Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Vault time.
Speaker 1: It is Saturday. We're going to venture into the vault
Speaker 1: for a classic episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind
Speaker 1: from August about food additives. Yeah, this is the one
Speaker 1: where we talked about MSG and the degree to which
Speaker 1: it's been demonized as some sort of you know, nefarious
Speaker 1: foreign um substance that's added to food when when really
Speaker 1: it's far more mundane than that. As far as I
Speaker 1: can recall, this is the only time I have ever
Speaker 1: eaten on Mike, so uh, please be be ready to
Speaker 1: get grossed out when you hear our chewing sounds. We
Speaker 1: sampled some MSG in this episode, and in fact, the
Speaker 1: MSG just took a bite out of a big old
Speaker 1: hunk of it. Well, the shaker is still in the office.
Speaker 1: I actually used it yesterday on some microwave lasagna. Was good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, it enhanced the flavor nice. So all right,
Speaker 1: if you've listened to this episode before, then prepared to
Speaker 1: experience it again. If not, be prepared to have what
Speaker 1: you think you know about MSG completely turned on its head.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works 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 of those substances that you mentioned, only some of
Speaker 1: those are my favorites. So um yeah, I'm I'm I'm
Speaker 1: instantly concerned. I'm going to start looking around in my
Speaker 1: cabinets and trying to figure out where this nefarious force
Speaker 1: is hiding. Now, lest I be accused of plagiarism, I
Speaker 1: should give attribution. That is a quote from an article
Speaker 1: on a on an alternative miss and website called Mercola
Speaker 1: that is about MSG, the food additive MSG. You've often
Speaker 1: heard of it associated with Chinese food. Probably it's monosodium glutamate,
Speaker 1: and that's what we're gonna be talking about today. But
Speaker 1: 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 but truly better than some drugs.
Speaker 1: And 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 Samuda, which is the drug that they
Speaker 1: that some individuals in the Dune universe take and then
Speaker 1: they listen to some sort of weird music Simuda music
Speaker 1: that can only really be processed while you're taking this
Speaker 1: particular drug. Well, MSG is worse than that too, because
Speaker 1: what does it do? I don't know, it does a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff. Apparently, if you listen to to everyone
Speaker 1: who has ever complained about MSG, it has ever proposed,
Speaker 1: and you know, a negative symptom of taking MSG, then
Speaker 1: it sounds like just the worst thing imaginable. Okay, So Robert,
Speaker 1: tell me your MSG story. How did you become acquainted
Speaker 1: with this killer? The silent killer chemical? All right, So
Speaker 1: growing up I was I don't remember ever being privy
Speaker 1: to any direct anti MSG messaging. Like, nobody had me
Speaker 1: watch a video, nobody made me read a paper about it.
Speaker 1: It was just this thing that you just heard. Oh well,
Speaker 1: MSG is to be avoided. You go to the local
Speaker 1: Chinese restaurant and your small American town, there's likely to
Speaker 1: be a no MSG sign there on the wall, just
Speaker 1: to let you know before you even think about coming
Speaker 1: in the door that there is going to be no MSG.
Speaker 1: And I and not even knowing what it was, I
Speaker 1: just kind of had in my mind that it was
Speaker 1: some sort of some sort of chemical, some sort of
Speaker 1: cheating substance that allowed the the individuals that are making
Speaker 1: the food to to trick you into enjoying something. It's
Speaker 1: the anabolic steroids of food, the doping of food. But
Speaker 1: as we're gonna discussing this episode, there's there's virtually nothing
Speaker 1: to any of this. Uh, this fear of moongering, decades
Speaker 1: worth of fear mongering that 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 restaurants 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 the 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 taste better. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's what that's salt, pepper, everything else like that. Just
Speaker 1: the act of the art of cooking is, Hey, how
Speaker 1: can we make this particular 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 time was
Speaker 1: teaching me how to make a recipe for this dip
Speaker 1: that came from his family. I think his grandmother had
Speaker 1: made it or something. All the recipes you learned in
Speaker 1: college tend to be going to be a little suspect.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't judge this friend of mine by this dip.
Speaker 1: But the dip in my memory is a little gross.
Speaker 1: So it had Philadelphia cream cheese, chopped up sandwich meat
Speaker 1: which I believe was Buddig beef, and then sliced green onions,
Speaker 1: and the fourth ingredient was a container of shakon seasoning
Speaker 1: called accent. And I was like, what is this? I
Speaker 1: think I might have seen this in my grandmother's kitchen cabinet,
Speaker 1: but otherwise I didn't know what it was. And it
Speaker 1: said wakes up food flavor. Well, that sounds good. You
Speaker 1: don't want your food to be asleep, So I looked
Speaker 1: at the ingredients, and the primary ingredient are actually the
Speaker 1: one ingredient in this food flavor alarm clock was monosodium
Speaker 1: glutamate in MSG, the stuff that had supposedly laid out
Speaker 1: my childhood friend with a body leveling illness, and the
Speaker 1: stuff that that I always heard these creepy rumors about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you actually brought in a little container of accent. And
Speaker 1: one of the things I love about it is that
Speaker 1: first of all, there's there's no mention of MSG. Uh Um.
