Stuff You Should Know - What's the deal with MSG?

Episode Date: September 5, 2019

MSG got a bad rap in the 70s and 80s. But what is it exactly and how bad is it for you? The answers to those questions lie within.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hello, stuff you should know. Come and see us in Orlando or New Orleans, because that's your last chance. Yep, Orlando, we're going to be at the Plaza Live October 9th, New Orleans.

We're going to be at the Civic Theater October 10th. Just go to sysklive.com and you will find info and links to buy tickets, and then you can come see us because they won't let you in the door without them. I'm sorry. That's right. And if you want to come see me, I will be in Chicago at Lincoln Hall on September 12th,

and I will be in Austin, Texas at the North Door on October 2nd. Ticket links are weirdly hard to find, so just look up, end of the world, Josh Clark, Austin or Chicago, and you will find what you're looking for. See you guys soon. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,

a production of iHeartRadios, How Stuff Works. I'm Josh Clark. I'm a producer of iHeartRadios. I'm a producer of iHeartRadios. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's first time guest producer Dave.

Dave. Back with us. He picked it up already that he already knows not to say anything in response. I love that for a guest producer, don't you? So Dave's story, Dave worked with us many, many years ago and went away. I don't even know what Dave did in the meantime.

He went to Alaska, I think for a while. He wandered the desert. The desert of Alaska. He wandered back in one day and said, hey, I hear you guys invented podcasting. Can I get a job? Yeah, and here he is now. Yeah, it's good to have him back.

You may have noticed a distinct uptick in the quality of our short stuffs. That's because Dave took over editing those things. Yeah, Jerry was like, this isn't even worth my time. Snooze, yawn. Yeah, Jerry's been handing off duties, huh? Left and right. Like she's dealing a hand of cards.

You know, the final straw one day is she's gonna just look at us both. This is how she's gonna quit and do the move when the dealer leaves the table. Yep. The little hand move. Yep, I'm out. I'm out.

I hate you both so much. I'm out. That's how she's gonna break it to us. Yep. And then a new person with a cummerbund on will just wander in. Yeah. And an arm garter.

Right? Because we go to Casino's in the 19th century. Right, a portly fellow with a mustache. That's right. His hair waxed. That'd be great. Would be great. Can't you see Jerry dreaming about doing that?

Like just kind of twitching in her sleep with a big smile on her face? You and I dream about stuff you should know going on forever and she dreams about its ultimate demise. Right. So, Chuck, let me ask you. Have you ever had nacho cheese Doritos? Is that the original Dorito?

I don't know. I think it's possible taco flavors the original, but for you and me as children of the 70s, 80s, I would say nacho cheese is the first one we probably ever ate, the red bag. Sure, I'm a cool ranch guy. I like it too. Actually, I like all Doritos.

I don't really discriminate. So you have had nacho cheese Doritos? Yes. Have you ever had soy sauce? Oh, I'm a big soy guy. I do not follow the sushi, what they say, how to eat sushi, I drown it. Do you, I still use soy sauce,

even though every time I, there's a weird little voice in my head that's like, and I'm supposed to do that. That voice is probably you, me sitting next to you. I say, no, it's really not, cause she uses a little bit too, but I don't know it is, it's not male, it's not female, it's just some weird disembodied voice. And I say, to heck with you voice, I'm doing it anyway.

What about Maggi sauce? Have you ever had that? Ooh, I don't think so. Oh, I'll bet you have somewhere. It's kind of like a tall slender brown bottle with a yellow label, Maggi, M-A-G-G-I. I think I can picture it. Okay, I'll bet you've had it.

Anyway, if you've had all three of those, or any one of those, what about Vegemite? Oh God, no. Okay, I've had Vegemite, I'm not crazy for it, but we're not here to yuck anyone's yom, right? Well, I'm gonna throw one in, because I see what you're doing now. Okay.

Can I throw one in there? Sure. Have you ever used accent? That is A-C, little accent-a-goo, I believe. Sure. C-E-N-T, that's spice. I don't know if I have, I know exactly what it is, because I'm just so familiar with grocery stores,

but I don't know if I've ever had it. You're so familiar with grocery stores. I'm so familiar. That's one of your talents. I've got another one for you. You know Japanese mayonnaise, the Kewpie Doll mayonnaise? I have had that. Okay.

We could do this all day. What about oysters? You ever had oysters? I love oysters. Okay, well Chuck, listen, you have had MSG, monosodium glutamate, if you've eaten anyone or all of those things. That's right.

I love monosodium glutamate, also known as MSG, and the world does too, the world just doesn't know it, because MSG, those three little words, those three little letters, have such a bad reputation, especially in the West, especially in America, that food manufacturers have come to basically bend over backwards to create new processes

for creating MSG, so that they can insert them into foods without having to say that there's MSG in the food, even though there's very much MSG in the food, but they know that a lot of Americans won't eat that food if they see that there's MSG in there. That's right, and we will get to this in more detail, but it was such a bad thing at one point, especially in the 70s and 80s.

Yeah. Like I remember growing up and people talking about MSG in Chinese restaurants, and the whole time they were talking smack about Chinese restaurants, a lot of American families were just dumping that stuff all over their food via that little accent spice bottle. Yeah, accent, any kind of processed food

that has any sort of salty or savory kind of flavor to it. Like it's everywhere. It's in grape juice. It appears everywhere, naturally and added. Because grape juice, what you want is a meaty, salty aftertaste. Right, you're swishing the grape juice around your mouth. You're like, yeah, it's got a real oystery quality to it.

