How many of you here know what Monosodium glutamate (MSG) is? If I had to make a wager I’d say the majority of people reading this haven’t heard of it, yet I would bet even more money that everyone of you had it in their food at least a dozen times, but more likely much, much more than that.
It is heavily used in fast food restaurants (KFC, McDonald’s, Chick Fil-A etc.), chips and snacks (Doritos, Pringles etc.), Seasoning blends (Vegeta and similar blends), all kinds of frozen meals, soups and soup mixes, processed meats like hot dogs and pepperoni, instant noodles and in condiments such as salad dressing, mayonnaise, ketchup, BBQ sauce and more.
So what exactly is this “secret spice”, how does it work, why is it absolutely everywhere, and if it’s so good why is it relatively unknown to the general public?
Monosodium glutamate is the sodium salt of glutamic acid, which is one of the most widespread non-essential amino acids. The human body can produce glutamic acid by itself, and with glutamate being a natural neurotransmitter (communication between brain cells), it plays an important role in the excitability of brain cells.
Plenty of websites and sources will tell you that MSG occurs naturally in protein rich foods such as meat, cheese, soy, peas, etc. However doing any deeper research will lead you to discover that while these foods contain glutamates, monosodium glutamate is synthetically produced and doesn’t occur in nature at all.
The difference is that naturally occuring glutamate is not bound to sodium, instead it is most often bound to other amino acids to form dipeptides or polypeptides, which are the building blocks of proteins. For example, the dipeptide glutathione is composed of glutamate, cysteine, and glycine, and it is an important antioxidant in the body.
It would be unfair to not include that while in most cases it’s bound to another amino acid, in some foods like tomatoes, mushrooms and seaweed it is also found as an unbound, free amino acid. When these foods are consumed, the glutamic acid is broken down into free glutamate by enzymes in the digestive system. The free glutamate can then be absorbed into the bloodstream and used by the body as a source of energy or as a building block for other molecules. However this is still not monosodium glutamate and any source that tells you otherwise is being dishonest.
Well then, you’re probably wondering what exactly worries me about the “monosodium” part. Mono just means one molecule, so we’ll be ignoring that part. Sodium is actually something that is necessary in small amounts for our body to function. However high sodium consumption can raise blood pressure, and high blood pressure is a major risk factor for heart disease and stroke.
More of you will be much more familiar with the danger of eating too much salt (sodium chloride), and that danger is precisely because of the sodium. Even without counting MSG people already consume way more than the recommended dose of sodium (being 2300mg per day, roughly contained in one table spoon of salt).
You can imagine that if the average American already consumes way more sodium through just salt then what is the recommend daily intake, how much the extra sodium they (unknowingly) consume through MSG can make all sodium related health problems even worse.
Researching MSG I have came across so many websites saying something along the lines of :”consuming too much of everything can lead to health problems, so while the same is true for MSG, it gets a bad rep for no reason.” However how is this a fair take when the average consumer has no idea about this spice even existing, and even less about the potential problems of consuming an excess amount of it.
However with all of the above out of the way, this is only half (or less) of the problem with MSG. I still haven’t told you why it’s so addictive and why it’s literally everywhere.
It was long believed that humans could distinguish between 4 different basic tastes: salty, sweet, sour and bitter. That is until Japanese chemist Kikumae Ikeda first synthesized MSG in a laboratory in 1907. He coined the new taste “umami”, which is best translated to English as “savory” or simply “deliciousness”.
Two years later, MSG was patented by the “Ajinomoto Corporation of Japan” and mass production and worldwide distribution began.
What it basically does, and why it’s called a “flavor enhancer” in many places is because adding it to a meal will not add anything new to it, but rather make whatever is already there taste better. This is why fries in McDonald’s have such a specific taste compared to regular ones and why KFC chicken is so succulent. This might sound weird but I will explain.
Like I already mentioned in the beginning, glutamate it plays an important role in the excitability of brain cells. For protein rich foods this makes sense, you eat something healthy and your brain fires off healthy molecules to basically tell it: “Yeah I’m loving this, give me more please.”
The problem is when added to any of the previously mentioned junk food, it will send the same signals to your brain, tricking it into thinking it’s consuming something healthy while it’s consuming absolute garbage. Worse yet the other garbage ingredients added to these foods make it much more addictive than foods with naturally occuring glutamates and with all of the information I have provided you with I hope you can start to see the real scale of the “MSG problem”.
This has most likely completely ruined our natural ability to be able to tell what food is good for us and what isn’t, and with MSG being literally everywhere the excessive glutamate can lead to excitotoxicity, a process by which the overactivation of glutamate receptors can induce neural cell death and damage to neural connections. Glutamate system dysfunction has been linked to depression, anxiety, autism, migraines, even schizophrenia as well as other psychological disorders and neurodegenerative diseases.
One of the biggest defense of MSG is that the stigma against it comes from xenophobia, all coming from the fact the term “Chinese restaurant syndrome” was used in a letter to the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine in 1968 by Dr. Robert Ho Man Kwok, where he described experiencing symptoms such as numbness, headache, and sweating after eating a Chinese meal that was high in sodium glutamate, also known as MSG.
Obviously coining it “Chinese restaurant syndrome” is a shit thing to do, especially for the fact that MSG sees widespread use everywhere.
Yet disregarding all of the information I have just given you above because of one xenophobic guy 50 years ago is just nonsensical, and such an easy cop out to avoid talking about the real issue at hand that you’d almost think it was purposefully promoted by multi billion dollar companies profiting of their MSG included recipes so they can get some heat of their back. That last part is just speculation though. Everything else is facts informed by multiple respectable sources I will provide below.
Sources:
www.healthline.com/nutrition/foods-with-msg#1.-Fast-food
www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/about-our-food/nutrition-calculator.html
www.campbells.com/products/condensed/chicken-noodle-soup/
www.everydayhealth.com/glutamate/guide/
www.fda.gov/food/nutrition-education-resources-materials/sodium-your-diet
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7576644/
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8311508/
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11706102/
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17691981/
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5278591/
Disclaimer: This content does not necessarily represent the views of IWB.