Speaker 1: Monosodium glutamate is mentioned once on the back, and presumably
Speaker 1: they don't have to say contains MSG because it is
Speaker 1: pure MSG. You know, they save on the printing for
Speaker 1: this thing because they don't have to print ingredients every time.
Speaker 1: It just says ingredient and ends of the t pull
Speaker 1: and monosodium glutamate. But they it's really an attempt to
Speaker 1: rebrand it right accent instead of MSG, because MSG sounds
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's the letters are tainted for us
Speaker 1: because of these just decades of negative connotations, which we'll
Speaker 1: get into. And I would say it's also by the
Speaker 1: general problem of chemophobia, people being afraid of chemical names
Speaker 1: of things, which will get to in the end, and
Speaker 1: I think we should end by number one having an
Speaker 1: accent or monosodium glutamate if you want to avoid the branding,
Speaker 1: taste tests on Mike and then see see if anything
Speaker 1: horrible happens to us. And then also we should suggest
Speaker 1: some rebranding. Yes, so as as we're going start thinking
Speaker 1: of new names for MSG. Ways we can we can
Speaker 1: reclaim this chemical for our tasting pleasure. Right, so we
Speaker 1: should go back and tell the story of MSG, Like
Speaker 1: where 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 dashy 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 ou mommy exactly
Speaker 1: what it was. But ou mommy, what is it? It's
Speaker 1: that deeply savory, meaty flavor. It's not the same as
Speaker 1: something being salty, but it's it's that kind of deep
Speaker 1: flavor that you get from cheeses and meats and tomatoes.
Speaker 1: It's there in anchovies, you know what I mean. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's almost There's some wonderful descriptions out there for huma umami,
Speaker 1: and umami is such a wonderful one word description is
Speaker 1: just rolling off your tongue once you've tasted it. Uh,
Speaker 1: to just go perfectly together. Uh, but yeah, you kind
Speaker 1: of have to have tasted you mommy, and most of
Speaker 1: us have to really appreciate it. So Japanese cuisine obviously
Speaker 1: had this concept of ou, mommy, they know what this
Speaker 1: delicious savory flavor is. But what a Kato was able
Speaker 1: to do was to pinpoint the chemical cause of this flavor,
Speaker 1: which was this substance that we now know as glutamate
Speaker 1: yes um. In particular, he pinpoint pinpointed glutamic acid. So
Speaker 1: this isn't a meano acid non essential because the human
Speaker 1: body and various plants and animals can produce it on
Speaker 1: their own and in the body gluten Glutamic acid is
Speaker 1: often found as Glutamate one of the most abundant neurotransmitters
Speaker 1: in the body, and it plays an important role in
Speaker 1: memory and learning, and according to the FDA, you can
Speaker 1: probably consume thirteen grams of it of it a day
Speaker 1: in the protein in your food. Right, So glutamate is
Speaker 1: already there in your diet almost definitely you're eating foods
Speaker 1: with glutamate in them. Yeah, if you're having tomatoes glutamate,
Speaker 1: If you haven't parmesan cheese, glutamate um, and certainly if
Speaker 1: you're having some of the more processed food items out there,
Speaker 1: various potato chips, etcetera, you having glutamate. Glutamate is just
Speaker 1: part of eating as humans. Yeah, so there's no there's
Speaker 1: no magic going on, right that this is just a
Speaker 1: standard dietary chemical and as such we do have receptors
Speaker 1: that are sort of programmed to taste it. Yeah. All
Speaker 1: that Ikeda did here is he took that naturally occurring
Speaker 1: glutamate and he solved the problem of then, well, how
Speaker 1: do I how do I synthesize it, how do I
Speaker 1: mass produce it? How can I get this in a
Speaker 1: form that's stable to the consumer. And basically what he
Speaker 1: did here is. He figured out he could synthesize the
Speaker 1: molecule by first extracting the glutamate from seaweed and then
Speaker 1: mixing it with water and just common table salt to
Speaker 1: stabilize the compound. Thus, mono sodium glutamate m s G.
Speaker 1: It's born, it's table salt, and it's glutamate. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: really can't drive drive that home enough that there's there's
Speaker 1: no like extreme chemical um process here. There's no weird
Speaker 1: magical ritual involved. This is just salt and glutamate that
Speaker 1: come together into a stable form. So I have to
Speaker 1: tell you that I don't know where I encountered this idea,
Speaker 1: but years ago, what I heard about the way MSG
Speaker 1: works in your mouth is that it literally quote tears
Speaker 1: holes in your tongue to make you taste things more intensely.
Speaker 1: I can't remember where I came across this, and I
Speaker 1: know I passed on this piece of false information to
Speaker 1: people plenty of time, like it tears a hole in
Speaker 1: the fabric of our reality and then demon taste from
Speaker 1: another universe comming. I never heard anything quite that extreme,
Speaker 1: but I do remember hearing that it like opens up
Speaker 1: the taste buds with the with the emphasis being that
Speaker 1: it's doing so in an un natural way. In it
Speaker 1: almost like a drug induced way, right. It would be
Speaker 1: fascinating to find out where these rumors started about its
Speaker 1: its mechanism of action. But anyway, so it went on
Speaker 1: to become a popular commercial food additive. It wasn't just
Speaker 1: anymore people putting glutamate rich foods into their foods to
Speaker 1: season it. Like you could put parmesan cheese or or
Speaker 1: seaweed or something like that into your food to boost
Speaker 1: the glutamate content. Or you could just isolate monosodium glutamate
Speaker 1: and add that to increase the zumami flavor without adding
Speaker 1: the other ingredients. I mean basically, especially now with with
Speaker 1: your mom a, I feel like it's been very much
Speaker 1: a favorite keyword among foodies over the past decade, uh
Speaker 1: you know, and maybe longer. But there are plenty of
Speaker 1: ways to to glued up your food to get that
Speaker 1: glue to mate in there without MSG. MSG is just
Speaker 1: kind of a a quick and easy way to do it.
