Why MSG
allergy is fake science
Source of
Article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/12/msg-allergy-chinese-restaurant-syndrome-myth Our failure to differentiate between quackery and hard
science has perpetuated the Chinese restaurant syndrome myth
In May this year, the medical journal Clinical & Experimental Allergy
published a review of more than a decade of scientific research into "the
possible role of MSG in the so-called 'Chinese restaurant syndrome'". Chinese restaurant syndrome is the popular slang for allergies or adverse
reactions that some people claim they get after eating food containing the
flavour-enhancer monsodium glutamate, or MSG, that is widely used in many
processed foods and also added to many Asian dishes. What is amazing about the publication of this research is not that it
concludes MSG allergy is a myth, but that a scientific journal still needs to
bother debunking such pseudoscience at all. As the New York Times put it in
an article
by Julia Moskin published last year, "'Chinese restaurant
syndrome' has been thoroughly debunked (virtually all studies since then
confirm that monosodium glutamate in normal concentrations has no effect on
the overwhelming majority of people)". This newspaper published an article
in 2005 by Alex Renton that says "at no time has any official
body, governmental or academic, ever found it necessary to warn humans
against consuming MSG". Renton also writes about experimenting on a friend of his named Nic, who
claimed to have adverse reactions to MSG: Renton feeds him a meal full of the
MSG and closely related naturally occurring glutamates that are found in a huge
range of foods including tomatoes, cheese, Marmite, seaweed and Worcester
sauce. But Nic feels no pain or adverse reaction after his glutamate-stuffed
meal. That's because he did not know he was eating MSG and other glutamates:
like everyone else who complains of allergy or adverse reactions to MSG, Nic
has psyched himself into believing that the benign substance makes him feel
bad. In China, where I live, you don't hear many complaints about MSG allergy.
They're too busy gorging themselves on the stuff. Chinese people consume 1.6m
to 1.8m tonnes of MSG crystals every year, according to China's "MSG
King" Li Xuechun, chairman of the Fufeng Group – a company that grew big
enough to list on the Hong Kong stock exchange thanks to sales of MSG. Most restaurants and home kitchens in China have a big bag of MSG
crystals, known in Chinese as weijing, or
"flavour essence", and they toss it liberally into all kinds of
savoury dishes. Even chefs who don't use glutamate crystals use soy sauce in
most recipes, and soy sauce tastes good precisely because it's chock full of
glutamates. Your clothes, your kids' toys and most of the stuff you own was probably
produced in factories in southern China by migrant workers who power through
their overtime shifts by eating instant noodles, of which MSG is a vital
ingredient. Instant noodles form a big part of the diet of the country's more
than 20 million university students, and you certainly don't hear any of them
complaining about Chinese restaurant syndrome. Nor do Italians complain about headaches after eating parmesan cheese
(which tastes good because of the glutamates in it), Japanese don't worry
about eating too much seaweed or dried shrimp (ditto), and even in Britain
you don't often hear whining about adverse reactions to Marmite (ditto); you
certainly don't get warnings from your doctor about the dangers of human
breast milk to babies (ditto). The fact is that unless you're eating bucket-loads of the stuff, MSG and its naturally
occurring cousins are not going to do you any harm. The persistence of the Chinese restaurant syndrome myth is a symptom of
the hypochondria that has become fashionable in contemporary Anglo-American
culture, and the failure of our educational systems to teach people the
difference between quackery and hard science. |
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