Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how stupworks
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick and Robert.
Speaker 1: What if I told you that a silent killer worse
Speaker 1: than alcohol, nicotine, and drugs is likely lurking in your
Speaker 1: kitchen cabinets and even your child's school cafeteria. Oh man,
Speaker 1: that's that's rough, because silent killers are the worst killers.
Speaker 1: I fire prefer the loud ones, so I know they're coming.
Speaker 1: And Uh, of those substances that you mentioned, only some
Speaker 1: of those are my favorites. So um yeah, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: I'm instantly concerned. I'm going to start looking around in
Speaker 1: my cabinets and trying to figure out where this nefarious
Speaker 1: force is hiding. Now, lest I be accused of plagiarism,
Speaker 1: I should give attribution. That is a quote from an
Speaker 1: article on a on an alternative myths and website called
Speaker 1: Mercola that is about MSG, the food additive MSG. You've
Speaker 1: often heard of it associated with Chinese food. Probably it's
Speaker 1: monosodium glutamate, and that's what we're gonna be talking about today.
Speaker 1: But we wanted to start with some of the scare tactics,
Speaker 1: because you had to hear it right here that MSG
Speaker 1: is quote worse than drugs, worse than drugs. I love
Speaker 1: that the blandness of that statement. Worse than all drugs,
Speaker 1: worse than drugs, but surely better than some drugs. And
Speaker 1: then also, are we just talking about what drugs right?
Speaker 1: The drugs that take our pain away or the drugs
Speaker 1: that that ruin us? I mean, it's there. There's so
Speaker 1: many different interpretations of that statement. Quick side note, Robert,
Speaker 1: what's your favorite fictional drug from a movie or book? Oh?
Speaker 1: You know, I have to go with the spice. But
Speaker 1: I also like simuda, which is the the drug that
Speaker 1: they that some individuals in the Done universe take and
Speaker 1: they listen to some sort of weird music semunda music
Speaker 1: that can only really be processed. You're taking this particular drug. Well,
Speaker 1: MSG is worse than that too, because what does it do?
Speaker 1: I don't know, it does a lot of stuff. Apparently,
Speaker 1: if you listen to to everyone who has ever complained
Speaker 1: about MSG, it has ever proposed, and you know, a
Speaker 1: negative symptom of taking MSG, then it sounds like just
Speaker 1: the worst thing imaginable Okay, so Robert, tell me your
Speaker 1: MSG story. How did you become acquainted with this killer,
Speaker 1: the silent killer chemical? Alright, So growing up I was
Speaker 1: I don't remember ever being privy to any direct anti
Speaker 1: MSG messaging, Like, nobody have me watch a video, nobody
Speaker 1: made me read a paper about it. It was just
Speaker 1: this thing that you just heard. Oh well, MSG is
Speaker 1: to be avoided. You go to the local Chinese restaurant
Speaker 1: and your small American town, there's likely to be a
Speaker 1: no MSG sign there on the wall, just to let
Speaker 1: you know before you even think about coming in the
Speaker 1: door that there is going to be no MSG. And
Speaker 1: I and not even knowing what it was, I just
Speaker 1: kind of had in my mind that it was some
Speaker 1: sort of some sort of chemical, some sort of cheating
Speaker 1: substance that allow the the individuals that are making the
Speaker 1: food to to trick you into enjoying something. It's the
Speaker 1: anabolic steroids of food, the doping of food. But as
Speaker 1: we're gonna discuss in this episode, there's there's virtually nothing
Speaker 1: to any of this. Uh, this fearmongering, decades worth of
Speaker 1: fear mongering, but it still refuses to completely go away. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we will in the end probably be able
Speaker 1: to speculate a good bit on where a lot of
Speaker 1: this fear comes from. But I encountered it to when
Speaker 1: I was growing up. So I remember one of my
Speaker 1: favorite restaurants when I was a kid was this little
Speaker 1: brick storefront Chinese restaurant in Chattanooga, Tennessee called China Lee.
Speaker 1: I love going there. They made some delicious seguan beef.
Speaker 1: I don't know if i'd still think it was good
Speaker 1: if I went there today. I don't know if they're
Speaker 1: still open. But at the time, I loved it and
Speaker 1: I would go there and I would you know, I
Speaker 1: was a kid, but if you had this experience at
Speaker 1: Chinese restaurant when you were a little where you just
Speaker 1: like eat to the point of pain and then you'd
Speaker 1: keep going. But I also remember this slight psychological taint
Speaker 1: to the experience because I would hear adults talking about
Speaker 1: Chinese food and MSG. There was this clear link in
Speaker 1: my mind that I had overheard from adult conversation and
Speaker 1: I didn't really understand it. But what I generally did
Speaker 1: get was that MSG was some sort of dangerous chemical
Speaker 1: and it was all in Chinese food. But if it
Speaker 1: was so dangerous. Why do we eat it? Why did
Speaker 1: my parents take me? Yeah? And then the other side
Speaker 1: of it too for me, is that, Okay, it's something
Speaker 1: that they're using to cheat you into into They're cheating,
Speaker 1: they're making the food taste better than it is. But
Speaker 1: the same thing can be said of pretty much every
Speaker 1: food additive that has ever been. Every spice in your
Speaker 1: cabinet is a way to cheat and make food tastes better. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's what the salt, pepper, everything else like that. Just
Speaker 1: the act the art of cooking is, Hey, how can
Speaker 1: we make this particular ular slab of protein, this particular
Speaker 1: heap of vegetables, how can we make this biomass, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, taste better and and be more digestible for
Speaker 1: the human body. Yeah, But of course I don't know.
Speaker 1: I got this message somehow. So when I was a kid.
Speaker 1: I do remember one instance where a friend of mine
Speaker 1: was sick. He was like laid out on the couch
Speaker 1: for a couple of days, and I remember it was
Speaker 1: attributed to the msg content of some Chinese food he'd
Speaker 1: eaten the day before. I don't know where that idea
Speaker 1: came from. I don't know if their doctor told them
Speaker 1: that or if that's just what a parent concluded, but yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what they said. And then later I think I
Speaker 1: softened a little bit on MSG, but in a in
Speaker 1: another disgusting way, because the next time I remember encountering
Speaker 1: it in my life, I was in college and a
Speaker 1: friend and roommate of mine at the time was teaching
Speaker 1: me how to make a recipe for this dip that
Speaker 1: came from his family. I think his grandmother had made
Speaker 1: it or something. All the recipes you learned in college
Speaker 1: tend to be yeah, be a little suspect. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: judge this friend of mine by this dip. But the
Speaker 1: dip in my memory is a little gross. So it
Speaker 1: had Philadelphia cream cheese, chopped up sandwich meat which I
Speaker 1: believe was Buddig beef, and then sliced green onions, and
Speaker 1: the fourth ingredient was a container of shakon seasoning called accent.
