This American Life did a great story on the history of why and how MSG was vilified. I won't post any spoilers because it is a fantastic listen.
this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2023
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Theoretically speaking you could be oversensitive to the substance, so in small amounts it should be fine for your body, and in larger amounts you'd get all those alleged symptoms.
However in practice that means that a lot more things than just crystalline MSG would trigger those symptoms - like mushrooms, tomato paste, soy sauce, Parmesan cheese, meat broth, etc.
Babies are also ingesting large amounts of glutamate when being breastfed. Which is why I believe 99.99...% of glutamate "intolerance" / "allergies" are caused by the nocebo-effect.
It probably comes down to eating a lot of very salty foods and not recognizing that you've had too much salt. Common symptoms include temporary high blood pressure and headaches, the same issue that people claim they have with MSG.
Just because it's a neurotransmitter in your brain, doesn't mean it can't have adverse affects elsewhere in the body (conversely, there are many drugs that have an effect on the body, but no effect on the brain due to the blood brain barrier), i.e. the body is complex.
That said, it's generally recognized as safe and may potentially cause side effects in some people but there isn't much evidence for it, and MSG is one of the most studied food additives in the world.
~~True. I guess nicotine is a good example of this. When delivered directly into the bloodstream (via inhalation or a nicotine patch) it is an addictive stimulant. When ingested orally it is poisonous.~~
It’s poisonous, anyway, and we don’t really know how the inhalation of chemical additives (at least idk) May compound the nicotine poisoning.
Back to being poisonous anyway, that’s why a lot of first time users feel nauseated and vomit.
You are right. All it took was 10 seconds for me to google. I am an idiot. What is true however is that it is much more dangerous when ingested orally. All my nicotine shots (for ecigs) carry the typical "skull" warning symbol, with the advice to call a doctor if you accidentally swallow some.
You’re not an idiot; misinformation abounds and it just gets tedious looking up everything, all the time.
Interesting side note: it wasn’t unusual on family farms, for a long time, to give horses a couple of plugs of chewing tobacco, as a deworming agent.