Do you use MSG (Mono sodium glutamate in cooking?

[sawadee1947]

many thai pastes from 7-11 and micromarts have it as an ingredient ,in small doses occasionally no problem .

you would need to eat tons of it to put your health at risk ,

maggi sauces have it in

Sorry, but you are WRONG. The max amount of being harmless is around 2g daily (incl ALL meals). But if you are sensitive even "mg" will harm you. So stay away from this crap. It is useless. You can replace it by spices from your garden or bought from a dealer who does not use insecticides.

And it is in all junk food as chips, roasted nuts/almonds aso.

Cook by yourself. Then you will know what you eat.

And the you see in Thai TV kids gathering around a woman showing how to prepare food taking 1 or 2 full spoon of MSG.... In this way Thai Food is far away from being healthy. Welcome

[luckytrev]

I have never used it my cooking before but saw a pack in the pantry the other day and thought "what the heck's all the fuss about" and chucked a bit into the 'dtom yum gai' to find out. Have to buy a new packet now as the peas don't take on that lovely green colour without it.

[lblake32]

MSG - mono-sodium glutamate is the sodium salt of Glutamic Acid - and is one of the non-essential amino acids that is very common in both plants and animals - and which we eat every day in lots of different foods and also our bodies manufacture it. It is abundant in our bodies and acts an essential neurotransmitter in our brains and central nervous sysyem. When we digest protein the glutamate is released - often as the sodium salt (msg) because our food is sodium rich. If we never eat protein containing glutamate, our bodies would manufacture it from other proteins and amino acids because it is essential for healthy brain function. It is impossible to be "allergic" to it in the normal sense as it is an essential chemical for life - but in rare cases it can act as a neurotoxin and disrupt normal brain and nervous system functioning.

Adding msg to food is generally irrelevant - as there is probably more of it in the natural food than is added by any food manufacturer or chef in a restaurant. The result of excessive consumption of msg in a short period of time is to excite the brain and nervous system - making one feel restless, agitated, excited, etc. - a bit like taking a big shot of caffeine from tea or coffee. That is why many people can not sleep at night after eating a meal with higher amounts of msg. This is not an allergic reaction - it is a natural reaction to having temporary elevated amounts of a neurotransmitter swishing around your body - and the effect soon passes.

Most scientific experiments that show msg to be highly disruptive or damaging to health have been done with animal studies, not humans, and have been done with hugely excessive amounts of msg that no-one in real life would ever be able to eat - unless you take an entire pack of msg and just gulped it all down in one go.

Except in rare cases - where people have pre-existing neural endocrine disorders that are adversely affected - msg in food is completely natural and harmless

[lblake32]

That being said, why would one want to add an unnecessary man made version ?. I'm satisfied with the naturally occuring version in my food. I don't need the shelf life extended or the flavour enhanced.

[MediaWatcher]

ukrules, on 25 Sept 2014 - 03:16, said:

It's funny what passes for an allergic reaction these days. There's a whole industry popping up around this kind of thing.

What you're describing is at best described as mildly irritating, it may or may not be related to the food. You've probably been eating this substance all of your life without realising it, I know for sure it's used in a lot of western foods for a long time.

Someone I know had an allergic reaction, he stopped breathing after being given some penicillin.

See the difference ? Mildly irritating situation vs allergic reaction.

Then, Mr smarty pants, explain why hey fever (also called allergic rhinitis) is consider an allergy.

[GuruWilma]

Yarinda, you're absolutely correct. MSG is extremely toxic to some people and should be avoided at all costs. My wife and I actually carry a card with us that we can give to the waitress or cook to ask them not to add MSG to our food. It goes on to say that we are extremely allergic to MSG and may die in their restaurant if we consume it. My wife breaks out in hives for days, has trouble breathing, has heart palpitations and arrhythmia and has on occasion gone into anaphylactic shock. We have had to take my adult stepdaughter to the ER at least three times in the past three years. Unfortunately, as much as we insist that the MSG not be added to our food, many times the message never makes its way back to the cook, and other times they refuse to comply because they are afraid their food will not taste good unless they add the MSG. Many will simply lie to us and say that they have not added it when they actually have. Keep in mind that most of the local bottled sauces have MSG added and that is usually enough to trigger a reaction in some people. My wife shops carefully and is able to find these sauces that have no MSG added, so they are definitely out there if you'll just look around. Also, the manufacturers have conveniently come up with alternative names on their labels in an attempt to disguise the existence of MSG, so you must be very careful and learn to identify these counterfeit names.