Speaker 1: And I was like, what is this? I think I
Speaker 1: might have seen this in my grandmother's kitchen cabinet, but
Speaker 1: otherwise I didn't know what it was. And it said
Speaker 1: wakes up food flavor. Well, that sounds good. You don't
Speaker 1: want your food to be asleep, So I looked at
Speaker 1: the ingredients, and the primary ingredients are actually the one
Speaker 1: ingredient in this food flavor alarm clock was monosodium glutamate MSG,
Speaker 1: the stuff that had supposedly laid out my childhood friend
Speaker 1: with a body leveling illness, and the stuff that that
Speaker 1: I always heard these creepy rumors about, Yeah, you actually
Speaker 1: brought in a little container of accent. And one of
Speaker 1: the things I love about it is that first of all,
Speaker 1: there's there's no mention of MSG. Uh Um. Monosodium glutamate
Speaker 1: is mentioned once on the back, and presumably they don't
Speaker 1: have to say contains MSG because it is pure MSG.
Speaker 1: You know, they save on the printing for this thing
Speaker 1: because they don't have to print ingredients every time. It
Speaker 1: just says ingredient and ends with the t roll and
Speaker 1: monosodium glutamate. But they it's really an attempt to rebrand
Speaker 1: it right instead of MSG, because MSG sounds I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's the letters are tainted for us because of
Speaker 1: these just decades of negative connotations, which we'll get into,
Speaker 1: and I would say it's also by the general problem
Speaker 1: of chemophobia, people being afraid of chemical names of things,
Speaker 1: which we'll get to in the end, and I think
Speaker 1: we should end by number one having an accent or
Speaker 1: monosodium glutamate if you want to avoid the branding. Taste
Speaker 1: tests on Mike and then see see if anything horrible
Speaker 1: happens to us. And then also we should suggest some rebranding. Yes,
Speaker 1: so as as we're going start thinking of new names
Speaker 1: for MSG. Uh. Ways we can. We can reclaim this
Speaker 1: chemical UH for our tasting pleasure. Right, so we should
Speaker 1: go back and tell the story of MSG, Like where
Speaker 1: did this food additive come from? Yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 1: Let's get to the origin story here. Mono sodium glutamate.
Speaker 1: This chemical was discovered by Japanese chemist Kika Akada back
Speaker 1: in nineteen o seven. So he was investigating flavoring and asparagus,
Speaker 1: tomatoes and especially uh dachi seaweed soup that has a
Speaker 1: strong umami flavor that that pleasant savory taste. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: much more familiar with you, mommy, these days. We hear
Speaker 1: about it all the time in in cooking shows and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. Now. I think decades back, people were
Speaker 1: way less familiar with the concept of umami exactly what
Speaker 1: it was. But ou, mommy, what is it? It's that
Speaker 1: deeply savory, meaty flavor. It's not the same as something
Speaker 1: being salty, but it's it's that kind of deep flavor
Speaker 1: that you get from cheeses and meats and tomatoes. It's
Speaker 1: there in anchovies, you know what I mean. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's almost There's some wonderful descriptions out there for huma,
Speaker 1: umammy and ummmy is such a wonderful one word. The
Speaker 1: script is just rolling off your tongue once you've tasted it. Uh,
Speaker 1: the two just go perfectly together. Uh. But yeah, you
Speaker 1: kind of have to have tasted you mommy, and most
Speaker 1: of us have, uh to really appreciate it. So Japanese
Speaker 1: cuisine obviously had this concept of ou mommy, they know
Speaker 1: what this delicious savory flavor is. But what a Kato
Speaker 1: is able to do was to pinpoint the chemical cause
Speaker 1: of this flavor, which was this substance that we now
Speaker 1: know as glutamate yes um. In particular, he pinpoint pinpointed
Speaker 1: glutamic acid. So this is an amino acid non essential
Speaker 1: because the human body and various plants and animals can
Speaker 1: produce it on their own and in the body gluten
Speaker 1: Glutamic acid is often found as glutam mat one of
Speaker 1: the most abundant neurotransmitters in the body, and it plays
Speaker 1: an important role in memory and learning, and according to
Speaker 1: the FDA, you can probably consume thirteen grams of it
Speaker 1: of it a day in the protein in your food. Right,
Speaker 1: So glutamate is already there in your diet almost definitely,
Speaker 1: you're eating foods with glutamate in them. Yeah, if you're
Speaker 1: having tomatoes glutamate, If you haven't parmesan cheese, glutamate um,
Speaker 1: and certainly if you're having some of the more processed
Speaker 1: food items out there, various potato chips, etcetera, you're having glutamate.
Speaker 1: Glutamate is just part of eating as humans. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: there's no there's no magic going on, right that this
Speaker 1: is just a standard dietary chemical and as such we
Speaker 1: do have receptors that are sort of programmed to taste it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: All that I Keeda did here is he took that
Speaker 1: naturally occurring glutamate and he solved the problem of then, well,
Speaker 1: how do I how do I synthesize it, how do
Speaker 1: I mass produce it? How can I get this in
Speaker 1: a form that's stable to the consumer. And Uh, basically
Speaker 1: What he did here is he figured out he could
Speaker 1: synthesize the molecule by first extracting the glutamate from seaweed
Speaker 1: and the mixing it with water and just common table
Speaker 1: salt to stabilize the compound. Thus, mono sodium glutamate M
Speaker 1: s G corn, it's table salt and it's glutamate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we really can't drive drive that home enough that there's
Speaker 1: there's no like extreme chemical um process here. There's no
Speaker 1: weird magical ritual involved. This is just salt and glutamate
Speaker 1: that come together into a stable form. So I have
Speaker 1: to tell you that I don't know where I encountered
Speaker 1: this idea, but years ago what I heard about the
Speaker 1: way MSG works in your mouth is that it literally
Speaker 1: quote tears holes in your tongue to make you taste
Speaker 1: things more intensely. I can't remember where I came across this,
Speaker 1: and I know I passed on this piece of false
Speaker 1: information to peep whole plenty of time, like it tears
Speaker 1: a hole in the fabric of our reality and then
Speaker 1: demon taste from another universe kind of I never heard
Speaker 1: anything quite that extreme, but I do remember hearing that
Speaker 1: it like opens up the taste buds with the with
Speaker 1: the emphasis being that it's doing so in an unnatural way,
Speaker 1: in almost like a drug induced way. Right. It would
Speaker 1: be fascinating to find out where these rumors started about
Speaker 1: its its mechanism of action. But anyway, so it went
Speaker 1: on to become a popular commercial food additive. It wasn't
Speaker 1: just anymore people putting glutamate rich foods into their foods
Speaker 1: to season it. Like you could put parmesan cheese or
Speaker 1: or seaweed or something like that into your food to
Speaker 1: boost the glutamate content, or you could just isolate monosodium
Speaker 1: glutamate and add that to increase this umami flavor without
Speaker 1: adding the other ingredients, right, I mean basically, especially now
Speaker 1: with with umm A, I feel like it's been very
Speaker 1: much a favorite keyword among foodies of the past decade,
Speaker 1: uh you know, and maybe longer. But there are plenty
Speaker 1: of ways to to glued up your food to get
Speaker 1: that glue to mate in there without MSG. MSG is
Speaker 1: just kind of a a quick and easy way to
Speaker 1: do it. Um So, this this quick and easy way
Speaker 1: is rolled out by the Japanese company uh A Gino Moto,
Speaker 1: and it it's you have this instant crystalline powder. That's
Speaker 1: that's ready to just sprinkle on your food, and it's
Speaker 1: an instant hit. Of course. Uh. They they patent it
Speaker 1: it in nineteen o nine, and today the form that
Speaker 1: you encounter tends to be made from beats and corn.
