The Truth About MSG

Having brought up in the Philippines, our dishes majorly revolve around Filipino and Chinese dishes. When I was younger I hear about MSG in food, how bad it is. I never actually know what it did to the body and I couldn’t even discern its taste so I wouldn’t know if I’m eating food with MSG unless someone tells me. My grandmother loves to put MSG in her cooking despite us warning her that MSG is bad. So when I got older I don’t eat a lot of her cooking; mostly I did the cooking myself or my sister and we both know that we don’t put MSG in our food. I still never understood the big fuss about MSG. Recently, I got some light-headness symptom when I eat certain foods particularly the microwaveable wonton shrimp soup or the food from the deli of this local chinese grocery store. My hunch for my symptom was due to the MSG in the food that I’ve just eaten.

(Disclaimer: Just because I pasted a Chinese takeout food in this article, I’m not saying all of Chinese food has MSG. Many foods have MSG if you just read the ingredients, especially those canned or preserved foods)

MSG is monosodium glutamate and appears like fine white crystal substance. According to my research, it has been discovered by a Japanese scientist when he extracted its form from a seaweed. Nowadays, MSG is made through fermentation of sugar cane, starch, sugar beets, or molasses. So MSG is actually natural, right? Yes. It is described as a natural flavor enhancer. I still don’t know what flavor it gives, and up til now I still can’t discern its taste.

MSG is not the only source of glutamate. The body actually produces  “bound” glutamate (meaning bound with other amino acid). Glutamate is found naturally in protein-containing food such as meat, vegetables, poultry, and milk. We intake “free” glutamate from foods like tomatoes, soy sauce, parmesan cheese, walnuts, corn, mushroom, MSG, etc. And you won’t be able to recognize the difference between glutamate in MSG-food and glutamate in spaghetti. And many times you’re actually ingesting a lot of glutamate from other “natural” foods than from an MSG-food.

The MSG effect that people claimed they experience is actually either from being allergic to MSG (or MSG-intolerant), or having consumed too much glutamate. They develop what it’s called an “MSG-symptom complex”. The MSG dosage that produced reactions in these people ranged from 0.5 grams to 2.5 grams. In food, the cook only put 1/2 tsp of MSG (that’s <0.5gm).

The signs of MSG-symptom complex include:

• burning sensation in the back of the neck, forearms and chest
• numbness in the back of the neck, radiating to the arms and back
• tingling, warmth and weakness in the face, temples, upper back, neck and arms
• facial pressure or tightness
• chest pain
• headache
• nausea
• rapid heartbeat
• bronchospasm (difficulty breathing) in MSG-intolerant people with asthma
• drowsiness
• weakness

So is MSG bad for you? That depends – are you have allergic to it? Are you ingesting lots of it? Are you hypertensive (MSG can cause rapid heartbeat)? In my honest opinion too, MSG can be bad for you because MSG can make food taste better, which will in turn make you eat more. Eating more = putting in more weight = obesity.

Despite knowing the truth about MSG, having brainwashed by people telling me MSG is bad, I’m still going to stay away from MSG.