Speaker 1: Um So, this this quick and easy way is rolled
Speaker 1: out by the Japanese company h a Geno motto and
Speaker 1: it it's you have this instant crystalline powder. That's uh,
Speaker 1: that's ready to just sprinkle on your food, and it's
Speaker 1: an instant hit. Of course, Uh. They they patented it
Speaker 1: in nineteen o nine, and today the form that you
Speaker 1: encounter tends to be made from beats and corn. It's
Speaker 1: known as MSG in the States, but a Keita'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, an 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 successful with this, It was apparently
Speaker 1: fabulously wealthy uh in the early twentie century. Japan died
Speaker 1: in the nineteen thirties, but this was his He really
Speaker 1: hit it out of the park with this fabulous flavor enhancer.
Speaker 1: So what could possibly go wrong? What could what could
Speaker 1: possibly stop this juggernaut of taste from just taking over
Speaker 1: the world. Well we will answer that question right after
Speaker 1: we get back from this break and we're back. So
Speaker 1: Robert MSG glutamate big flavor success story in the history
Speaker 1: of of food flavoring and additives. Yes, big big flavor
Speaker 1: success story as a huge age, absolutely huge it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it it is immediately a hit just throughout Asia. Allows
Speaker 1: that allows people to get of a meaty taste to
Speaker 1: non meaty dishes. I've read that it was especially a
Speaker 1: popular among Buddhists abstaining from meat during periodic absence periods
Speaker 1: various meat related fasts and uh in America too and
Speaker 1: in Canada. Elsewhere in the world it really gains popularity.
Speaker 1: I mean, you especially have to look back to World
Speaker 1: War two era post and pre war America to see
Speaker 1: just how ready we were for a flavor enhancer like this.
Speaker 1: On one hand, you had you had the military industrial
Speaker 1: complex here all right. You had the US military needing
Speaker 1: to to boost the flavor and otherwise dull soldier rations.
Speaker 1: So they turned to MSG easy way just to enhance
Speaker 1: some some limited food options there, easier than adding bacon
Speaker 1: to everything, right, and then industrialization of of all that food.
Speaker 1: It comes home with them after the war into the
Speaker 1: American household. But even before World War Two, we were
Speaker 1: essentially priming ourselves for such an advancement through the home
Speaker 1: economics philosophy. So there was recently a wonderful um interview
Speaker 1: on NPRS Fresh Air uh with Terry Gross married culinary
Speaker 1: historians Jane Ziegelman and Andy co appeared to promote their
Speaker 1: book A Square Meal, the Culinary History of the Great Depression,
Speaker 1: which it's a great, great interview, definitely check it out. Um.
Speaker 1: But they point out that the home economists of the
Speaker 1: age that they were not really into flavor. They were
Speaker 1: they were saying, all right, you needed, you need to
Speaker 1: be fed, you need to be healthy. Uh, you have
Speaker 1: limited means of pulling that off. Here are some strategies
Speaker 1: to do it. You can worry about spice when when
Speaker 1: when things are going a little better for you. So
Speaker 1: they pushed pushed American science based ways to get the
Speaker 1: best out of available food rations, often in bizarre dishes, uh,
Speaker 1: such as the one that they discussed on in the
Speaker 1: interview as being quote wrong in every possible way, was
Speaker 1: a recipe that featured canned corn, beef, plain gelatine, can pies, vinegar,
Speaker 1: and lemon juice. Oh boy, so so oh man. These
Speaker 1: these old recipes you see from like magazines from the
Speaker 1: World War two era where it's like, yeah, poor candle
Speaker 1: lima beans and spam together there. But but you can
Speaker 1: see where it's like they're engineering a meal. It's an
Speaker 1: engineering approach to the American meal. And so MSG is
Speaker 1: is perfect for that crystals that you sprinkle on there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's modernism brought to food. Yeah. And it was apparently
Speaker 1: when it was first marketed, uh, to the American housewife,
Speaker 1: it was in this slender little bottle, you know, full
Speaker 1: of the flavor crystals. It seemed like the future had
Speaker 1: arrived 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 rests a piece to make
Speaker 1: the best out of the available rations they could have,
Speaker 1: they could have found a lot of great, healthy and
Speaker 1: flavorful ways to get the most out of those rations
Speaker 1: if they turned to America's immigrant communities. But of course,
Speaker 1: for a number of reasons, including implicit or even overt
Speaker 1: racial bias or xenophobia, they didn't do it. And I'm
Speaker 1: not just talking about um, you know, certainly Asian immigrants,
Speaker 1: but even like Italian immigrants, Um, they they had they
Speaker 1: had various tactics to to make the best out of
Speaker 1: the available rations so with the with Italian immigrants, of course,
Speaker 1: you know, depending up more on pasta. One of the
Speaker 1: examples they point out is is using dandelion greens. That
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. So yeah, well, us who
Speaker 1: live in big cities in America today, we're just so
Speaker 1: used to international cuisine. I think it's a thing that's
Speaker 1: become thoroughly part of American culture to have a Chinese restaurant,
Speaker 1: a Mexican restaurant, a Thai restaurant in an Italian restaurant
Speaker 1: and all that, and it can be kind of hard
Speaker 1: for us to imagine what it was like firm, I
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe a lot of Midwesterners or something like that,
Speaker 1: to to see these strange foods from exotic lands. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I feel like we can all um. In many cases,
Speaker 1: we can. We can look to older members of our family, particularly,
Speaker 1: I remember, I think there are stories of this with
Speaker 1: uh grandparents on my on both my side and my
Speaker 1: wife's side of the family. Both of them had very
Speaker 1: similar stories about going to an ethnic restaurant. Uh. In
Speaker 1: my own grandfather's case, it was a Mexican restaurant, and
Speaker 1: I didn't want to try any of the more exotic food.
