Umami

12-06-2005 @7:01PM John Park said... I've suffered from this since I was a little kid, long before I was prepared to sign up for a mass psychosis. It sucks. For me it can be added (which isn't "chemical", just a purpose built fermentation of starch or sugar) or naturally occurring MSG as well as hydrolyzed proteins. This means that no matter what I do, if I cook meat slowly over low heat (like a stew) I'm going to have a five hour-long headache, feel lethargic, and become an intolerable jerk. What a party!

On the plus side, avoiding added MSG and its many variants (look on the label for natural flavors, hydrolyzed protein, carrageenen, modified food starch, dough conditioners, and many more) has led me to cook everything from scratch from good ingredients. I can tolerate it in small doses, so I still indulge in mushrooms, tomatoes and my beloved parmigiano, but the naturally occurring sources seem much less concentrated than the added amounts in canned foods.

I have no idea what the current, unbiased scientific thinking is on MSG, but I do recall that some of the major studies in the '80s were found out to be funded by the MSG industry.
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12-06-2005 @6:56PM negex said... I am mildly allergic to MSG -- makes my heart go boom-boom-boom. I can handle a little here and there, but not multiple dishes.

My dad has it too, but much worse; he's been to the hospital from his heartrate being far too high after eating MSG. And that's the troof.
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12-07-2005 @12:55AM Berkana said... Well, let's see. Monosodium glutamate has one sodium ion, and one glutamate ion. Is your friend alergic to sodium? That's impossible, because your body's full of it. Your blood has a certain sodium level, and it is absolutely essential to the functioning of your nerves and your muscles. So is your friend alergic to glutamate? That too is problematic: glutamate is the most common neurotransmitter in the brain. (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=glutamate+neurotransmitter)

Glutamate enhances flavor because it enhances the sensitivity of your tongue by boosting the signals your brain gets from it. (This is not surprising, as it is a neurotransmitter.) Combining it with sodium simply gives you a stable natural form of edible glutamate. Getting MSG wet simply causes it to dissociate into sodium, which is present in the body, and glutamate, ('cause that's what ionic substances do) which is just as present. So what's the big deal?

If someone would do a double blind test to see if people who freak the hell out about MSG actually have a physical reaction to either the sodium or the glutamate, I would really appreciate it. (Do any web search on "glutamate" and you'll find paranoid people freaking out about the "glutamate industry" and how evil it is.) Until then, I regard it as paranoia over some chemical with a long name in ignorance of the fact that it is already found in our bodies.
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12-07-2005 @1:04AM Berkana said... BTW, if you get glutamate from mushrooms or hard cheese, you're not getting it in small doses at all; mushrooms have more than enough glutamate to be plenty problematic. (And the sodium part? not a factor: if you were alergic to sodium, you would be a natural wonder.) You're ingesting enough glutamate in mushrooms and hard cheese to cause any effect that ought to be triggered by MSG.

My best guess is that the folks who have reactions and headaches from MSG are reacting to the introdiction of this neurotransmitter to their tongues, and their brains don't like the extra stimulus. As for heart rate problems, maybe the sodium is exacerbating blood pressure issues, or the person who gets heart problems has been ingesting huge quantities of glutamate, 'cause glutamate is *the most common neurotransmitter* in your body. It's in your own blood in a plenty high concentration; I don't see how the trace amounts found in food as a flavor enhancer can cause heart problems.
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12-07-2005 @1:17AM Berkana said... BTW, y'all read the link about how no scientific link has been found between MSG and its purported problems? Here's a quote to think about for those of you who didn't bother to read it:

"We now know that glutamate is present in almost every food stuff, and that the protein is so vital to our functioning that our own bodies produce 40 grams of it a day. Probably the most significant discovery in explaining human interest in umami is that human milk contains large amounts of glutamate (at about 10 times the levels present in cow's milk). Babies have very basic taste buds: it's believed that mother's milk offers two taste enhancements - sugar (as lactose) and umami (as glutamate) in the hope that one or other will get the little blighters drinking. Which means mothers' milk and a packet of cheese'n'onion crisps have rather more in common than you'd think.

. . . When you next grate parmesan cheese onto some dull spaghetti, what you will have done in essence is add a shed-load of glutamate to stimulate your tongue's umami receptors, thus sending a message to the brain which signals (as one neuro-researcher puts it) 'Joy and happiness!'

. . . Ripe cheese is full of glutamate, as are tomatoes. Parmesan, with 1200mg per 100 grams, is the substance with more free glutamate in it than any other natural foodstuff on the planet."

And no, MSG is not some freaky artificial chemical. Quoted from the paragraph on how it's made:
"As they put monosodium glutamate into production, Professor Ikeda and his commercial partners found that making stable glutamate from the traditional seaweed and salt was unnecessary. They developed a much simpler and cheaper process using fermented molasses or wheat - eventually manufacturers realised that almost any protein can be broken down to produce it."
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12-07-2005 @1:34AM Berkana said... If any of you say you had a huge reaction to MSG before you knew there was such a thing as MSG, you had a reaction to something else and are simply mis-attributing. The article lists foods that contain glutamate, and their concentrations (in milligrams per 100 grams), as:

roquefort cheese 1280
parmesan cheese 1200
soy sauce 1090
walnuts 658
fresh tomato juice 260
grape juice 258
peas 200
mushrooms 180
broccoli 176
tomatoes 140
mushrooms 140
oysters 137
corn 130
potatoes 102
chicken 44
mackerel 36
beef 33
eggs 23
human milk 22

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12-07-2005 @1:59AM Dmnkly said... Uncle!

:-)
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12-07-2005 @2:27AM extramsg said... It really is sad that this myth is so widespread. Honestly, MSG should be on tables just like salt and pepper. Of course, it is in Asian restaurants in the form of soy sauce or fish sauce. But I recently bought some and it makes a huge difference. If you taste it straight, it just tastes mildly salty and a little....meaty? Savory? Hard to explain. But if you put it on something like a steak or in a sauce, it really enhances the flavor without making it taste like something else.
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12-07-2005 @2:57AM M-L said... Hydrogen Dioxide anyone?
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12-07-2005 @4:56AM Berkana said... You mean dihydrogen oxide. . . (H2O. "Hydrogen dioxide" doesn't exist.)
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