Don't let the manufacturers fool you with their clever research that insists that MSG is harmless and don't take the advice of other posters who say that it is harmless to them. Listen to your own body and stay away from the stuff. It is a "silent killer"! See the following article for the truth about MSG.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/04/21/msg-is-this-silent-killer-lurking-in-your-kitchen-cabinets.aspx

You are deathly allergic to MSG and you live in Thailand?

[GuruWilma]

Without getting embroiled in a debate about reactions to MSG, does any one know of a simple test for monosodium glutamate that could be done prior to eating?

Hey I'd be interested if you found the answer to this one. Any luck?

[BudRight]

Is this the hypochondriac thread or something? Do you not know what an amino acid is? If you were 'alergic' to glutamate you wouldn't have made it to your own birth. It's in everything like carbon or oxygen is in everything. Really people.

[GuruWilma]

i like it, the food tastes better with it.

I don't think you're getting the idea here....

[h90]

The MK chain of restaurants has banned MSG and is certified MSG-free. Their food is delicous, which proves the point that MSG is not needed to make food taste good. And most customers in MK restaurants are Thai.

MSG tells your senses that there is some high quality protein in the food. Therefor your body likes it.

Ad some MSG (which costs virtually nothing) and you can remove some expensive meat and it will still taste the same (perfect for low cost soups).

Now there are several solutions to declare something MSG free and still add it: Some yeast that produce MSG, so you declare Yeast Extract....some mushrooms and some other fermented things that have very high content of it.

No need to declare the MSG as it is naturally.....

[numloc]

http://www.buzzfeed.com/johnmahoney/the-notorious-msgs-unlikely-formula-for-success#46cz301

This pretty much nails it. No serious scientific research had ever concluded that there is such a thing as severe allergic reactions to msg, it is present in so many natural ingredients, vegetables, breast milk etc...

Some may well suffer from "fear of msg" which is quite common....

[Diddl]

Hello Yarinda, MSG makes me terribly sick. After eating it I am sick for a few days until my stomach has emptied. I have had this problem for years now and have refused to go to any Chinese restaurants anywhere in the world for 30 years because of it. Now, as I am in Thailand, I only go out to Thai restaurants with Thai people so that they can explain my problem and so that they don't add any MSG to the dishes I choose. Also, applies to most Asian cuisine these days. You will find MSG in many packaged foods also, like biscuits, chocolate bars, soups, ready-meals, etc., and they hide the name MSG under different descriptions such as hydrogenised ..., caseinate, natural flavour, etc. Apparently, MSG damages the brain, but I don't suppose people on TV want to hear that because, when I warn them about certain things, they always react. Anyway, if nothing else, keep the children off MSG.

[nifty11]

MSG has been known and linked to Asthma related deaths in Australia.

[96tehtarp]

We use small amounts of it regularly, both in pure form and as a co-ingredient in other flavor enhancers. We use very small amounts of it in almost everything. E621 as it's known in the EU is a very common food additive. Other names for MSG include monopotassium glutamate, glutavene, glutacyl, glutamic acid, autolyzed yeast extract, calcium caseinate, sodium caseinate, E621 (E620-625 are all glutamates), Ajinomoto, Ac'cent Gourmet Powder, and many others.

Other common food additives include sugar and salt!

[h90]

Is this the hypochondriac thread or something? Do you not know what an amino acid is? If you were 'alergic' to glutamate you wouldn't have made it to your own birth. It's in everything like carbon or oxygen is in everything. Really people.

Since long there is a treatment for MSG allergic. In serious cases of MSG poisoning 100 mg Hypochondrin intravenous or in lesser cases 200 mg Placebol oral.

But there is some evidence that very large amounts cause some problems on a few people.

Staff of mine used to order a soup (already with MSG), and add two spoons (not teaspoon) of sugar and 1 spoon of MSG.

And that is only the soup....Such amounts of concentrated single amino acids don't happen in nature.

Like salt or sugar.....if you eat half a kg at once you'll die even if it is normal food. So it seems more than possible that large amounts of MSG has some effects.

[96tehtarp]

Is this the hypochondriac thread or something? Do you not know what an amino acid is? If you were 'alergic' to glutamate you wouldn't have made it to your own birth. It's in everything like carbon or oxygen is in everything. Really people.

Since long there is a treatment for MSG allergic. In serious cases of MSG poisoning 100 mg Hypochondrin intravenous or in lesser cases 200 mg Placebol oral.

