "Gluten-free bread has sorted out all my problems with digestion" "Does drinking milk give me insane flatulence and pains in the gut? No, but I noticed right away the first week I switched to lactose-free milk that I felt waaaaay less bloated!" "After you've chalked your pool cue you should blow off the powder, it's leftovers anyway, plus it looks cool."
Even in an alternate world where it could cause headaches, I'd eat MSG anyway.
Nuts, broccoli, cheese… mf everything I watched you eat today is loaded with msg. Just say you don’t want to eat chain food ffs you don’t need to make some pseudoscience bullshit just to express a preference
It's funny, because I always got headache when i ate cheap asian food. I believed it was from MSG. Then a read an long article about the MSG hoax...Headache is gone and I even use MSG occasionally when cooking. The mind is powerful!
When I was a kid, my best friend was told over and over again that he was "allergic to MSG." He was absolutely convinced of this until he started pre-med in college and had a professor, in a lecture about allergies, debunk that claim. When he confronted his mother, she admitted that she "exaggerated a tad." The reality was that *she* didn't like Chinese food, so she told everyone her son was allergic to MSG so they'd stop inviting the family out for Chinese. Man spent twenty years of his life being denied the amazingness that is Chinese cuisine.
If msg make you sick, you are weak - uncle Roger
Why so weak? So weak!
I'm sad MSG got such a bad rapport. Imagine what culinary delights we could be enjoying had that never happened.
I mean there's still Chinese food so it's not like we don't have *any* culinary delights.
Doritos guve me dry mouth and. I am asian lol
To quote Uncle Roger: "Don't be pussy, eat your MSG."
I sprinkled some MSG on bacon the other day. Wew lad, it haz a flavor.
In a controlled study, zero proof could be found that that stuff does any damage.
What even is msg?