Can You Get Addicted To MSG, Like With Sugar?
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Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!
In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!
As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!
So, no question/request too big or small 😎
❝Hello, I love your newsletter 🙂 Can I have a question? While browsing through your recepies, I realised many contained MSG. As someone based in Europe, I am not used to using MSG while cooking (of course I know that processed food bought in supermarket containes MSG). There is a stigma, that MSG is not particulary healthy, but rather it should be really bad and cause negative effects like headaches. Is this true? Also, can you get addicted to MSG, just like you get addicted to sugar? Thank you :)❞
Thank you for the kind words, and the interesting questions!
Short answer: no and no 🙂
Longer answer: most of the negative reputation about MSG comes from a single piece of satire written in the US in the 1960s, which the popular press then misrepresented as a genuine concern, and the public then ran with, mostly due to racism/xenophobia/sinophobia specifically, given the US’s historically not fabulous relations with China, and the moniker of “Chinese restaurant syndrome”, notwithstanding that MSG was first isolated in Japan, not China, more than 100 years ago.
The silver lining that comes out of this is that because of the above, MSG has been one of the most-studied food additives in recent decades, with many teams of scientists in many countries trying to determine its risks and not finding any (except insofar as anything in extreme quantities can kill you, including water or oxygen).
You can read more about this and other* myths about MSG, here:
Monosodium Glutamate: Sinless Flavor-Enhancer Or Terrible Health Risk?
*such as pertaining to gluten sensitivity, which in reality MSG has no bearing on whatsoever as it does not contain gluten and is not even made of the same basic stuff; gluten being a protein made of (amongst other things) the amino acid glutamine, not a glutamate salt. Glutamate is as closely related to gluten as cyanocobalamin (vitamin B12) is to cyanide (the famous poison).
PS: if you didn’t click the above link to read that article, then 1) we really do recommend it 2) we did some LD50 calculations there and looked at available research, and found that for someone of this writer’s (very medium) size, eating 1kg of MSG at once is sufficient to cause toxicity, and injecting >250g of MSG may cause heart problems. So we don’t recommend doing that.
However, ½ tsp in a recipe that gives multiple portions is not going to get you anywhere close to the danger zone, unless you consume that entire meal by yourself hundreds of times per day. And if you do, the MSG is probably the least of your concerns.
(2 tsp of cassia cinnamon, however, is enough to cause coumarin toxicity; for this reason we recommend Ceylon (or “True” or “Sweet”) cinnamon in our recipes, as it has almost undetectable levels of coumarin)
With regard to your interesting question about addiction, first of all let’s speak briefly about sugar addiction:
Sugar addiction is, by broad scientific consensus, agreed-upon as an extant thing that does exist, and contemporary research is more looking into the “hows” and “whys” and “whats” rather than the “whether”. It is a somewhat complicated topic, because it’s halfway between what science would usually consider a chemical addiction, and what science would usually consider a behavioral addiction:
The Not-So-Sweet Science Of Sugar Addiction
The reasonable prevailing hypothesis, therefore, is that sugar simply has two moderate mechanisms of addiction, rather than one strong one.
The biochemical side of sugar addiction comes from the body’s metabolism of sugar, so this cannot be a thing for MSG, because there is nothing to metabolize in the same sense of the word (MSG being an inorganic compound with zero calories).
People can crave salt, especially when deficient in it, and MSG does contain sodium (it’s what the “S” stands for), but it contains a little under ⅓ of the sodium that table salt does (sodium chloride in whatever form, be it sea salt, rock salt, or such):
MSG vs. Salt: Sodium Comparison ← we do molecular calculations here!
Sea Salt vs MSG – Which is Healthier? ← this one for a head-to-head
However, even craving salt does not constitute an addiction; nobody is shamefully hiding their rock salt crystals under their bed and getting a fix when they feel low, and nor does withdrawal cause adverse side effects, except insofar as (once again) a person deficient in salt will crave salt.
Finally, the only other way we know of that one might wonder if MSG could be addictive, is about glutamate and glutamate receptors. The glutamate in MSG is the same glutamate (down to the atoms) as the glutamate formed if one consumes tomatoes in the presence of salt, and triggers the same glutamate receptors in the same way. We have the same number of receptors either way, and uptake is exactly the same (because again, it’s exactly the same chemical) so there is a maximum to how strong this effect can be, and that maximum is the same whatever the source of the glutamate was.