I love it. Are they natural and oysters? Is that the deal? Yeah, oysters, clams, they MSG, the MSG. They like the little trio of- Sure, those three letters. Yeah. So the point is, is that people are terrified of MSG or really can't stand it.

They say maybe it gives them all sorts of physical maladies. Perhaps they think it can lead to developmental disorders. And yet at the same time, they consume MSG every day without realizing it and without being affected by it. So it's entirely possible. And like you said, we'll talk about this much more in depth later, that the fear of MSG is a totally unfounded scientific panic

that is basically a nocebo reaction to something that appears to be basically harmless to almost everybody who consumes it. Yeah, so let's, I mean, we're gonna be busting some myths left and right. Yeah, we are. Like- Who I call Adam. Did you say I call Adam?

Yeah, I call Adam. You're Jamie this time. Oh nuts, let me get my beret out. Yeah, you gotta shave your beard too, just keep the mustache. Yeah, and I gotta grow that mustache out to where it covers both lips. That's right.

He had that big thing. Boy, he disappeared, didn't he? It's enormous. Oh yeah, he said, thanks for the memories suckers. Yeah, I always had the, it was under the impression just watching that show and being a fan that he didn't wanna be there ever. Right, I think he liked the science of it.

He wasn't into the TV part of it. I think so, I think his last day on set, he was probably pretty stoked to get out there. Right, he was like Jerry at the end of stuff he should know when it comes. Yeah, except he had millions of dollars tucked into his arm garter. Exactly.

All right, so monosodium glutamate is, there's a lot of myths. One of them is that, you know, this is something that human beings just created out of thin air. It's black magic. And that is not true because it occurs naturally in a lot of foods.

If you've ever had tomatoes and cheese, those are a couple of big ones. You eat a pizza, you're eating naturally occurring MSG. Yeah, don't forget again, oysters, anchovies, mushrooms, potatoes. If you like Asian food, kelp, seaweed, all that stuff contains natural MSG or some form of glutamates.

Yeah, and such that the FDA, like if you get a can of tomato sauce, if you haven't added MSG otherwise, you don't have to put that on the label because it's in the tomato. Right, but apparently in the United States, you also can't put something like no added MSG or no MSG on the label

because it's been proven as misleading. So you just don't mention MSG at all, even though there is MSG in that tomato sauce. But like you said, if the manufacturer says these tomatoes have a decent amount of MSG, but we really want to pep it up a little bit with some added MSG, then they definitely have to put the MSG is in there.

That's right. So if you want to talk chemistry very briefly, which is always the best way to talk about chemistry, it is monosodium glutamate, is glutamic or glutamic acid, what do you say? Glutamic. Glutamic. Yeah.

A little ion of sodium just right there on top. Right, and so that's it. That's monosodium glutamate. And so the difference between glutamic acid, which is an amino acid that our bodies produce, we're able to synthesize it by breaking down proteins, it's actually a glutamic acid and any kind of mineral ion bonded together is a glutamate.

So if it's bonded, if glutamic acid is bonded with an ion of sodium, it's monosodium glutamate. If it's bonded with an ion of potassium, it's potassium glutamate. So there's like different minerals that it can bond to, but the one we're talking about is monosodium glutamate. And glutamate is extremely important to our bodies.

I saw somewhere that four pounds of us, a little under two kilograms of any human being walking around is glutamate. That's how much of it we have in our bodies at any given point in time. Yeah, and it actually serves functions too. Glutamic acid is a neurotransmitter, and it's an excitatory neurotransmitter,

which that means it stimulates nerve cells to relay the signal. And we'll get to the, is it good or bad thing, but some people, one of the claims and sort of where some of that is rooted, aside from just propaganda, is that MSG and foods can lead to excessive glutamate in the brain and then excessive stimulation of nerve cells.

And for that reason, it's what's called an excitotoxin. Right, like it excites neurons so much that it actually destroys or damages them. So you destroy enough neurons then you destroy your cognitive function. That's right. And we'll hold the rest of that to the, for further myth-busting.

Yeah. Myth-busting. I like the extra mustard you put on it. So as far as how much we're consuming, this is what the FDA says. And this is a quote, an average adult consumes approximately 13 grams of glutamate each day from the protein and food. And then this is just like regular foods.

While intake of added MSG is estimated to be around 0.55 grams per day. So average daily intake is about a half a gram a day. Right. And so you can find it again, everywhere in the body. You also find it in breast milk. And glutamates are just everywhere. And so even if you wanted to get away from MSG,

you're not really getting away from glutamates. And it would be, you'd be ill advised to get away from glutamates to begin with, right? Right. The thing is, and this is where a lot of people say, well, really MSG is fine.

There's no problems with it. A lot of people say that, that's kind of considered a subtle science by some, as we'll see, that the body does not distinguish between manufactured MSG and the MSG or other kinds of glutamates that it gets from foods in which this naturally occurs. Right?

