[cjlars]

Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) is an amino acid bound to a sodium molecule to make it into a shelf stable powder. Much like table salt (NaCl) is a sodium molecule bound to a chloride molecule to achieve the same. When they contact the water in food they both dissolve into the component molecules.

So really what you're talking about is glutamate which is a very widely occuring amino acid. It's "non-essential" which means that your body produces it. Almost all fermented foods contain it (including liquid aminos). Cheeses, meats, vegetables, etc contain it. It's very likely that you eat several times as much naturally occurring glutamate in your diet as you would if you used MSG in your cooking.

Basically if someone says they are allergic to MSG, but not allergic to all of the other foods that contain glutamate, is like someone saying they're allergic to table salt, but not allergic to all of the other foods that contain sodium, which is not medically plausible.

The flip side is that very high blood concentration of sodium can cause medical issues, and people worried about glutamate argue that a similar effect is going on when you eat MSG, but research so far indicates that at normal dietary levels, you're fine to sprinkle a little of either molecule on your food.

[galdosdi]

Your chemistry is scarily bad, are you trolling? When elements combine into molecules the result often behaves very differently from the components.

> Basically if someone says they are allergic to MSG, but not allergic to all of the other foods that contain glutamate, is like someone saying they're allergic to table salt, but not allergic to all of the other foods that contain sodium, which is not medically plausible.

OK, so how come I can eat table salt but chlorine alone will kill me?

Go back and complete that chem 100 course

[kazinator]

Indeed consuming protein molecules which contain glutamate is different from consuming free glutamate in the form of MSG.

We can draw a ready analogy to saccharides. It is like denying the effects of sugar because indigestible complex carbohydrates are made of sugar and do not produce those effects. "A blood sugar spike doesn't exist because cellulose is made of sugars, and I've eaten a large bowl of moistened sawdust without experiencing such a spike. It's probably an imagined effect or maybe caused by something else, such as a response to anti-caking agents in the sugar."

Why is MSG used in the first place on foods which already contain glutamate? For instance, why is it used in Vietnamese lemon grass chicken recipes, given that chicken protein has tons of glutamate? It's because the glutamate that is locked up in protein doesn't produce the taste effect of MSG.

So why don't these naysayers deny the existence of the taste effect of MSG also?

As in: "Gee, I don't believe that MSG can possibly be a flavor enhancer, because boiled chicken breast contains copious glutamate and yet tastes bland. People who say that flavor is enhanced by MSG are just imagining it due to confirmation bias fueled by mass hysteria."

[kazinator]

> if someone says they are allergic to MSG

If someone says they are allergic to MSG, they are simply abusing the word allergic. The reaction isn't allergic. It is not an immune response.

Nobody in the thread above you used the word "allergic"; you made that up.

Immune reactions are very different; they can be triggered by traces of the material. Nobody in their right mind claims they react to traces of MSG.

The following paper studies the actual mechanisms how of MSG alters blood flows in brains. Well, rat brains:

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