In this respect, if MSG is addictive, then so is a tomato salad with a pinch of salt: it’s not—it’s just tasty.
We haven’t cited papers in today’s article, but it’s just because we cited them already in the articles we linked, and so we avoided doubling up. Most of them are in that first link we gave 🙂
One final note
Technically anyone can develop a sensitivity to anything, so in theory someone could develop a sensitivity to MSG, just like they could for any other ingredient. Our usual legal/medical disclaimer applies.
However, it’s certainly not a common trigger, putting it well below common allergens like nuts (or less common allergens like, say, bananas), not even in the same league as common intolerances such as gluten, and less worthy of health risk warnings than, say, spinach (high in oxalates; fine for most people but best avoided if you have kidney problems).
The reason we use it in the recipes we use it in, is simply because it’s a lower-sodium alternative to salt, and while it contains a (very) tiny bit less sodium than low-sodium salt (which itself has about ⅓ the sodium of regular salt), it has more of a flavor-enhancing effect, such that one can use half as much, for a more than sixfold total sodium reduction. Which for most of us in the industrialized world, is beneficial.
Want to try some?
If today’s article has inspired you to give MSG a try, here’s an example product on Amazon 😎
Enjoy!
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See what other 10almonds subscribers are asking!
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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Q: I would be interested in learning more about collagen and especially collagen supplements/powders and of course if needed, what is the best collagen product to take. What is collagen? Why do we need to supplement the collagen in our body? Thank you PS love the information I am receiving in the news letters. Keep it up
We’re glad you’re enjoying them! Your request prompted us to do our recent Research Review Monday main feature on collagen supplementation—we hope it helped, and if you’ve any more specific (or other) question, go ahead and let us know! We love questions and requests
Q: Great article about the health risks of salt to organs other than the heart! Is pink Himalayan sea salt, the pink kind, healthier?
Thank you! And, no, sorry. Any salt that is sodium chloride has the exact same effect because it’s chemically the same substance, even if impurities (however pretty) make it look different.
If you want a lower-sodium salt, we recommend the kind that says “low sodium” or “reduced sodium” or similar. Check the ingredients, it’ll probably be sodium chloride cut with potassium chloride. Potassium chloride is not only not a source of sodium, but also, it’s a source of potassium, which (unlike sodium) most of us could stand to get a little more of.
For your convenience: here’s an example on Amazon!
Bonus: you can get a reduced sodium version of pink Himalayan salt too!
Q: Can you let us know about more studies that have been done on statins? Are they really worth taking?
That is a great question! We imagine it might have been our recent book recommendation that prompted it? It’s quite a broad question though, so we’ll do that as a main feature in the near future!
Q: Is MSG healthier than salt in terms of sodium content or is it the same or worse?
Great question, and for that matter, MSG itself is a great topic for another day. But your actual question, we can readily answer here and now:
- Firstly, by “salt” we’re assuming from context that you mean sodium chloride.
- Both salt and MSG do contain sodium. However…
- MSG contains only about a third of the sodium that salt does, gram-for-gram.
- It’s still wise to be mindful of it, though. Same with sodium in other ingredients!
- Baking soda contains about twice as much sodium, gram for gram, as MSG.
Wondering why this happens?
Salt (sodium chloride, NaCl) is equal parts sodium and chlorine, by atom count, but sodium’s atomic mass is lower than chlorine’s, so 100g of salt contains only 39.34g of sodium.
Baking soda (sodium bicarbonate, NaHCO₃) is one part sodium for one part hydrogen, one part carbon, and three parts oxygen. Taking each of their diverse atomic masses into account, we see that 100g of baking soda contains 27.4g sodium.
MSG (monosodium glutamate, C₅H₈NO₄Na) is only one part sodium for 5 parts carbon, 8 parts hydrogen, 1 part nitrogen, and 4 parts oxygen… And all those other atoms put together weigh a lot (comparatively), so 100g of MSG contains only 12.28g sodium.
Q: Thanks for the info about dairy. As a vegan, I look forward to a future comment about milk alternatives
Thanks for bringing it up! What we research and write about is heavily driven by subscriber feedback, so notes like this really help us know there’s an audience for a given topic!
We’ll do a main feature on it, to do it justice. Watch out for Research Review Monday!