Speaker 1: They're ordered an American hamburger and complain for the rest
Speaker 1: of his life that they served him at quote a
Speaker 1: hot hamburger. It was a harrowing experience. But but I
Speaker 1: feel like this is kind of a universal experience among
Speaker 1: of among a lot of older Americans and now in
Speaker 1: many cases deceased Americans, where suddenly there were all these
Speaker 1: these more flavorful options, these exotic options, these new options,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's only natural to approach those, uh,
Speaker 1: those new flavors with a certain amount of skepticism, to
Speaker 1: say nothing of you know, your your your own taste,
Speaker 1: your own palate, being less inclined to enjoy those that
Speaker 1: new Baraga flavors. But of course, as we have warned
Speaker 1: you at the end of this great MSG success story,
Speaker 1: did come some backlash. Yeah, and when we say success story,
Speaker 1: we're not just talking about other Chinese restaurants. But it's
Speaker 1: in it's being used in everything, it's in, it's in
Speaker 1: children's cereals, soup, it's in soup, It's just all over
Speaker 1: the place. It's just a become a standard part of
Speaker 1: the industrialization of food. But also it's like just just
Speaker 1: cooking in your kitchen. And then we enter a period
Speaker 1: in the in the early sixties where people began to
Speaker 1: uh to to question some of the chemicals in their food. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's a big book that came out in sixty two
Speaker 1: by Rachel Carson titled Silent Spring that kicked off a
Speaker 1: lot of a great deal of backlash just against chemicals
Speaker 1: and cooking in general. I mean, I don't think i'd
Speaker 1: try to blame Rachel Carson for irrational chemophobia. Indirectly, it
Speaker 1: might have had this unintended influence. It starts this, It
Speaker 1: starts as narrative 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 all right, and
Speaker 1: uh it's it's actually written by a Chinese American doctor
Speaker 1: by the name of Robert home Man Quawk. And he
Speaker 1: claimed that twenty minutes after eating at a Northern Chinese
Speaker 1: 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, know, 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 one secret ingredient that
Speaker 1: caused it. Now, in uh, in Robert holmen Quo'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 as Ian
Speaker 1: Moseby points out in his his his excellent paper that
Speaker 1: Wanton sup Headache for Chinese Restaurant Syndrome MSG and the
Speaker 1: Making of American Food. Uh. There was actually one reader
Speaker 1: who wrote in and congratulated the journal for fooling its
Speaker 1: readers and suggested that the real author of the letter
Speaker 1: was surely one Dr hu Man croc As. Then I guess,
Speaker 1: like a croc of of uh. I guess that's a
Speaker 1: play on Homeman quak homan quak. Yeah, but 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 Deli's 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 sometime we should try out something like this. Just
Speaker 1: say like, hey, have you ever noticed after you and
Speaker 1: then name some common but not all too common phenomenon,
Speaker 1: like you ever notice how after you eat uh lamb
Speaker 1: or you know something like that. I guess I thought
Speaker 1: of that because your name, uh you you have this
Speaker 1: strange feeling. We will get people writing in saying like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've had that before. Whatever it is, I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: we'll get it. Like I anytime I drink a lot
Speaker 1: of fizzy water, I feel like I am going to
Speaker 1: float up towards the ceiling and uh, you know, and
Speaker 1: grind up in a fan. Have you ever noticed that
Speaker 1: every time you drink one of those energy drinks that
Speaker 1: has taurine in it, you start to see over the
Speaker 1: dunes of time. Yeah? Yeah, I mean if enough people
Speaker 1: just sort of raised the question, then we we begin
Speaker 1: to to define the answer on our own recollection. And
Speaker 1: I'd say, yeah, that's happened to me. I did feel
Speaker 1: a little weird after that last big meal I ate
Speaker 1: at that Chinese restaurant. But that's one level, right, just
Speaker 1: 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 Bick and pharmacologist Herbert H. Schomberg at
Speaker 1: Albert Einstein College of Medicine published an article in Science
Speaker 1: on February nineteen sixty nine. In this experiment, they administered
Speaker 1: MSG orally and intravenously to test subjects and then concluded
Speaker 1: that MSG could produce the Chinese restaurants syndrome in typical
