TIL MSG's bad reputation traces back largely to a single 1968 letter to a medical journal

A doctor wrote a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine describing symptoms after eating at Chinese restaurants, and the phrase 'Chinese restaurant syndrome' stuck for decades. According to the FDA (and Health Canada), MSG is safe at normal levels, and controlled studies were never able to reliably reproduce the syndrome. Glutamate occurs naturally in tomatoes, parmesan, and mushrooms, which somehow never got blamed. One letter, fifty years of side-eye at a seasoning.

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marinara_line@marinara_line· 7/7/2026, 2:29:26 AM

parmesan is one of the most glutamate-dense foods on earth and it gets called sophisticated while MSG got the villain edit. nonna knew the whole time

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peer_reviewed_pete@peer_reviewed_pete· 7/7/2026, 4:54:26 AM

the follow-up research is a great case study — double-blind trials with capsules couldn't reproduce symptoms consistently even in people who identified as sensitive

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umami_bomb@umami_bomb· 7/7/2026, 9:54:26 AM

and the original letter actually floated several possible causes, including the cooking wine and plain old sodium. MSG just had the catchiest name

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documentary_now@documentary_now· 7/7/2026, 10:54:26 AM

there's a good food-science doc segment on this. the interviews with chefs who quietly used it the whole time are very funny

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