That's right. When your body takes it in, takes an MSG, it goes, okay, let's separate the sodium ion and send it over here for this use. And then we'll break the glutamate down over here and we'll use it for this, for neurotransmitting and to build proteins. It doesn't make any distinction,

metabolically speaking, between MSG that's manufactured and MSG that you find in like tomatoes. Right. I think part of the problem started in the 60s with the way it was synthesized. Yeah. Anytime something is synthesized through a chemical process

that has toxins and toxic byproducts, I think people are gonna freak out even if the end result is not toxic. Yeah. And it's pretty understandable too, because I mean, some of the stuff we're talking about is very nasty and you think about it, you're like, wait, that's where MSG comes from

and I'm eating it on my food. Right. I can commiserate with that big time, even though a large part of my brain is like, that's just kind of a fear of science and chemistry. Right. But it's understandable. I mean, like in the,

for the first half of the 20th century, there was a process to produce MSG that included propylene and acrylonitrile, which you don't wanna eat that and you don't eat it. It's just, these were used as precursors to create MSG. That's the process for a while. But you can understand how it would get a bad rep just from that alone.

Yeah, but now it's produced by fermentation. Basically, they take certain kinds of bacteria and yeast and they grow that in a broth. They basically use starches, various sugars, carbohydrates, and then the bacteria ferments that sugar and they produce the glutamate, then they combine it with the sodium

and it becomes, it looks sort of like salt. It's a white crystalline substance. It doesn't really have much of an odor and you could just sprinkle it on top of your chocolate ice cream if you wanted. You could. I think it actually does in certain amounts, bring out sweet.

I don't think it does anything to sour or bitter, but it can enhance sweetness and enhance saltiness. It does have its own flavor, which we'll see, but it's also known as a flavor enhancer too. Right, like that accent. Right, exactly, accent. Why are they sponsoring this episode? I don't know, they really should.

Either that or they'll like leave us out of this. We don't want to get this kind of wrap. They're like, we were under the radar for a large portion of the 20th century. Right, exactly, until you guys came along. Should we take a break? Oh wait, hold on, I have a little more on fermentation. All right, of course.

This was very surprising, but the fermentation, the wastewater, what's left over after you get the MSG out of this like sugar beet juice that the bacteria and yeast have fermented, I read a study from the Chinese National Academy of Science, I believe, Chinese Academy of Science. They called MSG wastewater,

one of the most intractable forms of wastewater we produce. Yeah, because all of that yeast and some of the ammonium that's produced as a byproduct of it, it consumes a lot of oxygen. So it kills off other stuff in like water. So you can't just dump this wastewater into other water because it'll create like a dead zone wherever it hits. That doesn't bode well for people that are scared of it.

No, it doesn't. There's a lot of stuff about MSG where if you look and you're like, yeah, I really understand, it's really coincidental that this is actually harmless, but there's all this like circumstantial peripheral stuff that seems to support. The wastewater will scorch the earth.

Basically, yeah, but enjoy your accent, chump. Poor accent. I know. All right, now I'm okay with taking a break. All right, we'll come back and talk a little bit a little bit of a refresher, perhaps, on Umami right after this. Let's go.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends

to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal?

No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy,

blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough,

or you're at the end of the road. OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god.

Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week

to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And it's like a Joshua shock. So Chuck, we did an entire episode on Umami. Do you remember that? That was a good one. It was. We also talked about it in our episode on taste

and how it works. Sure. But we should kind of go over the broad strokes of it again, I think. Yeah, I mean, up until the early 1900s, humans were sort of since 400 BCE when Bitter was added by a philosopher of all people named Democritus. Is there anything, anything those philosophers couldn't do?

I don't think so. It's pretty broad title back then. For real. But sweet, salty, sour, and bitter. And we were locked into that and everyone was pretty happy with that. Like why mess with it? You know?

I don't know. They're still messing with it today. There's like six, seven other candidates for a sixth taste. I'm sure that will be happening at some point in the near future, don't you think? Yeah, and I think we settled last time on carbon dioxide. It's going to be the sixth taste. Really?

Really? Wow, that's sad. No, it's a good one. It does some magic to your tongue. I guess it does, doesn't it? All right, well, we'll see. So here's a gentleman that comes along in 1909. And his name is Kikune Akita.

Is that right? Not bad. What did I get wrong? There's like an extra little half syllable in there. Kikunaya. Oh, OK. Well, I should just leave the Japanese pronunciations to you. I think you basically knew.

I should have just kept my mouth shut because it was so close. I've got Europe locked down. Here you go. How selfish can I be? Right, exactly. Do Kikunaya Akita in an Italian accent? I don't think I can. Yes, you can.

My brain just broke. So he was a professor of chemistry at Tokyo Imperial University. And he was eating some dashi, which is made from seaweed, a kelp called kombu. And he was like, man, this tastes meaty, but there's no meat in it. And it's super rich.

And there's something going on in here that I can't quite pinpoint. And I think it might be onto something. He said, where's the beef? He might have. He totally did. So this is not like the first time anyone ever realized, like, yeah, there's something, there's

such a thing as a meaty taste or whatever. But because we had been so locked into the idea that there's only four tastes. I mean, I remember going to elementary school and being taught that too. Sure. In the 80s, basically. Just lied to over and over again.

Yeah, no one said umami to me until like seven years ago. Basically, yeah. But Aketa had figured this out way back in 1908. He said, no, this is not just some flavor. This is a taste sensation that is not one of the other four. It's its own thing. And even more than that, I've been doing some pretty neat experiments on kombu and dashi.