Speaker 1: recipe dosages. So that's essentially the big first scientific shot
Speaker 1: fired here where suddenly there's a study that seems to
Speaker 1: back up what everyone is feeling and reporting about their
Speaker 1: there's their symptoms following consuming Chinese food. Wait a minute,
Speaker 1: you said administered MSG orally and intravenously. Yeah, how many
Speaker 1: foods can you think of that are fine when you
Speaker 1: eat them and meet them all the time, But if
Speaker 1: you were to administer them intravenous lee would be a
Speaker 1: big problem. Yeah, exactly. It's not hooked me up to
Speaker 1: the soy sauce ivan indeed. And that's uh, that's that's
Speaker 1: one of the problems that continues to to to to
Speaker 1: raise its head throughout the scientific investigation of MSG is
Speaker 1: like what kind of dosages are we talking about? And
Speaker 1: then how is it being consumed? Is it being consumed
Speaker 1: at an empty stomach? Is it because it's on food
Speaker 1: you wouldn't like really be taking just straight MSG? And
Speaker 1: then on top of that, are you shooting up with
Speaker 1: MSG something that nobody nobody is doing it. It's not
Speaker 1: on the menu at any restaurant, I guarantee. I guess
Speaker 1: they're trying to, I don't know, anticipate the scenario where
Speaker 1: somebody accidentally stabs himself with a fork and then an
Speaker 1: MSG container spills into the wound, and well, and there's
Speaker 1: there's also a larger problem here, and that is as
Speaker 1: as they laid out, MSG was widely used in Asian cooking,
Speaker 1: but it was also all over the U S food industry.
Speaker 1: So where we're why were there not widespread accounts of
Speaker 1: these symptoms um popping up because someone had a bowl
Speaker 1: of soup? Why are there not cases all over Asia
Speaker 1: where the stuff had already had like a had a
Speaker 1: couple of decades head start, right, body, you know, why
Speaker 1: why didn't Why didn't everybody in China? Why did everyone
Speaker 1: in Japan suffer these symptoms when they were eating food
Speaker 1: with MSG in it? And why not the foods naturally
Speaker 1: containing glutamate? Yeah? And is is that? Ian Moseby pointed
Speaker 1: out in that article. As early as nineteen nine, fifty
Speaker 1: eight million pounds of MSG were being produced per year
Speaker 1: in the United States. So it's in every It's in breakfast, cereal,
Speaker 1: TV dinners, frozen vegetables, condiments, baby food, can soup, it's
Speaker 1: it's everywhere, and nobody's talking about it except in reference
Speaker 1: to Chinese restaurants and occasionally kosher delis. Well, it sounds
Speaker 1: at that point like some cultural concerns might be as
Speaker 1: strongly motivating this this worry as any scientific or health concerns.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, And of course their studies also came out
Speaker 1: pretty early to sort of spend this uh further out
Speaker 1: of control. In May nine, psychiatrist John W. Only published
Speaker 1: a study in Science that saw large doses of MSG
Speaker 1: and injected into mice, which subsequently suffered a host of
Speaker 1: distressing symptoms. Yeah. I bet they did. Yeah, And he
Speaker 1: specifically raised the question of MSG and human pregnancy, and
Speaker 1: by July only Bick and Schaumberg to Schomberger, the two
Speaker 1: gentleman from the previous study. They joined up with the
Speaker 1: consumer advocate and future presidential candidate Ralph Nader to urge
Speaker 1: a Senate committee to ban the use of MSG in
Speaker 1: baby foods, and they got a number of companies to
Speaker 1: drop MSG that way, but the National Research Council ruled
Speaker 1: that it was fit for human consumption, but not necessarily
Speaker 1: by infants. Yeah, so we want to emphasize that, as
Speaker 1: I've read in multiple critiques, a lot of these early
Speaker 1: studies of MSG were just plagued with flawed method knowledge.
Speaker 1: So I've seen claims that they, of course that there's
Speaker 1: the problem of injecting it intravenously in huge quantities into
Speaker 1: mice and then saying like this seems like what would
Speaker 1: happen if you ate some with you. I've seen some
Speaker 1: reviews that also claimed that early studies were just not
Speaker 1: properly blinded. You tell people like, hey, we're gonna give
Speaker 1: you some of this creepy chemical called MSG. Tell me
Speaker 1: how you feel after you eat it? Yeah, and and
Speaker 1: plus you know, just think again, think of your your
Speaker 1: spice rack, your spice cabinet, virtually anything in there. If
Speaker 1: you're taking a high enough dosage, you're gonna hurt yourself.