Speaker 1: It's known as MSG in the States, but Akita's name
Speaker 1: still sticks elsewhere in the world. A geno moto or
Speaker 1: essence of taste. You can still buy with under that
Speaker 1: name at various you know, any anywhere you buy, you know,
Speaker 1: your local Asian market should have it, uh with that title.
Speaker 1: And I should also point out that that Akito was
Speaker 1: like he was tremendously sick, scessful with this. It was
Speaker 1: apparently fabulously wealthy, uh in the early twenty century. Japan
Speaker 1: died in the nineteen thirties, but this was his He
Speaker 1: really hit it out of the park with this fabulous
Speaker 1: flavor enhancer. So what could possibly go wrong? What could
Speaker 1: what could possibly stop this juggernaut of taste from just
Speaker 1: taking over the world. Well, we will answer that question
Speaker 1: right after we get back from this break and we're back.
Speaker 1: So Robert MSG glutamate, big flavor success story in the
Speaker 1: history of of food flavoring and additives. Yes, big, big
Speaker 1: flavor success story as a huge absolutely huge it. Yeah
Speaker 1: it it is immediately a hit just throughout Asia. Allows
Speaker 1: that allows people to give a meaty taste to non
Speaker 1: meaty dishes. I've read that it was especially a popular
Speaker 1: among Buddhists abstaining from meat during periodic absence periods various
Speaker 1: meat related fasts and uh in America too, and in Canada.
Speaker 1: Elsewhere in the world it really gains popularity. I mean,
Speaker 1: you especially have to look back to World War two
Speaker 1: era post and pre war America to see just how
Speaker 1: ready we were for a flavor enhancer like this. On
Speaker 1: one hand, you had you had the military industrial complex
Speaker 1: here all right. You had the US military needing to
Speaker 1: to boost the flavor and otherwise dull soldier rations. So
Speaker 1: they turned to MSG easy way just to enhance uh
Speaker 1: some some limited food options there, easier than adding bacon
Speaker 1: to everything, right, and then industrialization of of all that
Speaker 1: food it comes home with them after the war into
Speaker 1: the American household. But even before World War Two, we
Speaker 1: were essentially priming ourselves for such an advancement through the
Speaker 1: home economics philosophy. So there was recently a wonderful um
Speaker 1: interview on NPRS Fresh Air uh with Terry Gross married
Speaker 1: culinary historians Jane Ziegelmann and Andy co appeared to promote
Speaker 1: their book A Square Meal, the Culinary History of the
Speaker 1: Great Depression, which it's a great, great interview, definitely check
Speaker 1: it out. Um. But they point out that the home
Speaker 1: economists of the age, they were not really into flavor.
Speaker 1: They were they were saying, all right, you needed, you
Speaker 1: need to be fed, you need to be healthy. Uh,
Speaker 1: you have limited means of pulling that off. Here are
Speaker 1: some strategies to do it. You can worry about spice
Speaker 1: when when when things are going a little better for you.
Speaker 1: So they pushed pushed American science based ways to get
Speaker 1: the best out of available food ractions, often in bizarre dishes, uh,
Speaker 1: such as one that they discussed on in the interview
Speaker 1: as being quote wrong in every possible way, was a
Speaker 1: recipe that featured canned corn, beef, plain gelatine, can pas vinegar,
Speaker 1: and lemon juice. So so oh man, these these old
Speaker 1: recipes you see from like magazines from the World War
Speaker 1: two era, or it's like yeah, poor candle lima beans
Speaker 1: and spam together there. But but you can see where
Speaker 1: it's like they're engineering a meal. It's an engineering approach
Speaker 1: to the American meal. And so MSG is is perfect
Speaker 1: for that crystals that you sprinkle on there. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: modernism brought to food. Yeah. And it was apparently when
Speaker 1: it was first marketed, uh, to the American housewife, it
Speaker 1: was in this slender little bottle, you know, full of
Speaker 1: the flavor crystals. It seemed like the future had arrived
Speaker 1: in the form of this, uh, this wonderful enhancer UM.
Speaker 1: And here's another important little little fact that Ziegelman and co.
Speaker 1: Point out. Though the home economist of the day, who
Speaker 1: were creating all these strange recipes to make the best
Speaker 1: out of the available rations they could have, they could
Speaker 1: have found a lot of great, healthy and flavorful ways
Speaker 1: to get the most out of those rations if they
Speaker 1: turn to America's immigrant communities. But of course, for a
Speaker 1: number of reasons, including implicit or even overt racial bias
Speaker 1: or xenophobia, they didn't do it. And I'm not just
Speaker 1: talking about um, you know, certainly Asian immigrants, but even
Speaker 1: like Italian immigrants, Um, they they had they had various
Speaker 1: tactics to to make the best out of the available
Speaker 1: rations so with the with Italian immigrants, of course, you know,
Speaker 1: depending up more on pasta at One of the examples
Speaker 1: they point out is is using dandelion greens. That the
Speaker 1: Italian immigrants carried that tradition with them, and that would
Speaker 1: have been a wonderful, uh, a wonderful tactic to to
Speaker 1: educate the American public about, but they didn't. Instead, it's
Speaker 1: more like gelatine and meat and stuff. Yeah. Well, us
Speaker 1: who live in big cities in America today were just
Speaker 1: so used to international cuisine. I think it's a thing
Speaker 1: that's become thoroughly part of American culture to have a
Speaker 1: Chinese restaurant, a Mexican restaurant, a Thai restaurant, and an
Speaker 1: Italian restaurant and all that, And it can be kind
Speaker 1: of hard for us to imagine what it was like
Speaker 1: for I don't know, maybe a lot of Midwesterners or
Speaker 1: something like that, to to see these strange foods from
Speaker 1: exotic lands. Yeah. Well, I feel like we can all um,
Speaker 1: in many cases, we can. We can look to older
Speaker 1: members of our family, particularly I remember, I think there
Speaker 1: are stories of this with uh grandparents on my on
Speaker 1: both my side and my wife's side of the family.
Speaker 1: Both of them had very similar stories about going to
Speaker 1: an ethnic restaurant. Uh. In my own grandfather's case, it
Speaker 1: was a Mexican restaurant, and I didn't want to try
Speaker 1: any of the more exotic food there, ordered an American
Speaker 1: hamburger and complain for the rest of his life that
Speaker 1: they served him at quote a hot hamburger. Uh. It
Speaker 1: was a harrowing experience. But but I feel like this
Speaker 1: is kind of a universal experience among of among a
Speaker 1: lot of older Americans and now in many cases deceased Americans,
Speaker 1: where suddenly there were all these these more flavorful options,
Speaker 1: these exotic options, these new options, and you know, it's
Speaker 1: only natural to approach those, uh, those new flavors with
Speaker 1: a certain amount of skepticism, to say nothing of you know,
Speaker 1: your your your own taste, your own palate, being less
Speaker 1: uh inclined to enjoy those that new baraga flavors. But
Speaker 1: of course, as we have warned you at the end
Speaker 1: of this great MSG success story, did come some backlash. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and when we say success story, we're not just talking
Speaker 1: about other Chinese restaurants. But it's in, it's being used
Speaker 1: in everything, it's in, It's in children's cereals, soup, it's
Speaker 1: in soup. It's just all over the place. It's just
Speaker 1: they become a standard part of the industrialization of food.
