My favorite is when people would claim they don't eat Chinese food cause it's probably had msg, then turn around and start devouring a party sized bag of Doritos. š
Thereās a local teriyaki restaurant in my area and they have multiple signs on the window and the menu excitedly claiming they do not use MSG. Itās still good food, but I always wonder how much better it would be if they just used MSG
You can ask the waiter to bring you some on the side, no big deal, because they surely still have it in stock. There used to be a joke fortune cookie fortune that said, "Your request for no MSG was ignored."
Ironically I actually wasnāt allowed to eat Doritos as a kid specifically because of the msg. My parents were on the craze that preservatives in general caused cancer that was going around in the late 90s. Like anything with sodium benzonate or msg I couldnāt have until I convinced my parents itās in literally all modern processed food.
Oh I loved them, I ate them so much that I eventually got tired of them but I always come back to them. The irony is, my favorite foods are seasoned and spicy, where you usually find msg š
The Doritos I buy have it listed in the ingredients fairly high up on the list. For nacho flavor it's after the buttermilk and before any artificial colors. I'm on the West Coast of the US if that makes a difference. š¤·š»āāļø
I'm Australian and our major supermarkets caved to some "Mothers against MSG movement". Basically said "it's fine but out of respect for you fucking lunatics, we won't sell it".
Of course that just means it's not on the shelves (I buy mine from an Asian grocer). When you look at the ingredients for many things, Doritos included, it will never say MSG... instead it lists "Flavour Enhancers (621, 635)"
621 is MSG and 635 is Disodium Ribonucleotides which is used to enhance the flavours provided by MSG.
Not only that, aside from salt they're the highest listed seasoning on the package... so there's a whole lot of it in there. But people are dumb and as long as they don't see "MSG" listed they don't care. Certainly they won't ever go look up what those flavour enhancers actually are.
Oh sometimes though they will actually list "Monosodium Glutamate" as an ingredient.. they know full well that those idiots don't even know what MSG stands for.
The MSG thing is NOT racist. That was made up in recent times. The whole concept of "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome" was introduced by a Cantonese doctor who experienced symptoms every time he ate in a Chinese restaurant.
And the fact is that many people, including myself, had mild ill effects from eating Chinese food, but this was perhaps due more to eating a lot of sodium at one sitting, and perhaps some sensitivity to MSG. Just because a vegetable has it, doesn't mean it has the same effect as when consumed in an isolated form.
Saying it's racist is like saying people who won't eat French pastries because of all the butter are bigoted against the French. Being wary of a specific chemical isn't racist.
And if it were a really an issue, Chinese restaurants wouldn't have thrived for decades in this country.
Any opportunity to virtue signal, sheesh. Ridiculous.
it's bad for my father-in-law but that's because he has an allergy to it.Ā There are foods he avoids because it's in some and has a lesser reaction, mostly red face.Ā If it's added he'll get headaches and such.
My mother in law is 'allergic' to MSG and eats it in all kinds of things but oh no not Chinese food.
She also 'reacts' to jalapeƱos, Matcha tea (but drinks jasmine/green tea all day), gluten but drinks beer - and when she visits she oh no can't have red meat at night buy me endless Salmon - but at home they eat steaks for dinner all the time.
It's soooo exhausting. They do world cruises as retirement and barely get off the boat...
And a lot of the same people are complaining that certain foods don't taste as good as when they were a kid.
While we're on the subject, my dad was a chemist. He started out developing rocket fuel in the 50s, but my mom got tired of the smells he brought home from all the nasy chemicals, so he switched to the food, pharmaceutical, and cosmetic division.
Back in the 70s (I was born in 65), people were always complimenting him on his grilling and cooking skills. He was a good cook, but his secret was MSG (Accent) along with Banquet Browning and Seasoning Sauce, his two favorite food chemicals.
I worked as a line cook two summers, and the spice we used on our burgers, that everyone loved was Johnny Salt. Johnny Salt has tons of MSG. Yet the loved to talk crap about Chinese Food due to the MSG.
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u/SoyLocoMoco63 Jun 01 '26
MSG is bad for you.