Speaker 1: I mean nutmeg for instance. Cinnamon challenge. Yeah, cinnamon challenge
Speaker 1: is another one. Like these are both substances where if
Speaker 1: you take the right amount, then it's either that it's
Speaker 1: 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 ounce 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. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know that. Basically, bottom line, you take you
Speaker 1: take too much salt, you're gonna hurt yourself. You drink
Speaker 1: too much water, you're gonna hurt yourself. And certainly if
Speaker 1: you take too too much monosodium glutamate you are probably
Speaker 1: gonna hurt yourself. But it comes down to the question, though,
Speaker 1: how are typical amounts of MSG impacting people? Well, this
Speaker 1: does bring me to a question that I was curious about,
Speaker 1: not necessarily about the long term effects or or the
Speaker 1: supposed Chinese restaurants in Rome, but I was like, what's
Speaker 1: the acute toxicity of this stuff? Surely it's food additive,
Speaker 1: this has to have been studied. Uh. So acute toxicity
Speaker 1: is expressed in terms of LD fifty. You know, what's
Speaker 1: the dosage per body weight that kills fifty of lab
Speaker 1: animals that take it? Uh? And so I looked that
Speaker 1: up and there there is, indeed a study on the
Speaker 1: acute toxicity of MSG from called Monosodium glutamate Toxic effects
Speaker 1: and their implications for human intake. A review and I
Speaker 1: just want to read quote. According to a joint inquiry
Speaker 1: by the Governments of Australia New Zealand in two thousand three,
Speaker 1: a typical Chinese restaurant meal contains between ten and fifteen
Speaker 1: hundred milligrams of MSG per one grams. I guess that's
Speaker 1: the hundred grams of serving. The oral dose that is
Speaker 1: lethal to fifty percent of subjects l l D fifty
Speaker 1: and rats and mice is fifteen thousand to eighteen thousand
Speaker 1: milligrams per kilogram of body weight. That's fifteen to eighteen
Speaker 1: 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 kilo
Speaker 1: a body weight, So as far as acute poisoning goes,
Speaker 1: the LD fifty of MSG is more than five times
Speaker 1: greater than that of regular table salt. You can kill
Speaker 1: yourself with a fifth as much salt, and at this rate.
Speaker 1: I did a little math. I hope my math is
Speaker 1: right here. If it is a one hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: pound or seventy two point five kim adult, h would
Speaker 1: have to eat at least one thousand, eighty eight grams
Speaker 1: or about two point four pounds of MSG to attain
Speaker 1: lethal toxicity. Okay, so that's a lot of accent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that is a lot of av accent, certainly. I mean,
Speaker 1: how how much is in the continuity you brought in here?
Speaker 1: Let's see this is two ounces or fifty six grams,
Speaker 1: six grams to one thousand and eighty I mean, you'd
Speaker 1: be eating a lot of these, alright. So there's a
Speaker 1: lot of back and forth. It takes place after these
Speaker 1: initial old studies. Dozens of studies come out in the
Speaker 1: nineties seventies, some confirm, some contest on these findings. The
Speaker 1: harshest critics accused him of 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 a hardie obvious of strong vein of xenophobia runs
Speaker 1: through all of this. Um and any and mostly does
Speaker 1: a great job pointing this out in his article, which
Speaker 1: i'll link to on the landing page for this episode.
Speaker 1: UH says that, you know, the notion here that MSG
Speaker 1: is is so harmful doesn't really resonate as much um
Speaker 1: in Canada, UH, and certainly not outside of Chinese restaurants
Speaker 1: in the in the United States. And you see this
Speaker 1: tangent that runs through some of the studies, some of
Speaker 1: the critics who are saying, well that the Chinese are
Speaker 1: just miss using it, Chinese Americans, Chinese immigrants are misusing MSG. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if the Campbell's company wants to put a little MSG
Speaker 1: in the soups, I'm sure they're doing responsibly. But I mean,
Speaker 1: those Chinese restaurants, they can't be trusted. Yeah, clearly they're
Speaker 1: they're tricking us into loving their food so much by
Speaker 1: using a reckless amount of this this this additive so
Speaker 1: I mean, which is just completely nuts. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: I forget the fact that cases of of any kind
Speaker 1: of like CRS were virtually unknown in China and Japan. Uh.
Speaker 1: No Chinese cooking was somehow excessive or bizarre. Both of
Speaker 1: those UH descriptive terms were thrown out in some of
Speaker 1: these these papers, enough to make ms G seem like
Speaker 1: a problem. Along with the idea that the MSG was
Speaker 1: used in these establishments to perhaps conceal inferior food. That's
Speaker 1: another labo is that, oh, well they're they're they're cooking
Speaker 1: bad food. And I think I got that mean when
Speaker 1: I was a kid. These Chinese restaurants they use cheap
Speaker 1: and greedy ins and people put MSG on it in
Speaker 1: 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 restaurant 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 range 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 after taking a large
Speaker 1: meal at a Chinese food restaurant. Yeah, if you eat
Speaker 1: an enormous plate of general sauce chicken. Once it became
Speaker 1: established in the nineteen seventies as the the the American
Speaker 1: vary 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. Uh. I'm
Speaker 1: sure they don't judge, 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 just to drive from the fact that just
Speaker 1: about anything you might experience after a meal was thrown
Speaker 1: at this just sort of elusive amorphic idea of Chinese
Speaker 1: restaurant syndrome. So to this day, studies continue to be
Speaker 1: inconclusive regarding the the the additive health effects here. Um,