Speaker 1: But also just like just just cooking in your kitchen.
Speaker 1: And then we enter a period in the in the
Speaker 1: early sixties where people began to uh to to question
Speaker 1: some of the chemicals in their food. Uh. There's a
Speaker 1: big book that came out in sixty two by Rachel
Speaker 1: Carson titled Silent Spring that kicked off a lot of
Speaker 1: a great deal of backlash just against chemicals and cooking
Speaker 1: in general. I mean, I don't think I try to
Speaker 1: blame Rachel Carson for irrational chemophobia. Indirectly, it might have
Speaker 1: had this unintended influence. It starts this, It starts as
Speaker 1: a narrative in in many people's minds. It forces us
Speaker 1: to to to to ask some good, some important questions
Speaker 1: about how our foods coming together and where it's coming from.
Speaker 1: But but as we all know, a little information, uh
Speaker 1: can can sometimes be just enough to spin off some
Speaker 1: of some paranoia. Okay, Robert, where did this narrative of
Speaker 1: Chinese restaurants syndrome come from? Well, it's everyone seems to
Speaker 1: trace it back to one particular letter published in the
Speaker 1: New England Journal of Medicine in nineteen sixty eight. All right,
Speaker 1: and uh it's it's actually written by a Chinese American
Speaker 1: doctor by the name of Robert home Man Quawk, and
Speaker 1: he claimed that twenty minutes after eating at a Northern
Speaker 1: Chinese food restaurant. So we're talking, you know, strong flavoring, seasoning,
Speaker 1: wheat flour, as opposed to as opposed to, you know,
Speaker 1: more of the spicy punch of Central Chinese cooking, or
Speaker 1: or any of the other various culinary traditions to be
Speaker 1: found in China. I think a Northern Chinese cooking is
Speaker 1: less rice centric, right, it has more like wheat noodles
Speaker 1: and things like that. Yeah, yeah, rice south, wheat north.
Speaker 1: So he's saying, all right, eight at this North Chinese
Speaker 1: food restaurant, and that resulted in quote numbness at the
Speaker 1: back of the neck, gradually radiating to both arms and
Speaker 1: the back, general weakness and palpitation. Okay, so he ate
Speaker 1: a big meal. That's the that's the thing, and that's
Speaker 1: the That's one of the questions that keeps coming up
Speaker 1: for me as I read any of these accounts is like,
Speaker 1: who among us has not eaten restaurant food, and in
Speaker 1: many cases eating far more restaurant food than we should
Speaker 1: have and paid a price. Yeah you you gorge yourself
Speaker 1: on some salty delights and then you felt kind of
Speaker 1: bad afterwards. Yeah. Yeah, Oh it was salty and it
Speaker 1: was rich and it was I mean, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: we we all have those stories. It's a little much
Speaker 1: to start looking around for the the one secret ingredient
Speaker 1: that caused it. Now, in UH, in Robert holmen Quoc's letter,
Speaker 1: he's had a couple of theories. He said, Well, maybe
Speaker 1: it's a certain cooking line that they're using. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: just that high sodium content, which certainly would not be
Speaker 1: unheard of in North Chinese cooking. Or perhaps it's that MSG.
Speaker 1: Now not everyone bought this right away, as um as
Speaker 1: Ian Moseby points out in his his his excellent paper
Speaker 1: that Wanton Soup Headache, the Chinese Restaurant Syndrome MSG, and
Speaker 1: the Making of American Food. UH. There was actually one
Speaker 1: reader who wrote in and congratulated the journal for fooling
Speaker 1: its readers and suggested that the real author of the
Speaker 1: letter was surely one Dr Human croc as then I guess,
Speaker 1: like a croc of of h. I guess that's a
Speaker 1: play on Homeman quak Homan quak. Yeah. Then instead of like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's not a great joke. I'm not putting it
Speaker 1: out as a great joke, but certainly here's an example
Speaker 1: of someone saying, hey, this is this sounds like malarkey, Um,
Speaker 1: why did you even print this letter? Well, even if
Speaker 1: this guy was correct, that's no need to make fun
Speaker 1: of somebody's name exactly. Yeah. Um, But the thing is,
Speaker 1: this is not the only person who wrote back in.
Speaker 1: Others wrote in with shared experiences, though not all about
Speaker 1: Chinese or even Japanese cuisine. There were even some who
Speaker 1: wrote in about kosher delis where they were having this
Speaker 1: this experience. So almost immediately there's this just this sense
Speaker 1: of of other there's a sense of xenophobia in the equation. Now, Robert,
Speaker 1: I have a hypothesis that I think maybe we should
Speaker 1: I don't know if we were tricky enough to test this,
Speaker 1: but sometimes time we should try out something like this,
Speaker 1: just say like, hey, have you ever noticed after you
Speaker 1: and then name some common but not all too common
Speaker 1: phenomenon like have you ever notice how after you eat
Speaker 1: uh lamb or you know, something like that. I guess
Speaker 1: I thought of that because your name, uh you you
Speaker 1: have this strange feeling. We will get people writing in
Speaker 1: saying like, oh, yeah, I've had that before. Whatever it is,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure we'll get it. Like I anytime I
Speaker 1: drink a lot of fizzy water, I feel like I
Speaker 1: am going to float up towards the ceiling and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, and grind up in a fan. Have you
Speaker 1: ever noticed that every time you drink one of those
Speaker 1: energy drinks that has taurine in it, you start to
Speaker 1: see over the dunes of time. Yeah? Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: if enough people just sort of raised the question, then
Speaker 1: we we begin to define the answer on our own
Speaker 1: recollection and saying, yeah, that's happened to me. I did
Speaker 1: feel a little weird after that last big meal I
Speaker 1: ate at that Chinese restaurant. But that's one level, right,
Speaker 1: just a bunch of people talking about it and saying, hey,
Speaker 1: did that did you? Did you feel weird after you
Speaker 1: had general sauce chicken, which they wouldn't have at this point,
Speaker 1: I don't think, uh is it had not quite been
Speaker 1: infitted yet. If I'm remembering the timeline correctly. But but
Speaker 1: what complicates things is that science then enters the scenario
Speaker 1: as well it should, right, I mean, science enters the
Speaker 1: scenario to answer questions, to get to the bottom of what,
Speaker 1: if anything, is going on here? Right, So it looks
Speaker 1: like we needed to to have some some studies, some
Speaker 1: organized scientific investigation of whether MSG is really causing people's
Speaker 1: eyes to fall out and they're to bleed from the
Speaker 1: ears and their arms to leap out of their sockets. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean you're you're exaggerating, but not but not too much. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that basically the whole episode here gains legitimacy when
Speaker 1: nero neurologist Robert Vick and pharmacologist Herbert H. Schomberg at
Speaker 1: Albert Einstein College of Medicine published an article in Science
Speaker 1: on February first, nineteen sixty nine. In this experiment, they
Speaker 1: administered MSG orally and intravenously to test subjects and then
Speaker 1: concluded that MSG could produce the Chinese restaurants syndrome in
Speaker 1: typical recipe dosages. So that's essentially the big first scientific
Speaker 1: shot fired here where suddenly there's a study that seems
Speaker 1: to back up what everyone is feeling and reporting about
Speaker 1: there that there's their symptoms following consuming Chinese. Wait a minute,
Speaker 1: you said administered MSG orally and intravenously. How many foods
Speaker 1: can you think of that are fine when you eat
Speaker 1: them at them all the time, but if you were
Speaker 1: to administer them intravenous lee would be a big problem. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: I think with me up to the soy sauce ivy indeed,
Speaker 1: and that's uh, that's got That's one of the problems
Speaker 1: that continues to to to raise its head throughout the
Speaker 1: scientific investigation of MSG is like what kind of dosages
Speaker 1: are we talking about? And then how is it being consumed?