And I've actually isolated what's giving this thing its meaty taste. And by the way, I'm going to call meaty taste umami, which means delicious or yummy. And it's called monosodium glutamate. That's right. And this was not, we knew about glutamic, glutamic acid. Which way do you say?

Do you prefer glutamic? I mean, my mouth wants to say glutamic. But my heart wants to say glutamic. I got you. So I'm torn between two lovers. You are. Just call it G-acid. Yeah, G-acid.

We knew about this stuff already. There was a German chemist named Karl Einrich Rithausen. Beautiful. And he discovered this in 1866. So that brings us to another myth we can bust here is that gluten, because it's monosodium glutamate, people that have gluten intolerance think that it's made with wheat gluten

and that they can't eat it. And that's not true at all. No, had you heard that before? I've heard, I think anything with the letters G-L-U in any food, I think people that have gluten sensitivity are wary of. Right, well, what's interesting about this, I hadn't heard that, but this makes total sense.

The reason that it's even called glutamic acid is because Rithausen used wheat gluten to, he hydrolyzed it, basically broke it down like the acids in your stomach break down food to isolate the glutamic acid. Since he used wheat gluten, he just kind of named the acid after what he used as the precursor,

which was wheat gluten, but it has no gluten in it, has nothing to do with gluten. You can get MSG, any number of ways that don't involve wheat. Did I ever tell you about the restaurant in Paris, the gluten-free place Emily and I went to? No. You know what the name of it was? What?

No glue. No, he's serious. That's pretty great. That's great. Yeah, right in the middle of Paris. And it was actually really good. It had a very, very delicious hamburger there. I can imagine, man.

French cooking is... Yeah, even without gluten. And speaking of French cooking, there is a guy who was using savory. That's what people in the West called it. Even after Aketa came along and said, no, no, this is umami, it's its own thing. The Western chefs were well aware of this idea of savory.

They just hadn't said this is a fifth taste that humans are capable of tasting. And Auguste Skofier, who I had heard the name of before, but I didn't realize, he's the guy who basically founded French classical cuisine as we understand it today. Oh, really? Yeah, it was this guy.

He invented the sauce? No, no, he invented like French cooking. That was a joke. French cooking is all about the sauces. It is about the sauce. So yes, I'm sure he had a lot to do with the sauce, but I was reading an article on him in Britannica. And it was written by Nathan Mervold,

who was the first CTO of Microsoft. But it was about this French cook from the 19th century. Yeah, he was big into animal stocks. And he used veal stock and kitten stock and puppy stock and all sorts of baby animal stocks. And he knew about it. He was, we just didn't call it umami until it was so named. No, and also one other thing about Skofier,

he also used something called Maggi sauce, which had been invented several years before by Julius Maggi, who was a Swiss miller, who came up with the sauce. And Skofier was like, this is the bomb, I think was the quote that he said. So people were aware of savory, so much so that they were creating sauces

that really isolated the umami flavor. It just again was Akeda who came along and said, let's apply some science here. I give you, ladies and gentlemen, the fifth taste. That's right. And it does taste, you know, there's a writer named Carla Lalli Music. Nice.

It's music, but I bet she pronounces it music. I would if my last name was music. And she writes sometimes for a Bon Appetit. And she said it's sort of like salt mixed with dehydrated meat juice. And it adds a lot to food. You don't want too much of it. You can sprinkle it on your food,

but you don't really want like, you can buy pure MSG, but it's not the kind of thing that people generally do. Like at home is buy a big tub of MSG and like sprinkle it on stuff. It's usually mixed with other spices, like accent. Yeah, accent. Yeah, it can be mixed with other seasonings, salt. It gets mixed with most often.

And the reason that you want to pre-mix it is, cause one, I mean, it's just easier to use, but there's certain proportions you want to use. It doesn't take much MSG to bring out the flavor and salt or for MSG to kind of even stand on its own and lend that umami flavor to whatever you're doing. So you don't want to use too much. So you'd have to be pretty proficient in, you know,

using MSG to just use straight up MSG. Right. Which is why it's usually pre-mixed to begin with. Yeah, so Iquita for his, you know, he was a smart guy. So he wasn't just satisfied with discovering this and sort of sitting back and said, one day on Wikipedia, I will be featured. He said, I'm going to make some money off of this.

You got a business partner named, well, you should say all Japanese names. Okay. Saburo Suzuki Jr. Yeah. So you do it with the right flair. I've just been, I've been exposed to it so much. I kind of, yeah.

I like it. I sound like an American and you sound like you're trying to fit in. Thank you. Thank you. So this guy was already a part of the chemical industry and so it was a pretty natural relationship. They founded a company called?

Aji Nomoto. The Essence of Taste. And their mascot was and is. Well, that's just, okay, the Aji Panda. I could have said that. You could have said that. But they are still around today. And a couple of years ago,

they had about $10 billion worth of sales of MSG. They're the largest producer and they are literally pumping this stuff out on a year-to-year basis. Yeah, funny enough. I don't have a bottle of accent in my pantry, but I do have a bottle of Aji Nomoto. Oh yeah?

Yeah, some listeners are gonna write and be like, what do you hate America? I bet accent is not even made to America. I wonder, sometimes they do kind of slip it by. Like it's just been around for so long. Everybody thinks like, well, of course it's America. Yeah, who knows? Like they chant USA when they grab the bottle

and sprinkle it on their food. So we should talk a little bit about the science of whether or not MSG, you know, is it all in people's head? Is it real? I'm really glad you asked that, Chuck. I don't know. Well, I mean, here's the deal.

