Comments on: Glutamic acid in tomatoes and parmesan

By: Robyn

Robyn — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 12:47:08 +0000

I become violently thirsty in the night if I eat certain foods for dinner. I thought it was common salt, but it is worse if I have tomato paste, and last week I had parmesan for the first time in years, and it was the same. I get a bit thirsty in the evening and drink plenty, then wake in the night with dry mouth and sometimes a dehydration headache and busting for a pee. Last week after the parmesan the headache persisted until morning even though I drank 500ml water during the night, and I was very thirsty and drank a lot the whole of the next day. I’m assuming it was the MSG in the foods.
BTW, a stock that my mum uses that has disodium iosinate in it does a similar thing.

By: Martin Lersch

Martin Lersch — Fri, 08 May 2009 19:51:09 +0000

Claire: That’s an interesting objection and I agree that with chili peppers a test with chili capsules would not give the same “hot” felling in the mouth. If this could be the case with MSG is way beyond my expertise. But at least Tarasoff and Kelly have ruled out the possibility that MSG taken up through the gut will cause the CRS.

My typical control question if people claim to experience the CRS is if the same thing occurs when they eat tomatoes or parmesan…

Regarding sodium – remember that MSG and GA will be in equilibrium depending on the pH in the food, in the mouth and in all of your intestines. Although it’s typically added in the form of a salt some of it will be converted to GA when eaten.

By: Claire

Claire — Tue, 05 May 2009 01:35:33 +0000

There is a major flaw with the double blind studies in that to do a double blind study, they have to bypass the taste sensation and deliver it via pills. How do they know that the stimulation of the nerves involved in taste or buccal absorption wouldn’t be involved in the mechanism behind “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome”? By delivering the MSG in pill form in the studies, they assume that it does not. What if the mechanism involved taste or absorption through the mouth? Then the studies would have been designed to eliminate the existence of precisely what they were trying to study.

Food for thought: the eating of another flavoring, spicy hot chili pepper, causes some people to have the physiological reaction of sweating, but what would happen if you have them eat the pepper in pill form? One might conclude from such a double blind study that eating hot chili pepper doesn’t make people sweat any more than the placebo controls did.

Also, how do we know that the sodium doesn’t play a role thus making MSG not exactly the same as glutamic acid?

By: Ryan T. Riddle

Ryan T. Riddle — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 00:53:13 +0000

Also – regarding monosodium glutamate:

While there’s no evidence that MSG is bad for you, the urban legend persists, and to get around putting “monosodium glutamate” on their ingredient labels, food companies put “hydrolyzed soy protein” instead. Since glutamate is an amino acid, the effect of adding hydrolyzed soy protein is essentially the same as adding MSG, while technically no MSG has been added.

By: Ryan T. Riddle

Ryan T. Riddle — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 00:32:10 +0000

Has anyone ever tried adding disodium guanylate and/or disodium inosinate along with MSG to something home-cooked?

I’ve been wondering what effect that would have. They add these ingredients to potato chips; I wonder how much of a difference they make.

By: hdreioplus.de » Taste Comes From …

hdreioplus.de » Taste Comes From … — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 14:00:55 +0000

[...] (savory) with high percentages of glutamic acid. Glutamic acid is MSG. Contrary to popular opinion it is wrong that MSG is bad for you. After all, our own body produces glutamic acid, a simple amino [...]

By: Jovelino dos Santos

Jovelino dos Santos — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 02:21:50 +0000

If someone tells me there is MSG in such a food, I prefer not to eat it. Other than that, there is no way we can avoid MSG in the food we eat today. Whatever we eat, “this baby” is always there.
Well, people get sick for hating and gossiping while trying to enjoy the most delicious foods; then, they blame the MSG. However, I think that millions of people are bad for the food they consume. These people are miserable no matter what they eat. For them, even mineral water is poison.
Hatred and evil thoughts while digesting might make more sick people than MSG does.
I’ve been going to Asia for many years and never; thank God, got sick. I may consider myself a 52-year healthy male. Moreover, I never blame what I eat, because I am always thinking about people who are so poor and have no food choice.
Everything in excess is a problem.

By: M.

M. — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 06:11:54 +0000

Jeffrey Steingarten (on MSG): Why Doesn't Everybody in China Have a Headache? in It Must've Been Someting I Ate, ISBN 0375727124

By: Joanna

Joanna — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 12:18:16 +0000

I’ve long thought that for many people “I’m allergic” is just another way of saying “I’m a picky eater” – so it’s great that science is proving this to be the case. Teach your children well – don’t force them to eat what they don’t like, but get them to try a tiny taste EVERY TIME you serve something (“your tastebuds change” is the mantra in this house). That way they’re exposed to new tastes, even if they don’t yet want to embrace them.

Joanna
joannasfood.blogspot.com

By: milkshake

milkshake — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 17:13:24 +0000

I thought the crunchy crystals forming on some hard cheeses were actually calcium phosphate – there is lots of phosphotyrosines in the chain, mostly in the form of Ca salt, chymosine precipitates the casein by cleaving the phosphates etc. (It would be quite easy to figure out whether the mysterious crystals are inorganic stuff.)

Assaying the glutamate content was used as a reliable method to estimate the age of parmasan (the aged stuff is more expensive)