Speaker 1: Is it being consumed at an empty stomach? Is it
Speaker 1: because it's on food you wouldn't like really be taking
Speaker 1: just straight MSG? And then on top of that, are
Speaker 1: you shooting up with MSG something that nobody nobody is doing.
Speaker 1: It is not on the menu at any restaurant, guarantee.
Speaker 1: I guess they're trying to, I don't know, anticipate the
Speaker 1: scenario where somebody accidentally stabs himself with a fork and
Speaker 1: then an MSG container spills into the wound and well,
Speaker 1: and there's there's also a larger problem here. And that
Speaker 1: is as as they laid out, MSG was widely used
Speaker 1: in Asian cooking, but it was also all over the
Speaker 1: U S food industry. So where we're why were there
Speaker 1: not widespread accounts of these symptoms um popping up because
Speaker 1: someone had a bowl of soup? Why are there not
Speaker 1: cases all over Asia where the stuff had already had
Speaker 1: like a had a couple of decades head start anybody?
Speaker 1: You know? Why why didn't Why didn't everybody in China?
Speaker 1: Why did everyone in Japan suffer these symptoms when they
Speaker 1: were eating food with MSG in it? And why not
Speaker 1: the foods naturally containing glutamate? Yeah? And is is that
Speaker 1: Ian Mosby pointed out in that article. As early as
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine, fifty eight million pounds of MSG were
Speaker 1: being produced per year in the United States. So it's
Speaker 1: in every It's in breakfast, cereal, TV dinners, frozen vegetables, condiments,
Speaker 1: baby food, can soup, it's it's everywhere, and nobody's talking
Speaker 1: about it except in reference to Chinese restaurants and occasionally
Speaker 1: kosher delis. Well, it sounds at that point like some
Speaker 1: cultural concerns might be as strongly motivating this this worry
Speaker 1: as any scientific or health concerns. Oh yeah, And of
Speaker 1: course other studies also came out pretty early to sort
Speaker 1: of spin this, uh further out of control. In May
Speaker 1: nine sixty nine, psychiatrist John W. Only published a study
Speaker 1: in Science that saw large doses of MSG and injected
Speaker 1: into mice, which subsequently suffered a host of distressing symptoms. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I bet they did. Yeah, And he specifically raised the
Speaker 1: question of MSG and human pregnancy, and by July only
Speaker 1: Bick and Schaumberg to schaumberger the doom from the previous study.
Speaker 1: They joined up with the consumer advocate and future presidential
Speaker 1: candidate Ralph Nader to urge a Senate committee to ban
Speaker 1: the use of MSG in baby foods, and they got
Speaker 1: a number of companies to drop MSG that way, But
Speaker 1: the National Research Council ruled that it was fit for
Speaker 1: human consumption, but not necessarily by infants. Yeah, so we
Speaker 1: want to emphasize that, as I've read in multiple critiques,
Speaker 1: a lot of these early studies of MSG were just
Speaker 1: plagued with flawed methodology. So I've seen claims that they
Speaker 1: of course there's the problem of injecting it intravenously in
Speaker 1: huge quantities into mice and then saying like this seems
Speaker 1: like what would happen if you ate some with it.
Speaker 1: I've seen some reviews that also claimed that early studies
Speaker 1: were just not properly blinded. You tell people like, hey,
Speaker 1: we're gonna give you some of this creepy chemical called MSG.
Speaker 1: Tell me how you feel after you eat it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and plus you know, just think again, think of
Speaker 1: your your spice rack, your spice cabinet, virtually anything in there.
Speaker 1: If you're taking a high enough dosage, you're gonna hurt yourself.
Speaker 1: I mean nutmeg, for instance. The cinnamon challenge. Yeah, cinnamon
Speaker 1: challenge is another one. Like these are both substances where
Speaker 1: if you take the right amount, then it's either that
Speaker 1: it's just tasty, maybe it's even has some slight beneficial qualities,
Speaker 1: but if you take a lot of it, you're gonna
Speaker 1: make yourself sick. In the case of nutmeg, you might
Speaker 1: have like the worst high of your life. Do not
Speaker 1: try it, really the worst, one of the worst. Like
Speaker 1: all the accounts I've read of nutmeg induced um uh,
Speaker 1: you know, psychological effects. They it's it's dreadful, it's not
Speaker 1: worth worth trying. But it's been pointed out. So when
Speaker 1: they say MSG is worse than drugs, is it worse
Speaker 1: than nutmeg? I can't see that it would be. Uh.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know that. Basically, bottom line, you
Speaker 1: take you take too much salt, you're gonna hurt yourself.
Speaker 1: You drink too much water, you're gonna hurt yourself. And
Speaker 1: certainly if you take too too much monosodium glutamate you
Speaker 1: are probably gonna hurt yourself. But it comes down to
Speaker 1: the question, though, how are typical amounts of MSG impacting people? Well,
Speaker 1: this does bring me to a question that I was
Speaker 1: curious about, not necessarily about the long term effects or
Speaker 1: the supposed Chinese restaurants in Rome, but I was like,
Speaker 1: what's the acute toxicity of this stuff? Surely it's a
Speaker 1: food additive. This has to have been studied. Uh. So
Speaker 1: acute toxicity is expressed in terms of LD fifty. You know,
Speaker 1: what's the dosage per body weight that kills fifty of
Speaker 1: lab animals that take it? Uh? And so I looked
Speaker 1: that up and there there is, indeed a study on
Speaker 1: the acute toxicity of MSG from called monosodium glutamate toxic
Speaker 1: effects in their implications for human intake a review and
Speaker 1: I just want to read quote. According to a joint
Speaker 1: inquiry by the Governments of Australia New Zealand in two
Speaker 1: thousand three, a typical Chinese restaurant meal contains between ten
Speaker 1: and fifteen hundred milligrams of MSG per one hundred grams.
