[kazinator]

> They are willing to bring MSG into their homes as a component in other foods—more than happy to accept it as a flavoring powerhouse in Doritos, instant ramen, canned soup, and bouillon cubes, or at least happy to accept its euphemisms, like “hydrolized soy protein” and “autolyzed yeast.”

Those are strawman avoiders of MSG, not everyone. I avoid stuff which lists MSG under these names. As well as disodium inosinate or disodium guanylate.

I can tolerate some MSG, but if there is too much, I get headache/nausea. That is, it's not like I can't have a few chips at a party.

[tptacek]

People say things like this about gluten sensitivity, too, often with very detailed self-reporting. But in a controlled setting, outside of celiac, there's not a lot of evidence for NCGS, and it's very likely that a significant fraction of people who report NCGS are not in fact gluten-sensitive. As with MSG, people also have weird ideas about their gluten intake, and as with MSG there's widespread and easily illustrated sensitivity to other aspects of gluten-rich food (for instance, for a lot of people, rapid intake of lots of refined carbs will have immediate insulin effects).

The difference, of course, is that there is an underlying condition that makes gluten problematic for a small number of people --- celiac disease. There is no known "celiac of MSG", despite decades of searching for it.

Anything is possible, but the evidence overwhelmingly suggest that if you're having a reliable reaction to foods with MSG in them, it's something else in those foods you're sensitive to --- most likely salt! --- not MSG.

[1053r]

Just to expand on one of the parent's points, Celiac is pretty rare, and affects under 1% of the population. However, Fructose Malabsorption is much less rare, and affects closer to 5% in the US. In spite of the name, Fructose Malabsorption has little to do with dietary fructose, and instead has to do with a class of molecules called fructooligosaccharides (FOS).

Overconsumption of FOS causes bloating, nausea, "brain fog," lower GI upset, and a whole raft of other symptoms that sound an awful lot like what many self-diagnosed NCGS folks report. For folks with Fructose Malabsorption, the threshold consumption of FOS that causes symptoms is less than 10% the level that causes symptoms in the general population.

The confounding thing is that wheat is rich is FOS. So folks who believe they have NCGS stop eating wheat and sometimes feel better. They probably have Fructose Malabsorption, or are suffering from insulin spiking effects from refined carbs, or some other effect. But they heard gluten was bad for you, and when they ate the package of bread that said "gluten free," and stopped eating the normal wheat bread, they started feeling better.

"Middlebrow dismissals" of their condition don't really help them either. True, gluten is almost certainly not their problem. But gluten free food, as a side effect of lacking wheat, often helps them feel better! What are the chances that something similar is happening with MSG? Perhaps added MSG is often found along side other ingredients/contaminants that cause headaches and other reported "MSG symptoms"?

[kazinator]

> Perhaps added MSG is often found along side other ingredients/contaminants that cause headaches and other reported "MSG symptoms"?

MSG is a clear common denominator. Many people report that if they avoid anything with MSG (under any of its names), they avoid the associated problems. That doesn't mean it's MSG.

Why do studies focus on the MSG? Because they are sparked by the motivation to clear MSG's name (which could actually be right). They don't care about finding the root cause of these symptoms.

The proper scientific approach is to ignore the MSG hypothesis of the self-reported sufferers and get to the root cause, not simply to test that hypothesis and be done.

> "Middlebrow dismissals" of their condition don't really help them either.

Exactly; same in this MSG situation.

[tptacek]

Here we find ourselves hypothetically dismissing all the studies ever done on MSG based on broad classes of study design concerns.

[kazinator]

> Something else in those foods you're sensitive to --- most likely salt! --- not MSG.

Can you point to studies which confirm salt as the cause of these symptoms that MSG is unfairly blamed for?

I can eat consume copious amounts of salt without any ill effects, like finishing huge bowls of soup to the last drop.

I exercise a lot so I use salt liberally, and add it to water. If I don't supplement the salt intake, I start getting muscle cramps and a kind of lethargic feeling, particularly in hot weather.