Speaker 1: there's a passionate debate on either side of the issue,
Speaker 1: and that's true. I mean, food is one of those
Speaker 1: things that gets people really animated, especially online. I just
Speaker 1: noticed people have incredibly intense opinions about food and food additives,
Speaker 1: maybe even as much is 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 you know, various types of calories. I mean
Speaker 1: it it's hard to keep up, right, because one thing
Speaker 1: that seems there's a study that comes out and says
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 headge 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 of a
Speaker 1: racial stereotype pro wrestling manager were to throw it into
Speaker 1: your eyes, that would be harmful, but but as far
Speaker 1: as anyone anyone can tell, the consensus seems to be
Speaker 1: that a very few select individuals may react to large
Speaker 1: quantities of MSG on an empty stomach, but otherwise it
Speaker 1: is safe for the vast majority of people. So stop
Speaker 1: with 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 ven by the World Health Organization and the Food
Speaker 1: and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations all ruled on
Speaker 1: this as well, and they said, yeah, it's safe for
Speaker 1: the vast majority of people, which is you know, something
Speaker 1: that you can say for a vast number of additives
Speaker 1: out there. People have differing reactions to certain things. But
Speaker 1: but yeah, we're not throwing out the salt because of it,
Speaker 1: and UH and and we want to drive home again
Speaker 1: to that glutamates are in other foods. There are other
Speaker 1: ways to glute up a food product that don't involve
Speaker 1: actually using monosodium glutamate. If you've seen recipes, and more
Speaker 1: of them are popping up these days as more people
Speaker 1: come to understand food science. You know that beef up
Speaker 1: a pot of soup or something like that, by adding
Speaker 1: one of these glutamate rich ingredients to it. They say,
Speaker 1: you know, add anchovies or add marmite, or add soy
Speaker 1: sauce or something like that, you're adding glutamates. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: I mean it's even if every we're not putting ms
Speaker 1: you directly, and 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 being in the food
Speaker 1: in other ways. Uh. Julia Moskin wrote an excellent article
Speaker 1: on MSG for The New York Times back in two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, and she pointed out that while the
Speaker 1: USDA U s d A requires labeling for MSG, they
Speaker 1: don't for all other glutamates in your food, especially processed
Speaker 1: foods like chips um. She uh, there's a quote from
Speaker 1: 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, caned 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 convey in its store. Grab a
Speaker 1: tube of pringles or a bologna sandwich, and glutamic acid
Speaker 1: is most likely lurking there somewhere. This whole thing about
Speaker 1: the labeling of ms G it kind of makes me
Speaker 1: think about the GM foods labeling issue because in both cases,
Speaker 1: so some people want there to be a law where
Speaker 1: any food that is produced by an organism that has
Speaker 1: been genetically modified in well through laboratory procedures, because of
Speaker 1: course all crops have been genetically modified through agriculture is
Speaker 1: just a less accurate form of genetic modification. Uh So
Speaker 1: people want these foods labeled, right, so you you label
Speaker 1: them so people know what they're getting. And on one hand,
Speaker 1: I kind of can't be opposed to that because I
Speaker 1: don't know I mean having giving people more information about
Speaker 1: the products that they're consuming. I mean that seems like
Speaker 1: there's hard it's hard to disagree with that right right
Speaker 1: transparency information. The only hesitation I would have to it
Speaker 1: is that it does tend to send a signal that
Speaker 1: there's something inherently to be worried about. With genetically modified foods,
Speaker 1: it's almost as if the government is telling you, like,
Speaker 1: this is something that's maybe dangerous and you should be concerned,
Speaker 1: when there's no indication that's the case. And the same
Speaker 1: thing is true with with MSG. I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: I'm in favor of labeling just because I'm in favor
Speaker 1: of all forms of transparency. But I do kind of
Speaker 1: worry that when you make foods containing MSG have some
Speaker 1: kind of special label, it stigmatizes it in a way
Speaker 1: that you know is unfair. There are other food additives
Speaker 1: we have no indication or any safer than MSG that
Speaker 1: don't require a special label. Oh yeah, I agree. I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean certainly too, when you get into like the
Speaker 1: fear of chemicals with MSG, chemical itself becomes this bad
Speaker 1: word where we're ignoring the fact that, of course all
Speaker 1: food is made of chemicals. We are chemical beings. We
Speaker 1: live in chemical world. Um our terms have a way
Speaker 1: of getting ahead of us, 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: of dihydrogen monoxide and sodium chloride. Well you put it
Speaker 1: like that? Um, Then I started asking questions. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean that sounds pretty sick. But obviously what I've just
Speaker 1: described as chicken that has been brined in water and
Speaker 1: table salt. And you know most good chicken is brine.
Speaker 1: It helps it stay juicy when you cook it. So yeah,
Speaker 1: these we know that these chemical names bring a lot
Speaker 1: of stigma with them. Like, here's a good one. Do
Speaker 1: you know the I U P A C name for
Speaker 1: lactose milk sugar, Uh, lactose milk sugar, just milk sugar, lactose.
Speaker 1: It's beta de galacto pyrano sill one four D glucose.