Speaker 1: I guess that's the hundred grams of serving. The oral
Speaker 1: dose that is lethal to fifty percent of subjects LD
Speaker 1: fifty and rats and mice is fifteen thousand to eighteen
Speaker 1: thousand milligrams per kilogram of body weight. That's fifteen to
Speaker 1: eighteen grams of this stuff for every kilogram of your body.
Speaker 1: By comparison, salt, you know, table salt sodium chloride has
Speaker 1: an l D fifty of three thousand milligrams per kilogram
Speaker 1: of body weights. So as far as acute poisoning goes,
Speaker 1: the l D fifty of MSG is more than five
Speaker 1: times greater than that of regular table salt. You can
Speaker 1: kill yourself with a fifth as much salt, and at
Speaker 1: this rate. I did a little math. I hope my
Speaker 1: math is right here. If it is a one hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty pound or seventy two point five kilogram adult,
Speaker 1: UH would have to eat at least one thousand, eighty
Speaker 1: eight grams or about two point four pounds of MSG
Speaker 1: to attain lethal toxicity. Okay, so that's a lot of accent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that is a lot of out of accent, certainly.
Speaker 1: I mean, how how much is in the continuity you
Speaker 1: brought in here? Let's see this is two ounces or
Speaker 1: fifty six grams, six grams to one thousand and eighty
Speaker 1: I mean, you'd beating a lot of these, all right.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of back and forth that takes
Speaker 1: place after these initial studies. Dozens of studies come out
Speaker 1: in the nineties seventies, Some confirm, some contest on these findings,
Speaker 1: the harshest critics accusing the fearmongering and exaggerating his findings. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you also see a split overall, with some studies
Speaker 1: looking at supposed long term consequences of MSG, others looking
Speaker 1: at for short term uh CRS symptoms. All over the
Speaker 1: studies were inconclusive and UH, A strong vein if it's
Speaker 1: not Harthie obvious, a strong vein of xenophobia runs through
Speaker 1: all of this um and any and Mosby does a
Speaker 1: great job pointing this out in his article, which I'll
Speaker 1: link to on the landing page for this episode. UH
Speaker 1: says that, you know, the notion here that MSG is
Speaker 1: is so harmful doesn't really resonate as much um in Canada,
Speaker 1: UH and certainly not outside of Chinese restaurants in the
Speaker 1: in the United States. And you see this tangent that
Speaker 1: runs through some of the studies, some of the critics
Speaker 1: who are saying, well that the Chinese are just misusing it.
Speaker 1: Chinese Americans, Chinese immigrants are misusing MSG. Yeah, if the
Speaker 1: Campbell's company wants to put a little MSG in the soups,
Speaker 1: I'm sure they're doing responsibly. But I mean those Chinese restaurants,
Speaker 1: they can't be trusted. Yeah, clearly they're they're tricking us
Speaker 1: into loving their food some by using a reckless amount
Speaker 1: of this this this additive so I mean, which is
Speaker 1: just completely nuts. Um. You know, I forget the fact
Speaker 1: that cases of of any kind of like CRS were
Speaker 1: virtually unknown in China and Japan. Uh. No Chinese cooking
Speaker 1: was somehow excessive or bizarre. Both of those UH descriptive
Speaker 1: terms were thrown out in some of these these papers,
Speaker 1: enough to make MSG seem like a problem along with
Speaker 1: the idea that the MSG was used in these establishments
Speaker 1: to perhaps conceal inferior food. That's another llobl was that oh,
Speaker 1: well they're they're they're cooking bad food. And I think
Speaker 1: I got that mean when I was a kid. These
Speaker 1: Chinese restaurants they use cheap ingredients and people put MSG
Speaker 1: on it in order to trick you into thinking it's good. Yeah. Plus,
Speaker 1: just to give you an idea just how varied the
Speaker 1: the symptoms of Chinese restaurants syndrome become. Again, they kind
Speaker 1: of run the gamut of anything you might complain of
Speaker 1: after a meal at a restaurant. Um, it was, you know,
Speaker 1: just depended on who was reporting the symptoms. According to
Speaker 1: to Mosby is the paper they reigned from you know,
Speaker 1: mild headache to depression to sexual arousal and quote an
Speaker 1: irresistible urge to undress. Now that may have been a
Speaker 1: misinterpretation of people unbuckling their belts keeping a large meal
Speaker 1: at a Chinese food restaurant. Yeah, if you eat an
Speaker 1: enormous plate of General Sace chicken. Once it became established
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies as the the the American very
Speaker 1: with the with the emphasis on American Chinese dish. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: you might have to undress a little bit to make
Speaker 1: it home, You may sweat a little bit. You may
Speaker 1: in some cases feel a little ashamed, as I have
Speaker 1: at times for eating a dish uh so inauthentic at
Speaker 1: a restaurant that has more authentic dishes available. I'm sure
Speaker 1: they don't judge you, you know, they're just they're just
Speaker 1: happy that I'm there. I'm sure, but but but but still,
Speaker 1: they're just to just to drive from the fact that
Speaker 1: just about anything you might experience after a meal was
Speaker 1: thrown at this just sort of elusive amorphic idea of
Speaker 1: Chinese restaurant syndrome. So to this day, studies continue to
Speaker 1: be inconclusive regarding the the the additive health effects here. Um,
Speaker 1: there's passionate debate on either side of the issue, and
Speaker 1: that's true. I mean, food is one of those things
Speaker 1: that gets people really animated, especially online. I just noticed
Speaker 1: people have incredibly intense opinions about food and food additives,
Speaker 1: maybe even as much as their political opinions. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't help either that, you know, the scientific
Speaker 1: studies continue to look into the the benefits, the pros
Speaker 1: and cons of everything from wine to coffee, to salt
Speaker 1: to various uh, you know, various types of calories. I
Speaker 1: mean it it's hard to keep up, right, because one
Speaker 1: thing that's seen, there's a study that concert and there's
Speaker 1: one thing is bad for you one year, and then
Speaker 1: you just wait a few years and it's flip flopped
Speaker 1: in another study that manages to rise to the surface
Speaker 1: of media attention. Yeah, and I think you know, we
Speaker 1: should also hedge here and say that any food substance,
Speaker 1: anything that's part of your diet, may have interesting effects,
Speaker 1: good or bad, that we can find out about. Now
Speaker 1: us saying that there is not a clear picture that
Speaker 1: there's anything to worry about with normal levels of intake
Speaker 1: of MSG. Uh. That that isn't to say that you
Speaker 1: can't use MSG in ways that could be harmful. We
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean, maybe if you're eating huge quantities
Speaker 1: of this stuff, or maybe future research will will discover
Speaker 1: effects we don't know about yet, but as of today
Speaker 1: that there is no special reason to be concerned about
Speaker 1: moderate intake of MSG, right, I mean, maybe if a
Speaker 1: racial stereotype pro wrestling manager were to throw it into
Speaker 1: your eyes, that would be harmful. But but it's as
Speaker 1: anyone anyone can tell. The consensus seems to be that
Speaker 1: a very few select individuals may react to large quantities
Speaker 1: of MSG on an empty stomach, but otherwise it is
Speaker 1: safe for the vast majority of people. So stop with
Speaker 1: those spoonfuls of MSG before breakfast. It's just not good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, the major food and health organizations don't say
Speaker 1: that there's anything to worry about, right The f d
Speaker 1: A and World Health Organization too. Yeah, In FDA issued
Speaker 1: a large scale review by the Federal Federation of American
Speaker 1: Societies for Experimental Biology UH and an international research review
Speaker 1: in nine seven by the World Health Organization and the
Speaker 1: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations all ruled
Speaker 1: on this as well, and they said, yeah, it's safe
Speaker 1: for the vast majority of people, which is you know
Speaker 1: something that you can say for a vast number of
Speaker 1: additives out there. People have differing reactions to certain things,
Speaker 1: but but yeah, you're not throwing out the salt because
Speaker 1: of it. And UH and and we want to drive
Speaker 1: home again to that glutamates are in other foods. There
Speaker 1: are other ways to glute up a food product that
Speaker 1: don't involve actually using monosodium glutamate. If you've seen recipes,
Speaker 1: and more of them are popping up these days as
Speaker 1: more people come to understand the food science. You know,
Speaker 1: that beef up a pot of soup or something like that,
Speaker 1: by adding one of these glutamate rich ingredients to it.