The FDA says, I remember, did we do one on the FDA? Yes, does the FDA protect Americans? That's right, because that's where we, I remember this phrase, generally recognized as safe, gross. I think that also came up in our dietary supplements episode two. Yeah, it's funny that a phrase meaning something is safe

does not make one feel any better. Right, generally. Yeah, generally recognized as safe. It does not mean 100% safe. And it doesn't mean 100% safe, because even though it's fairly settled science, they can't say like, absolutely no way in any case is MSG ever harmful at all to anyone in any amount.

Yeah, but I mean, you can say that about basically anything. And I hate, I'm not trying to create a straw man argument. No, I'm with you. You can say that about water. There was a woman who drank too much water and died of water toxicity. You can die from too much salt. And remember, it doesn't take much MSG as compared to salt

to be added to food to really, you know, bring out the flavor or whatever. So there's like a lot of, well, you can basically, there's nothing you could say, this is never going to harm you no matter how much you eat. And I think that's kind of why they're saying generally recognized as safe. I think the other aspect of it though,

is that a lot of people do want to say, no, this is just, it's settled. I've seen that all over the place while we were researching. This is settled science. I've read about a woman who wrote a book exploring whether or not, you know, some food additives were safe. And she didn't even bother to include MSG in the book

because she considered it so settled. But there is definitely a contingency of people out there, including not just like worried parents or Facebook dwellers, like actual scientists in like the industry of food sciences who are saying, no, actually there may be a small group of people out there who experienced these symptoms

that we now call MSG symptom complex, but what used to be called Chinese restaurant syndrome. But that overall, like it's not going to developmentally harm your kid or it's not going to blow your brain up because it's an excitotoxin or anything like that. Yeah, so here's the deal on the science. It is true that increased glutamate activity

can cause harm and that large doses of MSG can raise the blood levels of glutamate, but dietary glutamate, like, and we'll talk about some of the experiments here in a second, but dietary glutamate is not going to have any effect on your brain because it can't cross the blood brain barrier in large amounts.

So they did a- Is it true? Huh? That's right. Oh yeah, for sure. Okay. So here's the deal. If people experience like headache, muscle tightness,

numbness, tingling, weakness, flushing, these are all reported like symptoms of that syndrome. We're talking about dietary glutamate. Like they say the threshold that could cause those symptoms is about three grams in a single meal. But if you remember, we said 0.5 grams is a daily average intake. Right.

So in a single meal consuming six times the average daily intake of MSG could lead to something like that. And they're not exactly sure why, but some researchers, they have speculated that really large doses like that, like overdosing on MSG, you may get little trace amounts

crossing the blood brain barrier. Gotcha, that makes sense. And that three grams in a single meal is straight up MSG fed to people in an experiment who were on an empty stomach. So like, there's basically no situation where you're going to accidentally poison yourself with MSG so that you would actually get

that MSG symptom complex. Right, and in the early 70s when this stuff started really becoming like, the devil spice, they were literally injecting baby monkeys and mice with straight MSG. And humans. And humans, and they didn't like it very much. Because they were injecting large amounts of MSG

into infant animals. Right, so I read that there are pharmacological effects from injecting MSG. Like that's basically not up for debate. And I was like, well, sure, if you inject sugar or even if you inject salt or something like that, you'd be, you know, same problems. Actually, it's not necessarily true.

You get kind of saline drips, you get glucose drips. They're like, people do inject salt and sugar and can tolerate it. So in injected form, MSG is not good for you. But no one injects MSG. And the fact that we metabolize MSG by eating it, and that that's how we actually intake MSG in small amounts through food, which are guts,

then metabolize and turn into glutamate and sodium, that it should not be harmful for you. That's what the science has found. That's right, and in addition to these studies that injected baby mice, which is sort of ridiculous, these weren't even great studies anyway. They were not double-blind, Ed found research that says, you know,

they were just basically lacking in design altogether. So they weren't good studies and they were wacky in how they, the methodology, I think. Well, yeah, which is kind of, I don't know, I guess it's surprising. I maybe just scientists who weren't so great were the ones who tended to be interested in it, or where they were rushing it out to market.

I'm not sure. But maybe food science was just a little early. Maybe so, but they, from the findings of these early studies and then replicated studies of the early studies that found MSG to be harmful basically said, no, this is not harmful. Yeah, probably if you inject it, it's not good, but don't inject it is basically what science said.

And then there were further follow-up studies in the decades that followed that said, okay, well, wait a minute, what about all these people who are self-reporting MSG allergies, who are saying they're getting this complex of symptoms from eating at like Chinese restaurants or something. And so there was investigation of that. And what they found from those studies

is that they basically couldn't get it beyond the placebo effect. That you were just as likely, if not in some cases, more likely to report the MSG symptoms complex from a placebo than you were, if you were given actual MSG, a pillow with MSG or something in it. So combined, all these studies combined

have basically led the FDA to say, because the symptoms can't be consistently or reliably replicated, and that there's all these double-blind placebo tests that have been done that show placebo can bring it out to, we tend to think that it's actually, basically in almost everyone's heads. That's right.

Should we take another break? Sure. All right, we'll take one final break and we're gonna come back and talk about a few reasons why the MSG scare was born right after this. One of my jokes, one of my jokes, one of my jokes, one of my jokes, one of my jokes, one of my jokes.