Speaker 1: That sounds like something that would in effect an astronaut
Speaker 1: when they learned it on a on a doomed world. Right,
Speaker 1: it's this, It's this demonic preon that comes out of
Speaker 1: the rocks to take over your brain. So anyway, I
Speaker 1: think we should try to come up with a simple
Speaker 1: rebranding of glutamate that can allow people to consume it
Speaker 1: without this chemical stigma. Right, so you just called hydrogen
Speaker 1: monoxide water. Of course, dehydrogen monoxide isn't the primary name
Speaker 1: anybody uses. It's like a it's a hoax name that
Speaker 1: people came up with to make a joke, but of
Speaker 1: course it does accurately describe the content of water. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think to to come up with some some some
Speaker 1: rebranding here to come up with a better, better name
Speaker 1: for msg. Uh. We should we should sample some we
Speaker 1: have We have some here on the table. While you
Speaker 1: were a speaking, I just cut up an avocada here,
Speaker 1: so uh and I and hey, I even have some
Speaker 1: shops tips sticks here if you want to get you know,
Speaker 1: semi authentic. Well, let's cut a couple of pieces of
Speaker 1: avocado here and then put let's have a regular piece first,
Speaker 1: and then put some accent. All right, I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go ahead and eat the second one. Eat a
Speaker 1: normal piece and unaugmented flice here. It's good. Some buttery
Speaker 1: definitely definitely right, Avocado is always good. Now I'm going
Speaker 1: to sprinkle some of our additive on there. Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: Now you know it's we didn't properly blind this test,
Speaker 1: did We know that this is not a very scientific
Speaker 1: so we know the difference. But I I would say
Speaker 1: that I think I can naturally taste the difference. The
Speaker 1: one 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. It's what we need
Speaker 1: if he 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? My normal, like
Speaker 1: my base level of of of feeling like I need
Speaker 1: to take my clothes off is it remains the same
Speaker 1: as virtually virtually not changed at all thanks to the
Speaker 1: MSG scale of one to ten. What is that base
Speaker 1: level um in the summer? I guess it tends to
Speaker 1: be like a five. You know. That's the yoga and
Speaker 1: you talking. Is there a special word for this naked yoga?
Speaker 1: Naked yoga? There's like hot yoga. I don't know together.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've seen it. You can go to naked
Speaker 1: yoga classes here in Atlanta. Um, I've never been the one,
Speaker 1: but you can go. I mean it. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: issues of you know, shared nudity, nudity in a semi
Speaker 1: public and environment aside, Like if you want to really
Speaker 1: feel what your body is doing and see what your
Speaker 1: body is doing in these various posses, it makes sense, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: So rebranding of ms G. What's your word? I came
Speaker 1: up with one, but my wife actually came up with
Speaker 1: a better one. So the one I've tried to do
Speaker 1: was savor. Kind of makes sense. It's savory, put some
Speaker 1: savor on your food. But we can see it in
Speaker 1: the advertisement to savor savor, my wife Rachel suggested, umami salt.
Speaker 1: I think that's perfect. That's the best one. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think to all the fancy salts you can buy
Speaker 1: these day, like the Himalayan pink salt. At our house
Speaker 1: we have this like mushroom and fuse salt salt, so
Speaker 1: mary salt. Yeah, so why not just marketed as mommy
Speaker 1: infused salt? Like that sounds perfect. It sounds a little
Speaker 1: bit uh, a little bit sciency, but steeped in in
Speaker 1: culinary terms, not chemical terms. And I think that's that's
Speaker 1: what a lot of it comes down to, Like the
Speaker 1: terminology for your food. Is it are you defining it
Speaker 1: by you know, it's it's exotic aspects and and then
Speaker 1: drawing in whatever you're your opinions are regarding the the
Speaker 1: foreign nature of the food or is it or is
Speaker 1: it based in in in human chemicals or is it
Speaker 1: something compy and and uh and mouth shaped like o mommy. Well,
Speaker 1: food always tastes better when it's got a nickname, right,
Speaker 1: you know, you never want the name of your food
Speaker 1: to be all that descriptive, like just accurately descriptive food
Speaker 1: names or not appetizing. You don't want chicken packs with broth,
Speaker 1: you know you want I don't know, uh uh uh
Speaker 1: happy foul package like schnitzel sound is great, right, it's
Speaker 1: fun that doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, but it's
Speaker 1: a fun word. Sounds better than like meat that has
Speaker 1: been beaten and fried and smothered. Right. So yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a lot there's a lot in in in the words
Speaker 1: we choose to describe our food. And I think that
Speaker 1: the story of MSG are continuing story of MSG really
Speaker 1: drives that home. Now. I know, in the wake of
Speaker 1: this episode a lot of people are going to be
Speaker 1: very angry with us because we we have not accurately
Speaker 1: described how all the scientists are bought off Hills and
Speaker 1: how 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 coming of the Savior. You're you're getting us back
Speaker 1: into surgery of getting my notes confused a little bit here. Well,
Speaker 1: if 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 treky that that you're going to
Speaker 1: know all the answers already. Personally, I'm afraid that we
Speaker 1: are not star trekky enough for the stark just the
Speaker 1: right level of star trekking us. You know, it's like
Speaker 1: people going to a dessert bar, right and we are
Speaker 1: offering something where people look at they're like, huh, well
Speaker 1: that I didn't expect to see that in the dessert bar.
Speaker 1: I will get that instead of putting that's the way
Speaker 1: I'm kind of looking at it. We're like the surrounded
Speaker 1: by cookies. We're gonna be the brown ut or nut 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 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
Speaker 1: you will find links out to our very social media
Speaker 1: accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, uh, Tumbler, Instagram. We are
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 us 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? Little Big Believe, I think the differ