But there is some evidence that very large amounts cause some problems on a few people.

Staff of mine used to order a soup (already with MSG), and add two spoons (not teaspoon) of sugar and 1 spoon of MSG.

And that is only the soup....Such amounts of concentrated single amino acids don't happen in nature.

Like salt or sugar.....if you eat half a kg at once you'll die even if it is normal food. So it seems more than possible that large amounts of MSG has some effects.

I often wonder about all the whining about MSG, however I keep my skepticism to myself. Just because I don't have a reaction to small amounts of MSG doesn't mean that some people do not. It is consumed by hundreds of millions of people everyday who have no unpleasant reactions.

I prefer to avoid it because high quality food doesn't require a flavor enhancement. Also, eating high quality food reduces obesity and diabetes and hypertension. For me a barometer of the quality of the food I'm eating is the amount of MSG and sugar and salt added to it. It's not good to eat a lot of low quality food.

I once had a reaction where I felt really awful for several hours. I suspect it was from eating a homemade Thai soup which had a very large quantity of MSG accidentally added to it. Normal dosage would be in the order of a 1/5th of a coffee spoon per bowl. I'll never know for sure, however I suspect the bowl I ate had perhaps a full teaspoon or more... I don't know.

[Bonefish]

Arsenic also occurs naturally in many foods, for example in rice. But when we eat too much of it, we die.

Same for MSG. Proteins contain most or all of about 20 amino-acids, including glutamic acid, but Mother Nature never intended to isolate one of them artificially and dump it in huge quantities into our food, to induce people to consume more of that particular food.

Any substance, when consumed in excessive amounts, will kill us. And that includes water, sugar and salt.

MSG may not affect some lucky people, but it is toxic to many of us.

[GuruWilma]

The MK chain of restaurants has banned MSG and is certified MSG-free. Their food is delicous, which proves the point that MSG is not needed to make food taste good. And most customers in MK restaurants are Thai.

MSG tells your senses that there is some high quality protein in the food. Therefor your body likes it.

Ad some MSG (which costs virtually nothing) and you can remove some expensive meat and it will still taste the same (perfect for low cost soups).

Now there are several solutions to declare something MSG free and still add it: Some yeast that produce MSG, so you declare Yeast Extract....some mushrooms and some other fermented things that have very high content of it.

No need to declare the MSG as it is naturally.....

Just because something is natural doesn't mean it's good for you. And just because it's a mushroom doesn't mean it's good for you.

Also, for many substances, the human body adapted to the amount that occurs naturally in the food. For example, sugar is good for you when eating it in small amounts like in blueberries, rasberries, apples etc. But when it's refined and given in large doses then the human body is not able to process all of it, and thus it's bad for you in unnatural doses.

This statement is not for or against MSG, but it's not a good idea to determine that something is good for you just because it occurs naturally in some food.

[h90]

Is this the hypochondriac thread or something? Do you not know what an amino acid is? If you were 'alergic' to glutamate you wouldn't have made it to your own birth. It's in everything like carbon or oxygen is in everything. Really people.

Since long there is a treatment for MSG allergic. In serious cases of MSG poisoning 100 mg Hypochondrin intravenous or in lesser cases 200 mg Placebol oral.

But there is some evidence that very large amounts cause some problems on a few people.

Staff of mine used to order a soup (already with MSG), and add two spoons (not teaspoon) of sugar and 1 spoon of MSG.

And that is only the soup....Such amounts of concentrated single amino acids don't happen in nature.

Like salt or sugar.....if you eat half a kg at once you'll die even if it is normal food. So it seems more than possible that large amounts of MSG has some effects.

I often wonder about all the whining about MSG, however I keep my skepticism to myself. Just because I don't have a reaction to small amounts of MSG doesn't mean that some people do not. It is consumed by hundreds of millions of people everyday who have no unpleasant reactions.

I prefer to avoid it because high quality food doesn't require a flavor enhancement. Also, eating high quality food reduces obesity and diabetes and hypertension. For me a barometer of the quality of the food I'm eating is the amount of MSG and sugar and salt added to it. It's not good to eat a lot of low quality food.

I once had a reaction where I felt really awful for several hours. I suspect it was from eating a homemade Thai soup which had a very large quantity of MSG accidentally added to it. Normal dosage would be in the order of a 1/5th of a coffee spoon per bowl. I'll never know for sure, however I suspect the bowl I ate had perhaps a full teaspoon or more... I don't know.