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Head Over Hips
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We’ve written before about managing osteoarthritis (or ideally: avoiding it, but that’s not always an option on the table, of course), so here’s a primer/refresher before we get into the meat of today’s article:
Avoiding/Managing Osteoarthritis
When the head gets in the way
Research shows that the problem with recovery in cases of osteoarthritis of the hip is in fact often not the hip itself, but rather, the head:
❝In fact, the stronger your muscles are, the more protected your joint is, and the less pain you will experience.
Our research has shown that people with hip osteoarthritis were unable to activate their muscles as efficiently, irrespective of strength.
Basically, people with hip arthritis are unable to activate their muscles properly because the brain is actively putting on the brake to stop them from using the muscle.❞
This is a case of a short-term protective response being unhelpful in the long-term. If you injure yourself, your brain will try to inhibit you from exacerbating that injury, such as by (for example) disobliging you from putting weight on an injured joint.
This is great if you merely twisted an ankle and just need to sit back and relax while your body works its healing magic, but it’s counterproductive if it’s a chronic issue like osteoarthritis. In such (i.e. chronic) cases, avoidance of use of the joint will simply cause atrophy of the surrounding muscle and other tissues, leading to more of the very wear-and-tear that led to the osteoarthritis in the first place.
So… How to deal with that?
You probably can exercise
It’s easy to get caught between the dichotomy of “exercise and inflame your joints” vs “rest and your joints seize up”, which is not pleasant.
However, the trick lies in how you exercise, per joint type:
When Bad Joints Stop You From Exercising (5 Things To Change)
…which to be clear, isn’t a case of “avoid using the joint that’s bad”, but is rather “use it in this specific way, so that it gets stronger without doing it more damage in the process”.
Which is exactly what is needed!
Further resources
For those who like learning from short videos, here’s a trio of helpers (along with our own text-based overview for each):
- The Most Underrated Hip Mobility Exercise (Not Stretching)
- Overcome Front-Of-Hip Pain
- 10 Tips To Reduce Morning Pain & Stiffness With Arthritis
And for those who prefer just reading, here’s a book we reviewed on the topic:
11 Minutes to Pain-Free Hips – by Melinda Wright
Take care!
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Teen Daily Delivery Requested
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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Have a question or a request? You can always hit “reply” to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom!
In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!
As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!
So, no question/request too big or small
I thoroughly enjoy your daily delivery. I’d love to see one for teens too!
That’s great to hear! The average age of our subscribers is generally rather older, but it’s good to know there’s an interest in topics for younger people. We’ll bear that in mind, and see what we can do to cater to that without alienating our older readers!
That said: it’s never too soon to be learning about stuff that affects us when we’re older—there are lifestyle factors at 20 that affect Alzheimer’s risk at 60, for example (e.g. drinking—excessive drinking at 20* is correlated to higher Alzheimer’s risk at 60).
*This one may be less of an issue for our US readers, since the US doesn’t have nearly as much of a culture of drinking under 21 as some places. Compare for example with general European practices of drinking moderately from the mid-teens, or the (happily, diminishing—but historically notable) British practice of drinking heavily from the mid-teens.
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Strawberries vs Cherries – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing strawberries to cherries, we picked the cherries.
Why?
It was close, and certainly both are great!
When it comes to vitamins and minerals, each fruit has its strengths (and both are excellent sources of vitamins and minerals), but on balance, strawberry comes out a little higher—especially for vitamin C, as a cup of strawberries can provide the daily recommended amount already.
In terms of macros, strawberries have less sugar, but this isn’t really a big deal when it comes to fruit, as the fiber content and polyphenols more than offset any negative effects.
Speaking of which, the fiber content is comparable for each fruit, and both contain a lot of antioxidants.
What swings it into cherries’ favor is cherries’ slew of specific phytochemical benefits, including cherry-specific anti-inflammatory properties, sleep-improving abilities, and post-exercise recovery boosts, as well as anti-diabetic benefits above and beyond the normal “this is a fruit” level.
In short, both are very respectable fruits, but cherries have some qualities that are just special, and that we feel outweigh the “has more vitamin C” of strawberries.