Speaker 1: They say, you know, add anchovies or add marmite, or
Speaker 1: add soy sauce or something like that, You're adding glutamates. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: I mean it's even if every we're not putting MSG
Speaker 1: directly in, you're doing pretty much the same thing, right,
Speaker 1: And there's and as far as we can tell, there's
Speaker 1: nothing significantly different about about it being carried by the
Speaker 1: salt crystals as opposed to you know, being in the
Speaker 1: food in other ways. Uh. Julia Moskin wrote an excellent
Speaker 1: article on MSG for The New York Times back in
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, and she pointed out that while
Speaker 1: the USDA U s d A requires labeling for MSG,
Speaker 1: they don't for all other glutamates in your food, especially
Speaker 1: processed foods like chips um she u. There's a quote
Speaker 1: from her article she says, alternatively, there may also be included.
Speaker 1: There may also be included under certain terms. Like vegetable
Speaker 1: broth or chicken broth. Thus, these ingredients are now routinely
Speaker 1: found in products like cantuna. Vegetable broth is listed as
Speaker 1: an ingredient. It contains hydralicized soy protein, can soup, low
Speaker 1: fat yogurts and ice creams, chips, and virtually everything ranch
Speaker 1: flavored or cheese flavored. Thus, the richest source of your
Speaker 1: mommy remains your local convenience store. Grab a tube of
Speaker 1: pringles or a bologna sandwich, and glutamic acid is most
Speaker 1: likely lurking there somewhere. This whole thing about the labeling
Speaker 1: of MSG it kind of makes me think about the
Speaker 1: GM foods labeling issue because in both cases, so some
Speaker 1: people want there to be a law where any food
Speaker 1: that is produced by an organism that has been genetically
Speaker 1: modified in well through laboratory procedures, because of course all
Speaker 1: crops have been genetically modified through agriculture is just a
Speaker 1: less accurate form of genetic modification. Uh So people want
Speaker 1: these foods labeled, right, so you you label them so
Speaker 1: people know what they're getting. And on one hand, I
Speaker 1: kind of can't be opposed to that because I don't know,
Speaker 1: I mean, having giving people more information about the products
Speaker 1: that they're consuming. I mean that seems like there's hard
Speaker 1: it's hard to disagree with that right, right, transparency information.
Speaker 1: The only hesitation I would have to it is that
Speaker 1: it does tend to send a signal that there's something
Speaker 1: inherently to be worried about. With genetically modified foods, it's
Speaker 1: almost as if the government is telling you, like, this
Speaker 1: is something that's maybe dangerous and should be concerned, when
Speaker 1: there's no indication that's the case. And the same thing
Speaker 1: is true with MSG. I mean, I guess I'm in
Speaker 1: favor of labeling, just because I'm in favor of all
Speaker 1: forms of transparency. But I do kind of worry that
Speaker 1: when you make foods containing MSG have some kind of
Speaker 1: special label, it stigmatizes it in a way that you know,
Speaker 1: it is unfair. There are other food additives we have
Speaker 1: no indication or any safer than MSG that don't require
Speaker 1: a special label. Oh yeah, I agree. I mean, I
Speaker 1: mean certainly too, when you get into like the fear
Speaker 1: of chemicals with MSG, chemical itself becomes this bad word
Speaker 1: where we're ignoring the fact that, of course all food
Speaker 1: is made of chemicals. We are chemical beings. We live
Speaker 1: in a chemical world. Um, our terms have a way
Speaker 1: of getting ahead of us and rolling out of control. Now, Robert,
Speaker 1: here's the thing. Would you ever eat a piece of
Speaker 1: chicken fowl flesh that has been saturated in a bath
Speaker 1: dihydrogen monoxide and sodium chloride. Well you put it like that? Um,
Speaker 1: Then I started asking questions. Yeah, I mean that sounds
Speaker 1: pretty sick. But obviously what I've just described as chicken
Speaker 1: that has been brined in water and table salt. And
Speaker 1: you know most good chicken is brine. It helps it
Speaker 1: stay juicy when you cook it. So yeah, these we
Speaker 1: know that these chemical names bring a lot of stigma
Speaker 1: with them. Like, here's a good one. Do you know
Speaker 1: the U I U P A C name for lactose
Speaker 1: milk sugar U lactose milk sugar, just milk sugar, lactose.
Speaker 1: It's beta de galacto pyrando sill one four D glucose. Oh,
Speaker 1: that sounds like something that would infect an astronaut when
Speaker 1: they landed on a on a doomed world. Right, it's this,
Speaker 1: It's this demonic preon that comes out of the rocks
Speaker 1: to take over your brain. So anyway, I think we
Speaker 1: should try to come up with a simple rebranding of
Speaker 1: glutamate the it can allow people to consume it without
Speaker 1: this chemical stigma. Right, So you just called the hydrogen
Speaker 1: monoxide water. Of course the hydrogen monoxide isn't the primary
Speaker 1: name anybody uses. It's like a it's a hoax name
Speaker 1: that people came up with to make a joke. But
Speaker 1: of course it does accurately describe the content of water. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think to to come up with some some rebranding
Speaker 1: here to come up with a better, better name for MSG. Uh.
Speaker 1: We should we should sample some we have We have
Speaker 1: some here on the table. While you were a speaking,
Speaker 1: I just cut up an avocada here, so uh and
Speaker 1: I and hey, I even have some chopstips sticks here.
