Hard Light Productions Forums

Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Polpolion on May 27, 2007, 07:24:49 pm

Title: Monosodium Glutamate
Post by: Polpolion on May 27, 2007, 07:24:49 pm
Name everything that you can find that has MSG in it. I'll start.

Ramen (sp)
Doritos

(I'd have more, but these are the only things I'm currently eating).
Title: Re: Monosodium Glutamate
Post by: Goober5000 on May 27, 2007, 07:57:11 pm
Chinese food!

(I'd have more, but I'm full at the moment.)
Title: Re: Monosodium Glutamate
Post by: Scuddie on May 27, 2007, 07:57:44 pm
It's easier to name things that DONT have MSG.  I'll start.

Bread
Orange Juice

(I'd have more, but these are the only things I can think of)
Title: Re: Monosodium Glutamate
Post by: Ghostavo on May 27, 2007, 08:02:14 pm
Humans...

What?! Nobody said it had to be food.
Title: Re: Monosodium Glutamate
Post by: Tyrian on May 27, 2007, 08:21:25 pm
Humans are food...It just depends on your palate... :nervous:

*Flees*
Title: Re: Monosodium Glutamate
Post by: Nuke on May 27, 2007, 09:32:19 pm
mmmmm people meat

i long for a world that is so hostile that people have to eat eachother to survive. muhahahaha!
Title: Re: Monosodium Glutamate
Post by: phatosealpha on May 27, 2007, 10:19:12 pm
Would a world so hostile people ate each other not because they needed to, but for fun, be even more hostile?
Title: Re: Monosodium Glutamate
Post by: jr2 on May 28, 2007, 03:46:32 am
soy sauce (unfortunately!)
Title: Re: Monosodium Glutamate
Post by: Wanderer on May 28, 2007, 04:07:13 am
Anything with 'E621' (in europe) stamped onto it.. Any food that has any considerable amount of proteins..
Title: Re: Monosodium Glutamate
Post by: S-99 on May 28, 2007, 05:53:26 pm
What the **** is msg, why is it bad?
Title: Re: Monosodium Glutamate
Post by: Polpolion on May 28, 2007, 08:11:36 pm
It's not bad. In fact, it's orgasmic really tasty.
Title: Re: Monosodium Glutamate
Post by: S-99 on May 28, 2007, 08:26:45 pm
Oh, well i always see packages of food with big labels on them that say no msg. So i assume maybe it was bad or something :p
Title: Re: Monosodium Glutamate
Post by: Herra Tohtori on May 28, 2007, 08:34:47 pm
What it is: a sodium salt of glutamic acid. Tells a lot doesn't it... :drevil:

What it's used for: to enhance tastes in tasteless micro food products sold in market. Also some other stuff. It tastes umami, which is the fifth basic taste in addition to sweetness, sourness, bitterness, and saltiness.

Why is it bad (possibly):

It allegedly can cause brain damage among other negative health effects.

More specifically, it can in large quantities spike the glutamic acid concentration of the bloodstream.  Glutamic acid, or glutamate, is an important part of cellular metabolism and also a neurotransmitter, but if the amount of it gets too high it can apparently cause cell deaths and stuff in nervous system. Normally, the brain is protected by blood-brain barrier which only lets specific chemicals to pass, but not all parts of the brain are equally protected, and the "strength" of this barrier also varies by, most importantly, age. Young children tend to have somewhat less effective blood-brain barrier than adults AFAIK, and also their brain are more sensitive in general.

Effects in experiments have been brain damage to infant mice (apparently with pretty high dosages though) and obesity to lab rats.


Yum. :)


Note that none of these effects on humans have been proven in any recognized research, and I suspect it will eventually fall into the same category as oat porridge. It kills you if someone shoots you with projectiles made of it with sufficient velocity, or drops a sufficient load of it at you. Or if you decide to eat a kilogram of salt, it likely kills you. Or if you eat a liver of a polar bear (Ursus maritimus) you will die on overdosage of vitamin A. Doesn't mean it's dangerous in itself... :rolleyes:


The health hazard label MSG is commonly associated with is mostly a result of a combination of carefully constructed stuff that has created a myth of MSG being a killer chemical.