I did an experiment, though, about 8 months ago: I started drinking bouillon. I prepared about a mug of hot water with a teaspoon of the soup stock. On one mug per day, I was okay. When I went up to three, the headaches and nausea showed up. I felt like crap, so I cut it short.

There is salt in that stuff, but that can't be it.

[pharrington]

The symptoms you're describing are also primary symptoms of dehydration.

A more reliable exploration would be, after diligently logging your food and drink intake (with time and quantities) along with your physical feelings for a couple months, add a daily regime of a specific amount of pure MSG. Start small, and increase the MSG intake until you start feeling adverse symptoms. Assuming symptoms manifest, then increase your daily hydration levels (obviously not to the point of giving yourself hyperhydration) and note when/if the adverse symptoms previously noted diminish.

[dekhn]

Doesn't this mean that eating any meat, or your own body chemistry, would also cause headaches?

[pc2g4d]

You would think so, but somehow the artificial stuff is different or in greater concentration.

Here's how I discovered my MSG intolerance:

I made a bunch of onion soup (from onion soup mix), and ate a ton of it. I then spent the next 24 hours feeling terrible, downing pepto, etc.

A few weeks later I made a recipe that included onion soup mix as an ingredient. Again I felt terrible.

I though, Aha, I must have an onion allergy, this onion soup mix keeps making me sick.

So I started checking if onions themselves made me sick. But onions were no problem.

Then I looked at the other ingredients on the onion soup mix. Monosodium glutamate stood out. I remembered hearing that could cause problems. So I started learning more about it, and as I did much of my digestive life came into focus. I remembered moments of intestinal agony ever since I was a teenager that I couldn't explain. I paid attention to what bothered my stomach, and always there was some form of MSG---autolyzed yeast, etc.

Since making an effort to avoid MSG I almost never encounter those symptoms. And when I do it's usually attributable to food prepared by others whose ingredients I can't strictly account for.

People claim MSG intolerance isn't a real thing, but my experience has shown me otherwise.

[gilrain]

Yes, and we've repeatedly researched MSG on the basis of experiences like yours. It turns out there is no evidence that people who self-report as sensitive actually are. Yes, even if they're really, really sure.

Maybe you are some sort of undiscovered outlier? That may be compelling to you, but it seems unlikely to me... the research indicates you're far more likely to be among those who have misidentified a cause for their symptoms, one conveniently pointed out to them by urban legend. It's completely unsurprising, and I've done the same many times before.

[pc2g4d]

My recollection from looking into the research myself was that though a large proportion of those who claimed MSG intolerance ended up having none, some proportion _did_ have the intolerance. The conclusion that MSG intolerance isn't real on that basis was overstated. Similarly, though many people who claim gluten intolerance have no such thing, some in fact do.

Given the nigh-infinite space of possibilities that is the human genome and the various environments and experiences of seven billion human beings, in my mind it's almost guaranteed that every human being will experience at least one medical condition that is insufficiently frequent in the population that it is "unknown to science". When your personal experience deviates from the common interpretation of scientific findings, what do you do?

I could be wrong. Maybe it's all in my head somehow? But that's a sort of real effect, too.

What I do know is that by avoiding MSG the quality of my diet has improved immeasurably, and my intestines aren't in agony. It's just an anecdote. An anecdote that happens to be my own life.

[kazinator]

> we've

Who is this "we", and in what way does it involve yourself?

[pharrington]

Scientists who have performed controlled measurements on peoples reactions to MSG.

As usual in human experience, without having specialized knowledge obtained via controlled, repeatable measurements, it is wildly difficult to accurately observe an informational correlation between two out of the literally millions of influential events on your body. Your conviction that MSG causes headaches and nausea is directly analogous to people who are convinced that proximity to arbitrary electromagnetic fields causes acute physical distress. This is standard confirmation bias. We all do it, it's a natural consequence of our brains' imprecise pattern matching combined with the extremely limited perspective any individual human has. The reliable way to mitigate this human flaw is to perform good science.

