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That would taste terrible! More on point: ingesting 30g of MSG is probably less harmful than 30g of sugar.



That's an awful lot of sodium to throw out the potassium sodium balance, even after considering the mass of the glutamate ion. I don't think it could actually be better than the same mass of sugar.


That could be true even if the MSG happens to give you an awful headache in the short term.



[0] is shill work by researchers working for a MSG manufacturer. I have seen this before. One even has an "ajiusa.com" e-mail address right there, /palmface/. Can't comment on on [1]: the entire paper is paywalled as far as I can see, not even a hint at the results.

Let's try something else:

Graham TE, Sgro V, Friars D, Gibala MJ. 2000. Glutamate ingestion: the plasma and muscle free amino acid pools of resting humans. American Journal of Physiology-Endocrinology and Metabolism 278:E83–89.

These researchers provided single 150mg/kg oral doses of MSG to 9 healthy volunteers (8 males, 1 female) to determine the plasma and muscle concentrations of glutamate following ingestion. All volunteers reported transient headaches.

Shimada A, Cairns BE, Vad N, Ulriksen K, Pedersen AML, Svensson P, Baad-Hansen L. 2013. Headache and mechanical sensitization of human pericranial muscles after repeated intake of monosodium glutamate (MSG). Journal of Headache and Pain 14:2

More than 50% of healthy, male subjects given 150mg/kg daily doses developed headaches.


> Let's try something else

N=8 or 9 (low power), 150 mg/kg(!) doses.

That's like ingesting 11 g of the stuff for a 75 kg adult.


from [0]:

>Because of the absence of proper blinding, and the inconsistency of the findings, we conclude that further studies are required to evaluate whether or not a causal relationship exists between MSG ingestion and headache.


And that's from people paid by their boss to show that there is no such effect.




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