Speaker 1: If you want to get to you know, semi authentic. Well,
Speaker 1: let's cut a couple of pieces of avocado here and
Speaker 1: then put let's have a regular piece first, and then
Speaker 1: put some accent. All right, I'm gonna I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: ahead and eat the second one. Eat a normal piece
Speaker 1: and unaugmented slice here. It's good. It's in buttery, definitely,
Speaker 1: definitely right, Avocado is always good. Now I'm going to
Speaker 1: sprinkle some of our additive on there. Mm hmm. Now
Speaker 1: you know it's we didn't properly blind this test, did
Speaker 1: We know that this is not a very scientific so
Speaker 1: we know the difference. But I I would say that
Speaker 1: I think I can naturally taste the difference. The one
Speaker 1: with the accent on it has a kind of deeper,
Speaker 1: richer meteor flavor. Yeah, there's there's definitely a salt salt
Speaker 1: nous to it as well, though less salty than if
Speaker 1: I had just poured salt on it. It makes sense, Um,
Speaker 1: yeah it is. I mean, I'm definitely getting a sense
Speaker 1: of the mommy and the salt as if it has
Speaker 1: almost been like almost like it's been misted with soy
Speaker 1: sauce in some almost invisible way. No, I'm sure you
Speaker 1: can edit out some of these gross mouth noises. No,
Speaker 1: no more more gross mouth noises. That's what we need
Speaker 1: if we can can find someone one of those websites. Okay, Robert,
Speaker 1: any irresistible urges to undress or how long do we
Speaker 1: have to wait irresistible urge to undress? I think that
Speaker 1: my normal, like my base level of of of feeling
Speaker 1: like I need to take my clothes off is it
Speaker 1: remains the same as virtually virtually not changed at all
Speaker 1: thanks to the MSG scale of one to ten. What
Speaker 1: is that base level UM in the summer? I guess
Speaker 1: it tends to be like a five. That's the yoga
Speaker 1: and you talking. Is there a special word for this
Speaker 1: naked yoga? Naked yoga? Uh, there's like hot yoga. I
Speaker 1: don't know. Yeah there, I mean, I've seen it. You
Speaker 1: can go to naked yoga classes here in Atlanta. Um,
Speaker 1: I'd never be the one, but you can go. I
Speaker 1: mean it. Uh, you know issues of um, you know,
Speaker 1: shared nudity, nudity in a semi public and environment aside.
Speaker 1: I'd like, if you want to really feel what your
Speaker 1: body is doing and see what your body is doing
Speaker 1: in these various poses, it makes sense, right, Okay, So
Speaker 1: rebranding of ms G. What's your word? I came up
Speaker 1: with one, but my wife actually came up with a
Speaker 1: better one. So the one I tried to do was savor.
Speaker 1: Kind of makes sense. It's savory, put some savor on
Speaker 1: your food. But we can see it an advertisement to
Speaker 1: savor savor. My wife Rachel suggested, ummi salt. I think
Speaker 1: that's perfect. That's the best one. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: to all the fancy salts you can buy the day,
Speaker 1: like the Himalayan pink salt. At our house we have
Speaker 1: this like mushroom infused salt, saltry salt. Yeah, so why
Speaker 1: not just marketed as ou mom a infused salt? Like
Speaker 1: that sounds perfect. It sounds a little bit uh, a
Speaker 1: little bit sciency, but steeped in in culinary terms, not
Speaker 1: chemical terms. And I think that's that's what a lot
Speaker 1: of it comes down to, Like the terminology for your food.
Speaker 1: Is it are you defineding it by you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's exotic aspects and and then drawing in whatever you're
Speaker 1: your opinions are regarding the the the foreign nature of
Speaker 1: the food or is it or is it based in
Speaker 1: in in human chemicals or is it something compy and
Speaker 1: and uh and mouth shaped like o mommy. Well, food
Speaker 1: always tastes better when it's got a nickname, right, you know,
Speaker 1: you never want the name of your food to be
Speaker 1: all that descriptive, like just accurately descriptive food names or
Speaker 1: not appetizing. You don't want chicken packs with broth, you
Speaker 1: know you want I don't know, uh uh uh happy
Speaker 1: foul package. Yea, like schiel sounds great, right, it's fun
Speaker 1: that doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, but it's a
Speaker 1: fun word sounds better than like meat that has been
Speaker 1: beaten and fried and smothered. So yeah, there's a lot
Speaker 1: there's a lot in in in the words we choose
Speaker 1: to describe our food. And I think that the story
Speaker 1: of msg are continuing story of msg UH really drives
Speaker 1: that home. Now. I know, in the wake of this
Speaker 1: episode a lot of people are going to be very
Speaker 1: angry with us because we we have not accurately described
Speaker 1: how all the scientists are bought off shills and how
Speaker 1: h it's there's some evil industry that wants to poison
Speaker 1: our bodies to get us addicted to drugs that they
Speaker 1: also sell. I don't know what is the conspiracy theory
Speaker 1: with msg um. The Illuminati created msg in order to
Speaker 1: fake the rapture so that believers would would ignore the
Speaker 1: second of the savior. You're you're getting us back into
Speaker 1: getting my notes confused a little bit here. Well, if
Speaker 1: you do actually want to get in contact with us,
Speaker 1: you can always do so as usual. And hey, pretty
Speaker 1: soon we're going to be in New York. We should
Speaker 1: mention this. That's right. We're going to be at Star
Speaker 1: Trek Mission New York. Yeah, that's gonna go from September
Speaker 1: two to four. It's going to be in New York City,
Speaker 1: and our panel is going to be on Friday afternoon.
Speaker 1: So if you're interested in seeing us, you can come
Speaker 1: check us out there. Yeah, yeah, see us here us
Speaker 1: and you know, there'll be an opportunity to chat with
Speaker 1: us um after the presentation as well. And it's gonna
Speaker 1: be fun. It's gonna be a little star treky, but
Speaker 1: not like so star trek e that that you're going
Speaker 1: to know all the answers already. Personally, I'm afraid that
Speaker 1: we are not star treky enough for the start treking,
Speaker 1: just the right level of Star trekking us. You know.
Speaker 1: It's like people go into a dessert bar, right and
Speaker 1: we are offering something where people look at and they're like, huh,
Speaker 1: well that I didn't expect to see that in the
Speaker 1: dessert bar. I will get that instead of putting that's
Speaker 1: the way I'm kind of looking at it. We're like
Speaker 1: the surrounded by cookies. We're gonna be the brown butternut muffin. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're the fig the fig bar of of dessert delights
Speaker 1: at this particular conference, and there, you know, if you're
Speaker 1: into Star Trek, it's seems like the place to be
Speaker 1: because tons of tons of gas, tons of cool panels
Speaker 1: and talks definitely worth checking out, all right, So Robert.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if they want to find us, where
Speaker 1: can they do that? Oh, head on over to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com, which should have a
Speaker 1: facelift by the time this episode comes out. Come check out,
Speaker 1: see how it's all working, let us know what's not working.
Speaker 1: All the joys of a new website. Uh. And also
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Speaker 1: blow the Mind on both on all pretty much all
Speaker 1: of those. But you can also generally find us on
Speaker 1: those platforms by just searching for Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 1: And as always, if you want to get in touch
Speaker 1: with this directly, you can email us at blow the
Speaker 1: Mind at how stuff works dot com for more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com? Or four? Start about the first f