[tptacek]

You might just as well raise concerns about adverse effects from dill, or alliums, or fava beans. In fact, all three of those are more likely to be associated with ill effects, because they're more allergenic.

The reason MSG gets such harsh pushback is that the idea of "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome" or "MSG sensitivity" has been rebutted pretty comprehensively both from an empirical perspective --- decades of studies have never established a link, which according to the narrative of MSG sensitivity should be very easy to do! --- and from a theoretical perspective. In fact, the theoretical basis for the safety of MSG is pretty plain just from the molecule, which makes you wonder how people could be spinning stories about the dangers of chemical MSG at all.

[bvinc]

I'm not trying to raise concerns. And actually, I agree with everything that you said. There is obviously a lot of misinformation and most of people's reactions and stories are factually incorrect and part of a fad. We can say that for sure because we've studied it.

What I'm trying to say is that you shouldn't take that knowledge and then proceed to tell an individual, who you haven't studied, that they are wrong about what is happening to their bodies. People have weird and rare reactions to things all the time. You should have a healthy amount of doubt and realize that maybe you don't have complete knowledge of their bodies. Why is everyone here so certain? Who proved that no person on the planet has any reaction to MSG?

[tedunangst]

If I had symptoms from an imaginary syndrome, I'd think I'd be thankful to someone telling me that so I could continue looking for the true cause.

[drewmol]

I agree with your sentimate. It's also important to remember that we continually learn new things about how previously considered inert components actually have effect when ingestested in combination with active ingredients. I love glutamate. When isolating them from other components and changing chemical structure, then dumping that in high volumes into other food (where the Chinese Food Syndrome part comes from), it does not seem unreasonable to me that it may cause irritation to some peoples digestive system. So I guess it's important to express that a whole is not only a sum of its parts, and both biology and chemistry are fluid evolving disciplines.

[tptacek]

If it "may" cause digestive irritation, how come it never does when scientists do blinded studies of it?

[drewmol]

The articles mentioned studies, but I can't give informed speculation, have not looked at any of the studies. Will assume the participants who reported irritation are a small enough a population to fall within the range of participants reporting irritation from placebo. So I'll opine that most of the people who report negative reaction probably have not sufficiently isolated MSG as the culprit, even if they are certain enough to convict.

Side note: Latacora intreagues me, I think it's a good aproach to satisfy some security pain points. If things go well in the next few months, I may reach out to evaluate fit;-)

[tptacek]

By all means, reach out any time you have questions. :)