MSG in chinese food

[pingpong]

Is it just me, or do most chinese restaurants use a lot of MSG in there food? After I come back from a chinese restaurant, I get very thirst and have to drink a lot of water. Although MSG brings the great taste out from the food, do you think it is damaging to your health?

[kdotc]

lol msg is bad but yet restaurant use as much as they can

[casshern]

I'm eating MSG right now.

[AznWing]

they do that to save time,effort and money lol
do they realy care about what you think is healthy?
all they want is you to enjoy ur meal, pay and leave and if you can add some tip lol

[ralliart]

It was safe, until people started having health problems. Google it. Thats what i did.

Honestly, food does taste ALOT better with MSG, but just like everthing, isn't good for your health. Just use it in moderate amounts.

[lee-lee]

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm msg....make food so yummy.
my bro told me the other day that for every tablespoon of msg, 6 seconds of ur life is gone.
i choose msg

[honkiebonkie]

well, just like some ppl are lactose intolerant, some ppl are msg intolerent...

does the MSG put MSG in their food?

[deviate]

yea the monosodium glutamate activates the good taste buds on your tounge but its bad for you

[casshern]

Is it just me, or do most chinese restaurants use a lot of MSG in there food? After I come back from a chinese restaurant, I get very thirst and have to drink a lot of water. Although MSG brings the great taste out from the food, do you think it is damaging to your health?

MSG is basically a kind of salt. Restaurants use it as a cheap ingredient to add flavoring to your food.

If you're not one of those people who are allergic to it, meaning you don't get head aches, stomach aches, or any other type of pain from eating it, then it's ok.

MSG is only bad for you if you consume too much.

[honkiebonkie]

since my previous post i read this article:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/foodmonthly/story/0,,1522368,00.html

very interesting!

dispells many myths....go read it before anyone make another comment!

[lee-lee]

^too long of an article.
bottom line: msg is not okay because it's asian. but a 4000 calorie burger is fine

[gyyr2]

MSG is supposed to enhance the taste of food. Restaurants use it to entice their customers to drink more..alcohol as the margins are higher.
At home I use it sparingly to make what I cook more tasty...just enough only to tickle your taste buds.

[saiko]

i always put some because it enhance the taste of the food.

[hiake]

I avoid MSG like the plague =_=b It causes me all kinds of trouble... insomnia (sometimes), sleepiness (sometimes), stomachache (always) and headache (if I am still sober)... =_=b I can take small doses but some restaurants go VERY generous and I'll feel like I developed an ulcer overnight. The pain. THE PAIN!!!

[Boss Lady]

MSG are very common nowadays... not just used in Chinese Restaurants but other ones as well... it makes food taste better and they're cheap! best way to avoid it is to eat home.

[hiake]

^ Well even though nearly all restaurants uses MSG and its derivatives to add flavour, there are some restaurants which are less generous with it. And those are the ones I would end up frequenting and be a regular at :P

There's only that much cooking you can do... The rest you'll just have to rely on good restaurants.

[101]

my friend has a american "chinese" restaurant...and i call it the house of msg

[Taxloss]

I guess it's ok as long they don't put too much of it in the food! If you get thirsty by it, it's a sign they have either bad cooks or lazy cooks.

[DuchSauce]

My friend's mom has a restaurant in Philly, her old menu used to have a 'no msg' sign, but when she updated her menu she took that off, she didn't want to lie, but only tells people there's msg if they ask.

[lotsofmsg]

There actully isn't solid evidence that MSG is actully harmful to your health
If there was the food accociations could put a ban on it, but there isn't such a
case that this food enhancer really does anything.
MSG is protein that ehances the the taste of meat within your mouth.

And MSG is not only found in chinese food, u really have to look at all foods possible and will find it practically everywhere.
But u have to look for the scientific name monosodium glucamate. U will see that it's in a lot of foods and its not just Chinese resturants that use it.
I have eaten chinese food since i was young and i have nothing against it nor am i sick and have cancer from it.
And u can't really avoid MSG it's in pratically everything, u drink soup can cambelle anything, there is msg in there. Chips lots of it in there. anything u can think of that has meat flavour or subsitue as meat there is MSG i there. And i work in a chinese restaruant and its awfully annoying when ppls ask me if there is msg in our food. Yes there is, and guess what, there is more at your house too!

[WinterSky]

lots of MSG in asian snacks too ;) betta watch out if your one of those health nuts

[Aznmask]

MSG do make u feel thirsty but it isn't that good to get u to drink more water? secondly i mean eating too much chinese food or other country food is not healthy. BTW you can request for no MSG on your food.. just ask them. Usually if u request no msg they won't add it czu they don't want get sue.

[rNb99]

msg is actually really bad for your health but i'm not sure how...but i know it's bad..but i know it makes the food taste better so that's why the restaurant loves using em.

