[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)

[kazinator]

Haven't tried yet. I do know I tolerate salt.

Response to EDIT: I tolerate milk products well, including cheese. I have used whey powder for supplementation (not in recent years). We're talking big quantities consumed at once. I noticed it's used in some baked goods and I tried it that way; it adds a certain milky "body" to the flavor.