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So Chuck, just despite the fact that like there's all the science out there, that some people are like, this is settled science. Like that is not a phrase that even really has any basis in reality, but that's what they're kind of the point with people who say it's settled science. They're saying like, this is as close as science comes,

like it's stopped being afraid of MSG. There's still plenty of people who don't eat MSG, who avoid it. I've saw that the International Food Information Council did a survey and found that 42% of Americans actively avoid MSG, like they read labels and if the thing says MSG is contained in this, they won't eat it, which is more than people

who avoid caffeine, genetically modified organisms, or gluten, which was really surprising to me. And when was that? That was, oh man, you're killing me. It wasn't very long ago, how about that? Well, it's been since the gluten scare has happened. Yes, yeah, I would guess so. So I would say within the last 10 years

that that poll was done. But so there are people who are like, I don't trust you. I don't trust the FDA. I don't like the word that says generally. It scares me that sometimes MSG is used as a preservative and stabilizer in vaccines. I don't like those two being associated with one another. Other people say, I saw this, but I couldn't see it.

I saw the same mention basically around the internet and I couldn't find any source material. So it takes us with a grain of salt as it were. But that MSG, the fermentation of MSG produces arsenic and lead. Yeah, that's all that too. So people aren't real excited about that kind of thing. And then there's that whole other subsection

of people who are like, it's an excitotoxin. And if you eat too much of this, your brain's gonna blow up. It's basically like a genuine flavor blast is what they're saying. So there are a lot of people who are afraid of MSG. But the question is, is it because MSG really is harmful or is it because it's just a fear of science

and a distrust of the people who are supposedly looking out for our wellbeing? Well, and a holdover from the 1970s and 80s when it was all over the place is something terrible to the extent where restaurants and hotels, and a lot of them still do have these signs that say no MSG, like it's safe to eat here. There was a book written by a man named Russell Blalock

called Excitotoxins Colon, The Taste That Kills. And there were rumors that Chinese restaurants put it in their food because you get filled up faster and you won't eat as much off the buffet. Oh yeah? Oh, you don't remember hearing that? No. Yeah, that was a big one.

I've- Is it like fills you up and so, or makes you feel full? So, you know, you're gonna get away with 13 cents less food. Right. I've actually seen that there is an idea that MSG does affect you in that way. It makes you feel fuller. But from what I'm seeing,

that science is bearing out the opposite, that they think that people who eat MSG tend to be heavier than people who don't use MSG because it may suppress leptin, which is a hormone that tells us that we're full so we stop eating. So the idea is the more MSG you eat, the less you're going to feel full

or you're just not going to feel full and you're going to keep eating more, which is a problem because from what I'm seeing, you know, the whole like anti-sodium thing that's kind of going on among health crusaders. Sure. Well, in very much the same way that corn syrup was allowed to replace fats in that whole fat free trend,

MSG is being added in increasing amounts to this low sodium or even salt free stuff because it brings out the flavor in salt. So if you add more MSG, you can use less salt. And on the package, you can say lower sodium. You don't say anything about the MSG, but you can sell this thing as lower sodium or whatever. So people who are worried about their heart

or worried about their salt intake will buy that, not knowing that they're eating actually more MSG than they would be. And that may actually cause them to overeat if indeed MSG is linked to obesity and the jury's still out on that one as well. Yes, very much inconclusive at this point. Yes.

So a lot of this, this is where the story gets kind of interesting, I think, as far as the hysteria around MSG. And there was a letter written to the New England Journal of Medicine in 1968 from Dr. Ho Man Kwok, KWOK. And he was a senior research investigator at a place called the National Biomedical Research Foundation.

He immigrated from China and he said, you know what, after I eat at Chinese restaurants here in the United States, Chinese American food, I feel malaise, I feel some of these symptoms that people always list out, these adverse reactions. And I think I'm speculating here that it's because they're using a lot of MSG over here. Right, which I think the implication was

they don't really use MSG in China because they're better chefs. Like really good chefs kind of look down their nose at using MSG because it's a cheat. You can bring MSG out, you can bring glutamates out on food through like patient, slow and low cooking techniques or you can just take a shortcut and put a little MSG on it

and you're gonna get to basically the same place, right? That's right. So in one way, you almost have the idea that he was saying like Chinese food in China is superior to Chinese food in America. But he was saying- So sure it's true. Probably, but he was saying like,

I actually feel physically unwell after I eat in Chinese restaurants in America. Yeah, exactly. Which is a big difference than Chinese food in China is better than Chinese food in America. Right, and this was not a letter to the editor. This was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Right, by a doctor.

Yeah, so it was a big deal. Right. And here's what happened after that. This letter, it was sort of a domino effect. And even though he was a Chinese American and he had probably the best of intentions, it gets picked up and then all of a sudden there are white people in America

writing racist articles with like broken English headlines. Very much like making a caricature out of Chinese people, Chinese food, Chinese immigrants, Chinese chefs. And it devolved into jokes. And like this is the era that we grew up in in the 70s and 80s where like we remember this stuff. Sure, in very short order, Dr. Kwok didn't coin this, but some of the letters, the follow-up letters

in response that the New England Journal of Medicine started to print, coined this term Chinese restaurant syndrome. That's right. Where basically if you ate at a Chinese restaurant in America because of the copious amounts of MSG that was used, you could feel weak, light-headed, your neck and face could feel tight or flushed or both. You might feel woozy, you might have heart palpitations,

any number of things, headaches, allergies might get set off, your asthma might get set off. And all of these things combined came to be called Chinese restaurant syndrome. And here's the thing, you said it, Dr. Kwok's letter was a letter. It wasn't a study, he didn't say, here's a study, let's peer review it.