We’ll do a main feature on cherries’ medicinal properties sometime soon, but in the meantime, if you’d like to try a tart cherry supplement, here’s an example product on Amazon
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Escape From The Clutches Of Shame
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We’ve written before about managing various emotions, including “negative” ones. We put that in “scare quotes” because they also all have positive aspects, that are just generally overshadowed by the fact that the emotions themselves are not pleasant. But for example…
We evolved our emotions, including the “negative” ones, for our own benefit as a species:
- Stress keeps us safe by making sure we take important situations seriously
- Anger keeps us safe by protecting us from threats
- Disgust keeps us safe by helping us to avoid things that might cause disease
- Anxiety keeps us safe by ensuring we don’t get complacent
- Guilt keeps us safe by ensuring we can function as a community
- Sadness keeps us safe by ensuring we value things that are important to us, and learn to become averse to losing them
- …and so on
You can read more about how to turn these off (or rather, at least pause them) when they’re misfiring and/or just plain not convenient, here:
While it’s generally considered good to process feelings instead of putting them aside, the fact is that sometimes we have to hold it together while we do something, such that we can later have an emotional breakdown at a convenient time and place, instead of the supermarket or bank or office or airport or while entertaining houseguests or… etc.
Today, though, we’re not putting things aside, for the most part (though we will get to that too).
We’ll be dealing with shame, which is closely linked to the guilt we mentioned in that list there.
See also: Reconsidering the Differences Between Shame and Guilt
Shame’s purpose
Shame’s purpose is to help us (as a community) avoid anti-social behavior for which we might be shamed, and thus exiled from the in-group. It helps us all function better together, which is how we thrive as a species.
Shame, therefore, is often assumed to be something we can (and possibly should) use to ensure that we (ourselves and/or others) “do the right thing”.
But there’s a catch…
Shame only works negatively
You may be thinking “well duh, it’s a negative emotion”, but this isn’t about negativity in the subjective sense, but rather, positive vs negative motivation:
- Positive motivation: motivation that encourages us to do a given thing
- Negative motivation: motivation that encourages us to specifically not do a given thing
Shame is only useful as a negative motivation, i.e., encouraging us to specifically not do a given thing.
Examples:
- You cannot (in any way that sticks, at least) shame somebody into doing more housework.
- You can, however, shame somebody out of drinking and driving.
This distinction matters a lot when it comes to how we are with our children, or with our employees (or those placed under us in a management structure), or with people who otherwise look to us as leaders.
It also matters when it comes to how we are with ourselves.
Here’s a paper about this, by the way, with assorted real-world examples:
The negative side of motivation: the role of shame
From those examples, we can see that attempts to shame someone (including oneself) into doing something positive will generally not only fail, they will actively backfire, and people (including oneself) will often perform worse than pre-shaming.
Looking inwards: healthy vs unhealthy shame
Alcoholics Anonymous and similar programs use a degree of pro-social shame to help members abstain from the the act being shamed.
Rather than the unhelpful shame of exiling a person from a group for doing a shameful thing, however, they take an approach of laying out the shame for all to see, feeling the worst of it and moving past it, which many report as being quite freeing emotionally while still [negatively] motivational to not use the substance in question in the future (and similar for activity-based addictions/compulsions, such as gambling, for example).
As such, if you are trying to avoid doing a thing, shame can be a useful motivator. So by all means, if it’s appropriate to your goals, tell your friends/family about how you are now quitting this or that (be it an addiction, or just something generally unhealthy that you’d like to strike off your regular consumption/activity list).
You will still be tempted! But the knowledge of the shame you would feel as a result will help keep you from straying into that temptation.
If you are trying to do a thing, however, (even something thought of in a negative frame, such as “lose weight”), then shame is not helpful and you will do best to set it aside.
You can shame yourself out of drinking sodas (if that’s your plan), but you can’t shame yourself into eating healthy meals. And even if your plan is just shaming yourself out of eating unhealthy food… Without a clear active positive replacement to focus on instead, all you’ll do there is give yourself an eating disorder. You’ll eat nothing when people are looking, and then either a) also eat next to nothing in private or else b) binge in secret, and feel terrible about yourself, neither of which are any good for you whatsoever.
Similarly, you can shame yourself out of bed, but you can’t shame yourself into the gym:
Let it go
There are some cases, especially those where shame has a large crossover with guilt, that it serves no purpose whatsoever, and is best processed and then put aside.
For example, if you did something that you are ashamed of many years ago, and/or feel guilty about something that you did many years ago, but this is not an ongoing thing for you (i.e., it was a one-off bad decision, or a bad habit that have now long since dropped), then feeling shame and/or guilt about that does not benefit you or anyone else.