I think not only the MSG makes problems on low quality food: Chemicals (direct spraying the meat with insect spray on the market), use of very old palm oil. Use of chicken which are supposed to be food for crocodiles. Old meat, etc etc. Huge amounts of MSG to mask it is just additional. 1 Teaspoon? As told before one of my staff added 1 spoon (not teaspoon) to his single serving (+2 spoons of sugar).

[BillyBobThai]

For you guys who have a problem with MSG here in Thailand, you had best eat only fresh food that you yourself have bought and prepared. Nothing else will do.

[Thongkorn]

The wife uses it, i have asked her many times not to But she does, so i just keep floating air biscuits. In laymens terms it make me fart.

[GuruWilma]

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Arsenic also occurs naturally in many foods, for example in rice. But when we eat too much of it, we die.

Same for MSG. Proteins contain most or all of about 20 amino-acids, including glutamic acid, but Mother Nature never intended to isolate one of them artificially and dump it in huge quantities into our food, to induce people to consume more of that particular food.

Any substance, when consumed in excessive amounts, will kill us. And that includes water, sugar and salt.

MSG may not affect some lucky people, but it is toxic to many of us.

Oh nice, snuck this one in here right before I could post mine.

With any substance you can generally do a self test to see how it affects you. Just track how you feel at set times after eating the substance. I did this 2 years ago for body building after reading the 4 Hour Body. I put 15 pounds of muscle on in just 6 weeks, which was a record for me by +10 pounds. Anyways a big component of what i did was tracking everything I ate and measured how it affected my performance in the gym later on.

I'm going to try the same for MSG for one week. Anyone in Chiang Mai interested in joining this experiment?

[GuruWilma]

An allergic reaction does not have to be life threatening. Anyway, you're splitting hairs. Call it an allergy, intolerance or whatever. I've been around a few years and I know I react negatively to large amounts of MSG in the food.

Yeah then there's always those people that say "You can't be allergic to that." If you've noticed something after eating certain foods your whole life then you generally get to know what affects you negatively.

I've always noticed that I often get a pimple after eating chocolate. Then about 50% of the time when I brought this up when talking to women, they would say, "That's a myth! Chocolate doesn't give you pimples."

I'm not sure how all these 20 year old women had such knowledge of the chemical structure of chocolate and how this substance affects the body, but I'm guessing it appeared in a popular edition of Cosmo Magazine that many of them read.

[laislica]

We seem to have been brainwashed into believing that the only information we should believe is only from "scientific sources".

As if these sources are pure and have no bias....

Have a read at this and then see if you feel the same way about MSG

A widespread and silent killer that’s worse for your health than alcohol, nicotine and many drugs is likely lurking in your kitchen cabinets right now.

“It” is monosodium glutamate (MSG)1, a flavor enhancer that’s known widely as an addition to Chinese food, but that’s actually added to thousands of the foods you and your family regularly eat, especially if you are like most Americans and eat the majority of your food as processed foods or in restaurants.

MSG is one of the worst food additives on the market and is used in canned soups, crackers, meats, salad dressings, frozen dinners and much more. It’s found in your local supermarket and restaurants, in your child’s school cafeteria and, amazingly, even in baby food and infant formula.

MSG is more than just a seasoning like salt and pepper, it actually enhances the flavor of foods, making processed meats and frozen dinners taste fresher and smell better, salad dressings more tasty, and canned foods less tinny.

While MSG’s benefits to the food industry are quite clear, this food additive could be slowly and silently doing major damage to your health.

What Exactly is MSG?

You may remember when the MSG powder called “Accent” first hit the U.S. market. Well, it was many decades prior to this, in 1908, that monosodium glutamate was invented. The inventor was Kikunae Ikeda, a Japanese man who identified the natural flavor enhancing substance of seaweed.

Taking a hint from this substance, they were able to create the man-made additive MSG, and he and a partner went on to form Ajinomoto, which is now the world’s largest producer of MSG (and interestingly also a drug manufacturer). 2

Chemically speaking, MSG is approximately 78 percent free glutamic acid, 21 percent sodium, and up to 1 percent contaminants.3

It’s a misconception that MSG is a flavor or “meat tenderizer.” In reality, MSG has very little taste at all, yet when you eat MSG, you think the food you’re eating has more protein and tastes better. It does this by tricking your tongue, using a little-known fifth basic taste: umami.