It was a letter that got some response, pretty much tongue-in-cheek joking responses in the New England Journal of Medicine. And the non-medical media saw this and said, oh, let's start reporting on this. And started reporting on it as if it were scientific fact that MSG caused these symptoms and that you would get this from eating at Chinese restaurants.

That's right. So none of it had to do with eating eight pounds of Chinese food at a buffet. Sure, sure. And even Dr. Kwok in his letter said, maybe it's soy sauce, maybe it's cooking wine, maybe it's, I can't remember, I think the copious amounts of sodium.

And people even still today say, hey, maybe Chinese food does do something to you, but is it possible it's one of the spices or herbs or plants that's used extensively in Chinese cuisine? Who knows? Yeah, and it can be salty food, especially when you're dumping soy sauce on top of already salty food.

Sure, but the point is it's not clear at all that there is such a thing as Chinese restaurant syndrome, that there is any kind of response that anyone actually gets to this, or is it all just the power of suggestion? That's right. And the story gets a little weirder here as far as this letter goes.

So they publish a letter, New England Journal of Medicine, and apparently there's a history there of like joke letters, like onion-style stuff, I guess. Sure. Fake syndromes, silly letters. Chris returns to the NBA. A lot of the letters in response to this Kwok letter had this sort of took this angle where they were doing that.

And some of them suggested that it was a fake letter in the name Ho Man Kwok was a pun human crock. And it was all just cooked up. Right. So that's the foundation. Then in 2018, Dr. Howard Steele put a response to, I know, to an article about this controversy. And he called a reporter and said,

you know what, I wrote that letter way back then. He said, I was trying to win a bet to see if I could get a fake letter in the New England Journal of Medicine. So that became the story for a while that this one letter that had kicked off this potentially totally unfounded fear of MSG and Chinese food restaurants

had was not only like baseless, but it had been written as a prank by a white doctor who made up a funny sounding Chinese name and that he had basically pranked everyone, everyone in America for the last several decades. That's how it stood for a little while. But it turns out that even that wasn't correct. And we have our friends over at this American life,

our friends slash rivals over at this American life to thank for exposing this Howard Steele dude because they dug in a little further. Yeah, who you gonna turn to? The Podfather. Yeah. Mr. Glass, Dr. Ira Glass. The Podfather, I thought that was Marin.

No, I always called Ira Glass the Podfather. Really? Yeah. I always thought you were referring to Marin every time. That makes a lot more sense than the stuff you said. Marin's not the Podfather. Isn't Adam Curry the Podfather? Well, I think technically probably.

Is that an urban legend? That he was the first podcaster? Yeah. I don't know. I think that's gotta be true, right? I don't know. It sounds great. So yes, of course it has to be true.

I mean, Jesse Thorne was around before Marin. Sure. Well, we were around before Marin. Were we? Barely? Just barely. He'll never live it down. So, and this was this year in 2019 as we record this.

This American life poked around like they like to do. They found out that Dr. Steele, who was dead at this time, was kind of a real jerk because Dr. Kwok was a real person who was now also dead. And his children are not too happy about all this. They confirmed, like, no, my dad was Dr. Kwok. That is his real name. Yeah, it's not a joke name.

No, he wrote this letter. He did work. There is a really a place called the National Biomedical Research Foundation because I guess Steele said that wasn't even a real thing, right? He said he made up the whole thing. All of it.

Yes. And this daughter was sort of exasperated. It was like, no, that was my dad. He worked there. He wrote that letter and this Dr. Steele sort of, like, what's his problem? Basically, his daughter explains on this American life that her dad was the kind of guy

who would just play a prank like this. And when he was finally found out, would just refuse to apologize because you should have had your head on straight better and shouldn't have fallen for it. He was that kind of guy. And on the one hand, I mean, he was an important physician. He apparently invented some orthopedic surgical techniques

that are still used today. But he was also kind of a jerk from what I can tell. He's the kind of guy that pulls out the chair from under you and you fall on the floor and he's like, what, you don't reach back to see if your chair's there? Basically, that's kind of how his daughter portrayed him in a certain way.

Lovingly, because it's her dad, but you should, did you hear that segment on that episode? So yeah, it's real cringe inducing to hear Lily Sullivan on this American life break the news to Dr. Steele's daughter that like, he didn't make up that letter that he was lying about that all these years. She's like, oh God, what has he done now?

So the uptake or the upshot of all of this is that there was like steel really confounds everything. But if you take steel out of the equation, what you're left with is a Chinese American doctor, think a pediatrician who wrote a letter back in 1968 from what I can tell very earnestly and with good intentions saying, hey, don't you think this is weird?

What is this kind of thing? Here's what happens to me when I eat Chinese food in America. Here's what I think it is. That just set off this uncritical and kind of pretty racist examination of it that the whole country just kind of took on as fact for decades. That's right.

And your beloved accent, Chuck. Yeah. I'm gonna play into this. Well, I mean, I don't use it. Well, no, but it had been around for a good 20 years before Dr. Quack's letter was published, right? Oh, sure. Americans been using that stuff for ages.