[wind2000]

lotsofmsg[/COLOR];245512]There actully isn't solid evidence that MSG is actully harmful to your health
If there was the food accociations could put a ban on it, but there isn't such a
case that this food enhancer really does anything.
MSG is protein that ehances the the taste of meat within your mouth.

And MSG is not only found in chinese food, u really have to look at all foods possible and will find it practically everywhere.
But u have to look for the scientific name monosodium glucamate. U will see that it's in a lot of foods and its not just Chinese resturants that use it.
I have eaten chinese food since i was young and i have nothing against it nor am i sick and have cancer from it.
And u can't really avoid MSG it's in pratically everything, u drink soup can cambelle anything, there is msg in there. Chips lots of it in there. anything u can think of that has meat flavour or subsitue as meat there is MSG i there. And i work in a chinese restaruant and its awfully annoying when ppls ask me if there is msg in our food. Yes there is, and guess what, there is more at your house too!


Has anyone noticed the username of this person?:)

Seriously, more ppl are coming up with allergies to MSG. lots of time i go to Chinese restaurant, i hear the customers asking the waiter to make sure that there's no msg in the food otherwise they get a severe headache.

[WilliamStorm]

^too long of an article.
bottom line: msg is not okay because it's asian. but a 4000 calorie burger is fine

Ahhhhhh well said!! Go MSG!!!! I want sommmore lol:P

[winterfuyu]

Msg = Instant Noodles

[ryce2go]

i think w/o MSG... i probably wouldnt like the taste of the food.. immune to MSg

[chheng]

i n mah family stoped eattin msg like 5 years now and find that food tastes better without em lol

[stardust86]

MSG is so bad for you!! I remember seeing pots of MSG on the tables in China.

[nyckeion]

msg isnt really bad since its made virtually broth...

In 1907, Japanese researcher Kikunae Ikeda of the Tokyo Imperial University identified brown crystals left behind after the evaporation of a large amount of kombu broth as glutamic acid.

credits to wiki

so you decide

[dann]

msg in ANY food..... im allergic to them.... i get a HUGE headache after...

esp something in that yellow dim sum dumpling.... gives me headaches afterward... everytime....

[smallrinilady]

fried food is bad for you, but who's going to stop eating that?

[smallrinilady]

msg in ANY food..... im allergic to them.... i get a HUGE headache after...

esp something in that yellow dim sum dumpling.... gives me headaches afterward... everytime....

there is msg in fast food restuarnt hamburgers
maybe that's why the dude from that movie got so sick all the time

[dann]

^ nah, i can eat some types of msg...

it could it be the amount of msg?

cuz i get headaches from dim sum... and uh... something else lol

[yongxlin]

MSG is popularly marketed as a "flavor enhancer"; but ultimately it is a food additive!!! And we wonder why the nation is overweight? The MSG manufacturers themselves admit that it addicts people to their products. It makes people choose their product over others, and makes people eat more of it than they would if MSG wasn't added.

[thanislim]

Hmm thats an interesting article about MSG honkiebonkie. Asians are definitely more tolerant to MSG than others but here's the interesting bit about the article.

The anti-additive movement (check out the excellent and informative www.truthinlabeling.org) admits that 'natural' and 'industrially produced' glutamate are chemically the same, and treated by the body similarly. So why doesn't anyone ever complain of a headache or hyperactivity after a four cheese and tomato pizza (where there's easily as much glutamate as in an MSG-enhanced chicken chow mein)?

This shows that MSG occur naturally in many foods such as parmesan cheese and ripe tomatoes. Vegemite or Marmite contains a lot of MSG as well.

My friend Nic came round. He told me about a Japanese restaurant he'd been to that gave him headaches and a 'weird tingling in the cheeks' - until he told them to stop with the MSG. Then he was fine, he said. I nodded and I served him two tomato and chive salads; both were made using the very same ingredients but I told him one plate of tomatoes was 'organic', the other 'factory-farmed'. The organic tomatoes were far better, we agreed. These, of course, were the tomatoes doused with mono sodium glutamate.

Then we ate mascarpone, parma ham and tomato pizza. Nic felt fine. So did I. I had ingested, I reckoned, a good six grams of MSG over the day, and probably the same again in free glutamate from the food - the equivalent of eating two 250g jars of Marmite.

This shows that MSG should not be the main cause of the problems.

Everything we eat SHOULD be in moderation. Even if you drink too much soy milk, it's actually not healthy. Moderation is the key.

[nyckeion]

it dont matter anymore anyways you cant stop the use of msg because it has not been stated that its dangerous

[flx330]

after reading about the symptoms online i feel them after eating chinese food. is that psychological or physical. who knows. and yea there's no solid evidence that it's not healthy

[chickenutbread]

MSG is in a lot of things, especially cup noodle. i didn't research it or anything, but there's a general impression from a lot of people that it's bad. well, unhealthy.

[_keke_]

oowe didnt know that it wasnt good 4 health O_o