Umami is the taste of glutamate, which is a savory flavor found in many Japanese foods, bacon and also in the toxic food additive MSG. It is because of umami that foods with MSG taste heartier, more robust and generally better to a lot of people than foods without it.

The ingredient didn’t become widespread in the United States until after World War II, when the U.S. military realized Japanese rations were much tastier than the U.S. versions because of MSG.

In 1959, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration labeled MSG as “Generally Recognized as Safe” (GRAS), and it has remained that way ever since. Yet, it was a telling sign when just 10 years later a condition known as “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome” entered the medical literature, describing the numerous side effects, from numbness to heart palpitations, that people experienced after eating MSG.

Today that syndrome is more appropriately called “MSG Symptom Complex,” which the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) identifies as "short-term reactions" to MSG. More on those “reactions” to come.

Why MSG is so Dangerous

One of the best overviews of the very real dangers of MSG comes from Dr. Russell Blaylock, a board-certified neurosurgeon and author of “Excitotoxins: The Taste that Kills.” In it he explains that MSG is an excitotoxin, which means it overexcites your cells to the point of damage or death, causing brain damage to varying degrees -- and potentially even triggering or worsening learning disabilities, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Lou Gehrig’s disease and more.

Part of the problem also is that free glutamic acid is the same neurotransmitter that your brain, nervous system, eyes, pancreas and other organs use to initiate certain processes in your body.4 Even the FDA states:

“Studies have shown that the body uses glutamate, an amino acid, as a nerve impulse transmitter in the brain and that there are glutamate-responsive tissues in other parts of the body, as well.

Abnormal function of glutamate receptors has been linked with certain neurological diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease and Huntington's chorea. Injections of glutamate in laboratory animals have resulted in damage to nerve cells in the brain.”5

Although the FDA continues to claim that consuming MSG in food does not cause these ill effects, many other experts say otherwise.

According to Dr. Blaylock, numerous glutamate receptors have been found both within your heart's electrical conduction system and the heart muscle itself. This can be damaging to your heart, and may even explain the sudden deaths sometimes seen among young athletes.

He says:

“When an excess of food-borne excitotoxins, such as MSG, hydrolyzed protein soy protein isolate and concentrate, natural flavoring, sodium caseinate and aspartate from aspartame, are consumed, these glutamate receptors are over-stimulated, producing cardiac arrhythmias.

When magnesium stores are low, as we see in athletes, the glutamate receptors are so sensitive that even low levels of these excitotoxins can result in cardiac arrhythmias and death.” 6

Many other adverse effects have also been linked to regular consumption of MSG, including:

Obesity

Eye damage

Headaches

Fatigue and disorientation

Depression

Further, even the FDA admits that “short-term reactions” known as MSG Symptom Complex can occur in certain groups of people, namely those who have eaten “large doses” of MSG or those who have asthma.7

According to the FDA, MSG Symptom Complex can involve symptoms such as:

Numbness

Burning sensation

Tingling

Facial pressure or tightness

Chest pain or difficulty breathing

Headache

Nausea

Rapid heartbeat

Drowsiness

Weakness

No one knows for sure just how many people may be “sensitive” to MSG, but studies from the 1970s suggested that 25 percent to 30 percent of the U.S. population was intolerant of MSG -- at levels then found in food. Since the use of MSG has expanded dramatically since that time, it’s been estimated that up to 40 percent of the population may be impacted.8

How to Determine if MSG is in Your Food

Food manufacturers are not stupid, and they’ve caught on to the fact that people like you want to avoid eating this nasty food additive. As a result, do you think they responded by removing MSG from their products? Well, a few may have, but most of them just tried to “clean” their labels. In other words, they tried to hide the fact that MSG is an ingredient. How do they do this? By using names that you would never associate with MSG.

You see, it’s required by the FDA that food manufacturers list the ingredient “monosodium glutamate” on food labels, but they do not have to label ingredients that contain free glutamic acid, even though it’s the main component of MSG. There are over 40 labeled ingredients that contain glutamic acid,9 but you’d never know it just from their names alone. Further, in some foods glutamic acid is formed during processing and, again, food labels give you no way of knowing for sure.

