There's No Hard Evidence That MSG Is a Culprit Behind Health Conditions Like Asthma
One could argue that monosodium glutamate or MSG has an image problem. The much-maligned flavor additive has been at the center of controversy for decades.
It was reported in the late 1960s in a New England Journal of Medicine opinion piece as a potential cause for symptoms such as heart palpitations and numbness of various body parts. And while the author said these symptoms could have stemmed from several things in his meal, including sodium or alcohol from the cooking wine, the public zeroed in on MSG.
Numerous reports, most of them anecdotal, were then published after this original observation linking MSG to everything from face flushing to headaches to chest pain, which left many believing MSG was harmful to their health.
In fact, an estimated 42 percent actively try to limit or avoid MSG entirely, according to the International Food Information Council. And many companies have added a “no MSG” proclamation on their products, including seasoning mixes, chicken broth, and frozen entrees.
Truth is, MSG has been an ingredient in many supermarket foods in the United States for years—canned soups, deli meats, chips, cheese puffs, and instant noodles can all contain the additive.
“MSG is added to foods because it provides an umami flavor, which, in addition to salty, sweet, bitter, and sour, is one of the five tastes and contributes to savory flavors,” Megan Meyer, Ph.D., director of Science Communications at the International Food Information Council, tells Bicycling. In fact, chefs in the United States are more openly beginning to experiment with MSG’s flavor-enhancing powers.
So the question remains: Is MSG really as problematic as we’ve been led to believe or is it time to give it a second look? Read on for what the science says and why this flavor additive may not need to be blacklisted.
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What Exactly Is MSG Anyway?
Monosodium glutamate (MSG) is the sodium salt of glutamate. Comprising of water, sodium, and the non-essential amino acid glutamate, MSG works on the same taste receptors as the glutamate naturally present in foods including tomatoes, mushrooms, soy sauce, miso, aged cheese, and cured meats.
MSG is one of the most common food additives that delivers a savory (or umami) flavor to our taste buds. Today, the MSG seasoning used in food production is made from seaweed, or more commonly from the fermentation of sugar beets, sugar cane, or molasses.
In packaged foods, code for MSG can include “hydrolyzed vegetable protein,” “vegetable protein extract,” “yeast extract,” “autolyzed yeast,” or simply “seasoning.” While the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requires that food products list these items on the ingredient panel, the agency does not require the label to also specify that they naturally contain MSG. But these items are not allowed to claim “no MSG.”
How Does MSG Impact Your Health?
For the most part, the concern that MSG is a health pariah has been overblown. Though some people do appear to be sensitive to MSG, the FDA has classified the food additive as “generally recognized as safe,” saying most people can consume it in reasonable amounts without worries.
According to Meyer, most of the early studies to test hypersensitivity to MSG, as well as its role in a host of other issues—including hypertension, impaired fetal development, and altered brain functioning—have suffered from poor science, including a lack of reproducible scientific evidence or robust clinical data.
These studies also typically involved exposing subjects—both human and rodents—to megadose levels that far exceed what someone would get from a typical diet. (Americans consume about 500 milligrams per day of MSG added to food, which is far less than the upwards of 3,000 milligrams used in some studies suggesting an adverse health impact.)
A review in the Journal of Headache and Pain found that MSG only contributes to the onset of headaches when administered as a high concentration liquid solution, and even those studies suffered from not properly blinding subjects to what they were consuming. (Not to mention, nobody eats MSG in such isolation.) Additionally, this study determined that the blood-brain barrier restricts the uptake of the glutamate part of MSG when it’s consumed in normal amounts and thereby has no detrimental impact on brain functioning. So the chance your migraine or brain fog was caused by slurping up ramen is slim.
“The human body treats glutamate that is added to foods in the form of MSG the same as the natural glutamate found in food,” Meyer explains. “For example, the body does not distinguish between free glutamate from tomatoes, cheese, or mushrooms and the glutamate from MSG added to foods.”
In other words, Meyer says, glutamate is glutamate, whether naturally present or from MSG. And few people are ready to write off pasta sauce or shiitake mushrooms as nutritional villains.
Still, it might be wise to not give MSG a total all-clear. University of North Carolina scientists found that those who ate the most MSG were about three times more likely to be overweight than those who didn’t consume MSG, despite similarities in physical activity and daily calorie intake. It’s worth noting that most of the study participants prepared their meals at home without much reliance on commercially-processed foods, so much of the MSG would have come from the seasoning they added to their cooking.
Perhaps, high exposure to MSG may unfavorably alter fat and carbohydrate metabolism in the body, but much more research is needed before any conclusions can be drawn. (A study in Public Health Nutrition found that an intake of 2.2 grams per day was not associated with being overweight.) Since dietary MSG does not gain access to our brains, it’s unlikely to have a direct impact on our desire to eat more, and, in turn, cause weight gain by that method.
In the end, perhaps the biggest reason to be leery about MSG is not that it’s detrimental on its own, but that it’s added to many not-so-healthy processed packaged foods and restaurant dishes. Just a small amount can make foods like instant noodles and hot dogs taste good enough that we want to eat more of them, which can have a negative impact on our overall health if our willpower is weak.
So, a diet that contains high amounts of MSG could be a sign of one that relies too heavily on processed foods. On the flip side, if adding a touch of MSG (it’s available as a white crystalline powder in many supermarkets, Asian grocers, and online) or other glutamate-rich items (like soy sauce) to make healthy items (such as vegetables and whole grains) more appealing to the point you’ll want to eat more of them, then consider that a win.
And let’s not overlook a potential upside to boosting the MSG in our food supply: Because it’s so flavorful, MSG can help food manufacturers reduce the amount of sodium they would normally add to foods without compromising consumer acceptance.
“Since MSG contains about one-third the amount of sodium as table salt, it’s a helpful alternative for those looking to decrease the amount of sodium in their diet while still maintaining flavor,” Meyer says.
The Bottom Line: There is no hard evidence that MSG is a culprit behind health conditions like migraines and asthma—that notion emerged largely from shoddy research and hearsay. MSG likely has a neutral impact on your health, unless you are getting it from eating too many packaged foods.
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