[gilrain]

The parts of humanity involved in figuring it out, and those laymen which have bothered to follow along. I'm in the latter group, so yes, feel free to ignore me. (Just don't ignore the actual research, eh?)

LeVar Burton: you don't have to take my word for it!

[dekhn]

So, if you were to obtain autolyzed yeast, and eat it, you'd experience the symptoms? Basically all modern packaged food with umami flavor includes it (it's the go-to-method for adding umami to processed foods).

Personally, I'd say that you may have an allergy or immune reaction to yeast, rather than MSG intolerance.

[kazinator]

Hey pc2g4d: check out this:

https://open.library.ubc.ca/cIRcle/collections/ubctheses/24/...

Wow.

[pharrington]

"The daily intake is estimated to be between 50 and 200mg/kg/day in industrialized countries"

Wow, indeed. An estimate of between 3.4g - 13.6g per day for a person that weighs 150lb is wrong by a magnitude. The upper end of that estimate has people burning through a 16oz packet of MSG in one month.

[kazinator]

Bingo, same here.

When I was little, back in the 70's, my mom used these bouillons: Knorr and whatnot. We had no idea what is MSG, but somehow I clued in to the idea that I was feeling sick from that soup and was dreading the "headache soup".

In the late 80's, I once so ill from a cup of instant noodles that I had to go home.

Not long after that, I finally learned about MSG from a book I stumbled upon in the library (circa 1989, I think). It all clicked.

I understood mom's soup and the instant noodles incident.

I started avoiding everything with MSG and have scarcely had any apparently food-related headaches since: all the ones I've had over have been from eating out.

One particular series fell into a clear pattern. A new Chinese restaurant opened near where I work. I ate there on three separate occasions over the course of six months, around lunch time. Each time, I felt some discomfort in the abdomen toward the evening and headache/nausea the following morning lasting into the afternoon. Each time, exactly the same repetition.

[ubercore]

The list of ingredients on Knorr bouillon is extensive:

Salt, monosodium glutamate, hydrogenated cottonseed oil, chicken fat, hydrolyzed soy/corn protein, dehydrated mechanically separated cooked chicken, dehydrated chicken meat, dehydrated chicken broth, autolyzed yeast extract, dehydrated onions & parsley, lactose, water, colour, spices & spice extract, disodium guanylate, disodium inosinate, citric acid, tartaric acid, hydrogenated soybean oil and sulphites.

[kazinator]

That's right: "bouillon" isn't "MSG".

Some eight months ago, I reproduced these effects in myself by drinking a hot water solution of something called "Better Than Bouillon". I put about a teaspoon into a mug of hot water. On one mug per day, I was okay, but if I drank three per day, I got the headaches.

The listed ingredients of this paste are: roasted beef with concentrated beef stock, salt, hydrolyzed soy protein, sugar, corn syrup solids, flavour (dried onion and garlic, spice extracts), dried whey (milk), potato flour, caramel, corn oil, xanthan gum.

Must be the dried onion? :)

I've consumed beef, salt, corn syrup, onion, garlic, spices, whey powder, caramel, corn oil in the past in much larger amounts. Xanthan gum is just a thickener; I've used it! No problems. The only thing that stands out there is the "hydrolyzed soy protein".

[jkaplowitz]

I get that you say onion is fine for you, but it's amazing how non-obvious and common the actual culprit could be, whatever it is in your case: I have a relative who has, through trial and error, determined that tomatoes, onions, and garlic are among his migraine triggers - but shallots are fine despite being quite similar to onions. Bodies are weird. :)

[ubercore]

Have you reproduced it with MSG dissolved in water?

EDIT: Have you thought about lactose? It's in whey (depending on quality, various concentrations)

[pharrington]

When you get those headaches/nausea, have you noticed any correlation with how hydrated you are at the time?