In general, if a food is processed you can assume it contains MSG (or one of its pseudo-ingredients). So if you stick to a whole, fresh foods diet, you can pretty much guarantee that you’ll avoid this toxin. The other place where you’ll need to watch out for MSG is in restaurants. You can ask your server which menu items are MSG-free, and request that no MSG be added to your meal, but of course the only place where you can be entirely sure of what’s added to your food is in your own kitchen. To be on the safe side, you should also know what ingredients to watch out for on packaged foods. Here is a list of ingredients that ALWAYS contain MSG:

Autolyzed Yeast Calcium Caseinate Gelatin

Glutamate Glutamic Acid Hydrolyzed Protein

Monopotassium Glutamate Monosodium Glutamate Sodium Caseinate

Textured Protein Yeast Extract Yeast Food

Yeast Nutrient

These ingredients OFTEN contain MSG or create MSG during processing:10

Flavors and Flavorings Seasonings Natural Flavors and Flavorings Natural Pork Flavoring Natural Beef Flavoring

Natural Chicken Flavoring Soy Sauce Soy Protein Isolate Soy Protein Bouillon

Stock Broth Malt Extract Malt Flavoring Barley Malt

Anything Enzyme Modified Carrageenan Maltodextrin Pectin Enzymes

Protease Corn Starch Citric Acid Powdered Milk Anything Protein Fortified

Anything Ultra-Pasteurized

So if you do eat processed foods, please remember to be on the lookout for these many hidden names for MSG.

Choosing to be MSG-Free

Making a decision to avoid MSG in your diet as much as possible is a wise choice for nearly everyone. Admittedly, it does take a bit more planning and time in the kitchen to prepare food at home, using fresh, locally grown ingredients. But knowing that your food is pure and free of toxic additives like MSG will make it well worth it. Plus, choosing whole foods will ultimately give you better flavor and more health value than any MSG-laden processed food you could buy at your supermarket.

[MZurf]

An allergic reaction does not have to be life threatening. Anyway, you're splitting hairs. Call it an allergy, intolerance or whatever. I've been around a few years and I know I react negatively to large amounts of MSG in the food.

Yeah then there's always those people that say "You can't be allergic to that." If you've noticed something after eating certain foods your whole life then you generally get to know what affects you negatively.

I've always noticed that I often get a pimple after eating chocolate. Then about 50% of the time when I brought this up when talking to women, they would say, "That's a myth! Chocolate doesn't give you pimples."

I'm not sure how all these 20 year old women had such knowledge of the chemical structure of chocolate and how this substance affects the body, but I'm guessing it appeared in a popular edition of Cosmo Magazine that many of them read.

I get several facial pimples when eating large amounts of chocolate/sugar. That's not the reason I avoid overloading though, since the pimples disappear quickly. It's that I'm pre-diabetic

[Ulysses G.]

MSG iss in virtually ALL processed savory Western foods, often in excessive amounts: canned nuts, sausage, all manner of "luncheon meat," crackers, salad dressing, potato and corn chips, not to mention all fast food. Funny how the people who claim to have an "allergy" to it only experience flare-ups after eating in Asian restaurants...

No scientific research has ever proven the existence of so-called "MSG headache".

Most people who claim to be "allergic" to MSG are just neurotic. VERY few people actually are.

[MZurf]

MSG iss in virtually ALL processed savory Western foods, often in excessive amounts: canned nuts, sausage, all manner of "luncheon meat," crackers, salad dressing, potato and corn chips, not to mention all fast food. Funny how the people who claim to have an "allergy" to it only experience flare-ups after eating in Asian restaurants...

No scientific research has ever proven the existence of so-called "MSG headache".

Most people who claim to be "allergic" to MSG are just neurotic. VERY few people actually are.

That's comforting to know Dr Ulysses, that I'm neurotic instead of allergic. Thanks for sharing that pearl of wisdom.

[MZurf]

The wife uses it, i have asked her many times not to But she does, so i just keep floating air biscuits. In laymens terms it make me fart.

Does that mean you are a professional "farter"?

[MZurf]

I get a warm feeling in my groin and then an erection for some bizarre reason...

If I got that reaction I would be using MSG in all my food

[Bonefish]

MSG iss in virtually ALL processed savory Western foods, often in excessive amounts: canned nuts, sausage, all manner of "luncheon meat," crackers, salad dressing, potato and corn chips, not to mention all fast food. Funny how the people who claim to have an "allergy" to it only experience flare-ups after eating in Asian restaurants...

No scientific research has ever proven the existence of so-called "MSG headache".

Most people who claim to be "allergic" to MSG are just neurotic. VERY few people actually are.

Do you work for Ajinimoto, Dr. Ulysses G.? I hope they pay you well.