Restaurant that doesn't use MSG

They post those signs because it's the boogeyman for adults and people stopped going to restos that served it. It makes sense that the restos would stop using it for financial reasons. MSG is found naturally in food you likely eat every day. If it is so dangerous why don't the 4 billion or so people in Asia constantly have a headache? According to many people all of China should be fat, asthmatic, have heart problems and/or dead by now. Look at the way Filipinos eat the stuff. Magic Sarap (which is MSG) is in almost every home cooked meal I have ever seen produced by a local. My gf, everyone in her family, every helper I have ever had has always asked me where the Magic Sarap is. Why aren't all the Filipinos dead yet? Why do I never get headaches or numbness? (well, I get numb alright, but it ain't caused by MSG I get headaches only when I try to stop drinking caffeine.....or I hit my head on something.) Why am I not dead yet?

There could be certain levels of people who are "sensitive" to it, but it is probably on the same level as people who are sensitive to salt and other common ingredients that the vast majority of people aren't. Should we ban salt, mushrooms, peanuts, or any other thing a person is sensitive or allergic to because it's bad for a select few? No. They should be aware of their condition and avoid it.

If you put too much MSG in food it tastes horrible and a person wouldn't finish the dish if it had too much in it. Chinese food contains lots of ingredients and spices (plant based that are much more likely to cause an allergic reaction). Sorry about your friend but it's likely that she had a medical condition and was going to go regardless if she had ate Chinese food that day. Correlation does not imply causation and the doctor seemed quick to place the blame on MSG just because it was present and he likely himself thought MSG was bad for people (just because you are a doctor does not mean you don't have prejudices). Also, just because one doctor claimed a person died from it doesn't make MSG bad for anyone. That is an extremely small sample size and impossible to use as there was no controlled setting, any number of things could have caused her heart failure. If we use that as evidence then my evidence is myself. I have never so much as had a runny nose after eating MSG....therefore, MSG is good for everyone.

MSG is sodium and an common amino acid, that's it. They have tested it on people who swear they are sensitive to it and they get no reaction in controlled studies. The Chinese food restos could be adding an ingredient that they are not telling you about or they could be preparing it in an unhealthy manner. There are so many more likely causes for people to be getting sick from eating that type of food....much more likely than MSG.

There have been studies done that do show results, but once the study is done again they cannot reproduce the results. If a study's results cannot be consistently reproduced then there is a flaw in the control and it is not valid. MSG does have a toxicity level like almost everything else in this world (water has a toxicity level). You have to be pretty dang stupid to hit that level though. No normal human being is going to shovel a pound of pure MSG (without food) into their mouth. Every study that has found something bad with MSG has had people eat ONLY MSG at very excessive levels (levels that no normal person will ever encounter).

It's very hard to search for anything concerning MSG as there are so many nuts on the internet with a blog that are stating opinions and cherry picking results from scientific studies. It's rare (I have yet to find one) to find a link to an actual study from those that state it is bad for you.

 

"Ajinomoto Co., Inc. is a Japanese food and chemical corporation which produces seasonings, cooking oils, TV dinners, sweeteners, amino acids, and pharmaceuticals."

And?

 

I see. Did you have an opinion on it or were you just throwing the company name out there for promotion purposes?

 

I retain the basics and remember where I gathered it in the first place. A keyboard certainly is a lot faster than going to the library to verify before making each post. Even lazy people have no excuse to be ignorant any longer.

 

It is a biological issue, not a personal one. If a person chooses to believes the science or not is up to them. I don't own an MSG producing company and I don't, knowingly, eat the stuff much myself so I could really care less if people eat it or not. I just don't like false information.....which is what it seems that people who say it is bad for you are spreading (though I don't doubt they actually believe what they are saying). If I ate a tablespoon of salt and had a heart attack (and I truly believed it) would it be valid for me to say that salt is bad for everyone and that it should be banned the world over? Millions, probably billions, of people eat MSG daily and have no ill effects from it.

What are "massive amounts"? How many milligrams are excessive? At what level do people start to become sick from it?

What I posted is not "propaganda", it's scientific studies. If you would like me to link to them so you can read them yourself I will post them. People underestimate the power of their own mind and what ill effects it can have on their bodies. If you don't believe in the science then there isn't much more to say. People are only limiting where they can eat. I just hope people don't try to push it on the rest of the world by getting a safe ingredient banned for everyone. (BTW: you have mentioned that it has been banned or restricted in other countries, or someone else did, which one's would those be?)

Anecdotal fallacy. One single lie does not make everything else ever said a lie. (I've had many x girlfriends who regularly used that fallacy though.) I wish someone here would post me a link to studies showing that it is harmful to the average person and not just anecdotal evidence. I might actually believe it if I could see the studies and evidence myself.