Note that I don't think there should be any sane reason to add "flavour enhancers" to a food. Even if the chemical is completely safe, it does tell something about the food itself. If it does need chemical enhancement to taste like something, I think there's a problem somewhere... :rolleyes:
Title: Re: Monosodium Glutamate
Post by: S-99 on May 28, 2007, 08:41:24 pm
Very informative. Lol, flavor enhancers, what ever happened to using the spice rack at home? That's all that gourmet chefs do :)
Title: Re: Monosodium Glutamate
Post by: Polpolion on May 28, 2007, 09:08:57 pm
Herra:

You're too smart.


:p
Title: Re: Monosodium Glutamate
Post by: Wanderer on May 29, 2007, 02:16:01 am
You shouldnt really complain about 'chemicals' being added to foods.. The whole meaning of that word is so easily twisted when applied to food additives. On same basis you could call water or sugar as chemical. And MSG is found from normal spice racks.. Or am i the only with soy sauze there?

On personal experience... pure (if diluted) MSG tastes rather bad though (and i dont mean soy sauze)
Title: Re: Monosodium Glutamate
Post by: vyper on June 01, 2007, 01:04:24 pm
I think most people understand what you mean when you say "added chemicals".

MSG is the biggest sin of all those committed by the food industry, but I'm quite sure there are plenty more we could do without.
Title: Re: Monosodium Glutamate
Post by: Nuke on June 01, 2007, 02:07:15 pm
if its name is so long that it requires an akronym to fit on a spice lable then it doesnt belong in a spice rack.
Title: Re: Monosodium Glutamate
Post by: Wanderer on June 01, 2007, 05:28:15 pm
Nuke.. you really haven't got a clue of the 'true' names of the spice compounds do you?

Most of the stuff just has a commonly used 'trivial name' that is used instead of its true chemical name.. and most, if not all, chemical names are intimidating.

Sort of like the good old 'dihydrogen monoxide' thing
http://www.dhmo.org/
Title: Re: Monosodium Glutamate
Post by: Nuke on June 01, 2007, 05:59:26 pm
well yes you got sodium clhoride and fructose, but they usually go by the ancient terms salt and sugar respectively. but msg is different in that it has no other name besides its chemical name.

then you got your actual spices which are actual freeze dried and crushed plant matter. being organic those would require a couple pages of chemical names associated with it.

but chems in food dont scare me nearly as much as what im calling hippie food. organic produce for example. why, do they need to tag things we know organic with the buzzword organic. like i saw an ad for organic strawberries, i said no, how much are the inorganic ones. so they use real poo for fertilizer and dont kill the bugs, why is that different that what was farmed 200 years ago? then we got no carbs, no msg, no trans fat, hell i dont even know what im buying anymore. cage free eggs? what the ****? why are theese eggs better than eggs laid by birds in a cage. i figure life in a cage would be better than perhaps being slaughtered for meat. at least for a chicken anyway. theres a whole isle of hippie food theese days. some of it looks rather disgusting. i avoid that row like the plague.
Title: Re: Monosodium Glutamate
Post by: Herra Tohtori on June 01, 2007, 06:04:20 pm
Yeah, well, I wouldn't go and add pure 8-methyl-N-vanillyl-6-nonenamide to my food (and neither should you, be adviced) but I do like having some of it sometimes, from where I normally get it.

Mmm... now there's some good stuff. ;7
Title: Re: Monosodium Glutamate
Post by: Bobboau on June 01, 2007, 08:46:19 pm
you know there is a place were they do do that. I remember reading an article about it, if you take a drop of it raw it'll make your toung swell up and ****, which isn't supriseing.

and Wanderer, do tell us what the less evil name for MSG is that's been around since antiquity.
Title: Re: Monosodium Glutamate
Post by: Wanderer on June 02, 2007, 01:23:05 am
Carbohydrates include everything from the simple stuff like glucose or fructose to 'table sugar' (sucrose), cellulose and also complex gel forming stuffs which among other things make ketchup act like it does. MSG is also sort of similar.. people have used it for ages already (or how long Asians have used soy beans).

Milk has and will always have certain trans fats in it.. And not all of the trans fats are harmful.. Besides industry can pretty easily prevent their formation in the food processing chain if they just want to (like they have done here in Finland). Certain saturated fats can be beneficial to health. The whole fat thing is hell of a lot more complex and more difficult to understand than what 'normal consumer' is aware of.

And yeah.. there are loads of odd organic food going around there days.

MSG was discovered too 'late' to have gained (yet) a trivial name..