Right. And no one had ever complained of any symptoms from MSG. It wasn't until that one single letter. That's right. Isn't that fascinating? Yeah. What an odd story. You got anything else?

No. Okay. Well, if you want to know more about MSG, go try Maggi or Kombu. Or what was it, oysters? Sure. Tomatoes, cheese, accent. Go try all that stuff.

You're gonna love it. And since I said that, it's time for Listener Mail. Well, you got a Listener Mail follow up, don't you? I do. I have two things, Chuck. First, I want to give a little heads up to everybody. My Chicago End of the World show is coming up on September 12th.

And there's tickets still available. I'll be at Lincoln Hall and you can get tickets at LH-ST.com. Don't be a jerk and spell out dash. It's just the dash symbol. And then yes, I have an update for a Listener Mail. Do you remember the Listener Mail author, Kate, who wrote in at the end of the nuclear semiotics episode? Sure.

She had said that she had undergone like a big breakup and drove from Phoenix to Charlotte and listened to us the whole time. Well, when we read that almost immediately, we got an email from another Listener named Jeremy, who lives in Charlotte, who said, sorry to hear about your breakup, but welcome to Charlotte from another SYSK Listener.

Are they in love? It's a great, I don't know about that. It's a great city. And I hope you have a new start, a great new start here. Which I just thought was so nice. Sure. That I found Kate's original email and got in touch with her and just forwarded just that part.

Copied and pasted it and forwarded Jeremy's whole email because, you know- You're not playing matchmaker. You're just being friendly. No, and I'm glad I'm not trying to play matchmaker because in response, I get an update from Kate. And she says, thank you. I'm doing so well now.

I made a new group of friends. I have my own apartment, a new teaching job, and I'm even dating someone new. It ended up being the best decision I've ever made. She said, thank you for sharing my Listener Mail, you guys rock, and then the metal finger hand emoji. Is she dating the guy? I don't think so.

That would have been really fast. That's a MacGuffin then. Right. But yeah, well, you're the one who introduced it. I never said that. The guy was just being nice. I think it clearly was headed toward a romantic ending now.

Oh, oh, sorry. I didn't realize- I've seen too many movies, I guess. I think you have too. You're like, come on, you got mail. All right, well, I'm glad everyone's happy. It doesn't have to end like a Meg Ryan movie. No, it doesn't.

But it sounds like it came pretty close, actually. All right, I love it. So way to go, Kate, in making a bold decision that paid off. So now Listener Mail, or should we? Or does that count? Should we just end? I don't know, man, that's up to you.

How good's the Listener Mail you have? Yeah, it's pretty good. Let's go ahead and read it. Okay. This is from Veronica. She said, hey guys, be on the content of your show that I love. I hold a special place in my heart for the community.

Your show has fostered that I experienced at your Chicago show this summer, which was just a few weeks ago. Yeah. I attended that show during, and by the way, she started listening to this show when she was in the sixth grade. No.

And now she's like a working adult. No. That's cool. Yes, it's the best. I attended the show in a very particularly difficult week. My childhood dog of 17 years had passed away that day. I had just moved across the country for a job with a lot of new responsibilities and challenges,

and I was trying to establish some new routines in a big city where I knew no one. I was sitting in the third to last row of that theater with anxiety heavy in my heart, and then seeing both of you guys for the first time and hearing your voices made me feel like everything was gonna be okay. Yeah.

It's hard to put into words how tangible the happiness in that theater was. And people, if you don't go to these live shows, there's tangible happiness. There is, you know? Yeah, well, you have not paid this listener to say this, or give this testimonial. Yeah, come for stuff you should know,

stay for the tangible happiness. Right, you can squish it through your fingers like jelly. She said, I've never been to any sort of event with such a joyful crowd. This is amazing. And she capitalized joyful. At the end of the show, she talked about his late dog, Buckley.

I remember the last question the night was this cute little girl who said, which dog who was dead, do you miss the most? She said it nicer than that. But I said, Buckley. And she said, that brought me to tears in the theater, not only because this was the same name as my own dearly departed dog.

What? Who died that day. This has just descended into like joyful chaos. I know, right? I can barely hang on. Man, she said also it felt like such a weird coincidence of this universe and I couldn't explain it. Having recently graduated college,

I'm starting my first job as a teacher in the fall. And I attribute a large part of my desire to go into education to you guys. Thanks for instilling me a love of learning, pursuing intellectual curiosities and sharing those curiosities and joys along the way with others. And she shouts out some friends,

Caroline, Veezy in Philadelphia, Joanne L, and Ava Maria, Florida. They're two fellow stuff you should know enthusiasts. And her name is Veronica, newly transplanted to Chicago from California. Well, welcome to Chicago, Veronica. Yeah, I'm sorry to hear about Buckley, but I'm glad that you could help grieve that loss

with, you know, 1400 friends. Joyful friends. That's right. Man, that was amazing. Thanks a lot for that letter, Veronica. That was great. If you want to get in touch with us like Veronica did or Kate or Jeremy,

you can go on to stuffyoushouldknow.com and check out our social links, or you can send us a good old fashioned email. Wrap it up, spank that puppy on the bottom, and send it off to stuffpodcastsatihartradio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio,

visit the I Heart Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new I Heart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts.