Human beings have been using monosodium glutamate for more than 100 years. Because it can make food more delicious, it has always been one of the most popular condiments in the kitchen. However, the safety of monosodium glutamate has been questioned in recent years. The "common sense" that "monosodium glutamate is harmful to health" has been widely spread, resulting in many people using less and no monosodium glutamate in cooking, which has affected the taste of dishes. However, looking at those "gourmets" who insist on using monosodium glutamate, they don't seem to have any problems with their health. Will adding monosodium glutamate to food really cause abnormal reactions of the body and even health damage?
Chinese restaurant syndrome and sodium glutamate
The first person to report adverse reactions caused by monosodium glutamate was a Chinese American doctor named Guo Haomin. In April 1968, he wrote to the editor in chief of the New England Journal of medicine, describing his strange experience of back and neck numbness, weakness, palpitation and other symptoms after eating Chinese food, and assumed that it might be caused by monosodium glutamate added to the food. Unexpectedly, after the publication of this reader's letter entitled "Chinese restaurant syndrome", in less than two months, more than 300 people successively said that they had encountered similar situations and had various symptoms. This caused people's panic, so that Chinese restaurants have posted advertisements of "No MSG added" to dispel people's concerns.
Some researchers also focused on monosodium glutamate without fully considering other possible factors, and seemed to find evidence in some experiments. For example, a large intake of sodium glutamate (the main chemical component of monosodium glutamate) will cause local brain damage in animals, or stimulate appetite and lead to obesity, and so on. The hydrolysis of sodium glutamate will produce glutamate, which is not only one of the most abundant amino acids in nature, but also an important member of neurotransmitters in the nervous system, which are responsible for transmitting commands and storing memory. Therefore, some people worry that excessive intake of monosodium glutamate will over stimulate the brain.
The rumor was broken
However, a fact that cannot be ignored is that so far no one can fundamentally prove that MSG is the culprit of "Chinese restaurant syndrome". When people re-examine the experimental data on the harmful effects of monosodium glutamate, they find that most of them are obtained from young animals, and the brains of these experimental subjects are still very "young" and lack the barrier of self-protection. In addition, the dosage of sodium glutamate in the experiment was far beyond the standard. In other words, if we refer to such a dose, when cooking, we will not "sprinkle" monosodium glutamate gram by gram, but "pour" monosodium glutamate one after two or even one kilogram. In the follow-up experiments, people or monkeys were observed, and MSG was rarely found to have the same side effects. The most interesting thing is that some people who claim that they will have an uncomfortable reaction to monosodium glutamate are not informed
After swallowing the capsule containing monosodium glutamate, there was no abnormality. This fully shows that the so-called "monosodium glutamate is harmful to health" is likely to be a matter of speculation.
In fact, the World Health Organization, the food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the U.S. Food and drug administration have unanimously classified monosodium glutamate as the "safest" category of food additives. Although it can not be ruled out that very few people will have short-term discomfort symptoms after eating monosodium glutamate, for most people, the most common "adverse reactions" brought by monosodium glutamate are probably limited to dry mouth and tongue, and they are only a temporary reaction, with minimal long-term impact on health, which can be completely ignored.
[sodium glutamate]
Sodium glutamate is the main component of monosodium glutamate. It is the sodium salt of human nonessential amino acid glutamate and widely exists in nature. In the early 20th century, it was extracted from kelp by a Japanese scientist and now it is mostly produced by bacterial fermentation. It is easily soluble in water and is a white tasteless crystalline powder. It is often used for dietary seasoning. In an appropriate amount, it can increase the "fresh" taste of dishes.