As to how to process it and put it aside, if your thing harmed someone else, you could see if there’s a way to try to make amends (even if without confessing ill, such as by acting anonymously to benefit the person/group you harmed).
And then, forgive yourself. Regardless of whether you feel like you deserve it. Make the useful choice, that better benefits you, and by extension those around you.
If you are religious, you may find that of help here too. We’re a health science publication not a theological one, but for example: Buddhism preaches compassion including for oneself. Judaism preaches atonement. Christianity, absolution. For Islam, mercy is one of the holiest ideals of the religion, along with forgiveness. So while religion isn’t everyone’s thing, for those for whom it is, it can be an asset in this regard.
For a more worldly approach:
To Err Is Human; To Forgive, Healthy (Here’s How To Do It) ← this goes for when the forgiveness in question is for yourself, too—and we do write about that there (and how)!
Take care!
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Is “Extra Virgin” Worth It?
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!
In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!
As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!
So, no question/request too big or small
❝I was wondering, is the health difference important between extra virgin olive oil and regular?❞
Assuming that by “regular” you mean “virgin and still sold as a food product”, then there are health differences, but they’re not huge. Or at least: not nearly so big as the differences between those and other oils.
Virgin olive oil (sometimes simply sold as “olive oil”, with no claims of virginity) has been extracted by the same means as extra virgin olive oil, that is to say: purely mechanical.
The difference is that extra virgin olive oil comes from the first pressing*, so the free fatty acid content is slightly lower (later checked and validated and having to score under a 0.8% limit for “extra virgin” instead of 2% limit for a mere “virgin”).
*Fun fact: in Arabic, extra virgin is called “البكر الممتاز“, literally “the amazing first-born”, because of this feature!
It’s also slightly higher in mono-unsaturated fatty acids, which is a commensurately slight health improvement.
It’s very slightly lower in saturated fats, which is an especially slight health improvement, as the saturated fats in olive oil are amongst the healthiest saturated fats one can consume.
On which fats are which:
The truth about fats: the good, the bad, and the in-between
And our own previous discussion of saturated fats in particular:
Can Saturated Fats Be Healthy?
Probably the strongest extra health-benefit of extra virgin is that while that first pressing squeezes out oil with the lowest free fatty acid content, it squeezes out oil with the highest polyphenol content, along with other phytonutrients:
If you enjoy olive oil, then springing for extra virgin is worth it if that’s not financially onerous, both for health reasons and taste.
However, if mere “virgin” is what’s available, it’s no big deal to have that instead; it still has a very similar nutritional profile, and most of the same benefits.
Don’t settle for less than “virgin”, though.
While some virgin olive oils aren’t marked as such, if it says “refined” or “blended”, then skip it. These will have been extracted by chemical means and/or blended with completely different oils (e.g. canola, which has a very different nutritional profile), and sometimes with a dash of virgin or extra virgin, for the taste and/or so that they can claim in big writing on the label something like:
a blend of
EXTRA VIRGIN OLIVE OIL
and other oils…despite having only a tiny amount of extra virgin olive oil in it.
Different places have different regulations about what labels can claim.
The main countries that produce olives (and the EU, which contains and/or directly trades with those) have this set of rules:
International Olive Council: Designations and definitions of Olive Oils
…which must be abided by or marketers face heavy fines and sanctions.
In the US, the USDA has its own set of rules based on the above:
USDA | Olive Oil and Olive-Pomace Oil Grades and Standards
…which are voluntary (not protected by law), and marketers can pay to have their goods certified if they want.
So if you’re in the US, look for the USDA certification or it really could be:
- What the USDA calls “US virgin olive oil not fit for human consumption”, which in the IOC is called “lamp oil”*
- crude pomace-oil (oil made from the last bit of olive paste and then chemically treated)
- canola oil with a dash of olive oil
- anything yellow and oily, really
*This technically is virgin olive oil insofar as it was mechanically extracted, but with defects that prevent it from being sold as such, such as having a free fatty acid content above the cut-off, or just a bad taste/smell, or some sort of contamination.
See also: Potential Health Benefits of Olive Oil and Plant Polyphenols
(the above paper has a handy infographic if you scroll down just a little)
Where can I get some?
Your local supermarket, probably, but if you’d like to get some online, here’s an example product on Amazon for your convenience
Enjoy!
Don’t Forget…
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