Can You Get Addicted To MSG, Like With Sugar?

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The 10almonds Team

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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  • Mid-Life Weight Loss’s Hidden Cost To The Brain

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    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.

    For most people in the US, losing weight is generally considered a health-positive thing, unless one is underweight to begin with, of course—but then, “underweight to begin with” is already not “most people in the US”.

    However, there can be costs.

    When less is not always more

    We’ve written before about how a lot of mainstream belief presupposes thinness as desirable, and presumes it to be healthy, which frankly, it’s not for everyone. Indeed, for people over a certain age, having a BMI that’s slightly into the “overweight” category is a protective factor against mortality:

    When BMI Doesn’t Quite Measure Up

    It now seems that there are also such considerations when it comes to brain health. Generally speaking, have a high body fat percentage will tend to put a strain on the heart, and what’s bad for the heart is bad for the brain, because the latter relies on the former to provide it with a healthy flow of blood bearing oxygen and nutrients, and ultimately take away detritus once the glymphatic system has got it out of the brain itself (having a good glymphatic system and poor circulation is an unlikely combination, but if it somehow occurred, the result would be much like if you empty the trash from your house but there’s no municipal service to come pick it up and take it away).

    For more on that, see:

    Fat & neuroinflammation

    It is known that metabolic dysfunction (as is strongly associated with fat storage in the liver, visceral fat, and less importantly, subcutaneous fat deposits), is a driver of inflammation in general, which in turn makes the metabolic dysfunction worse.

    Poorly regulated or persistent brain inflammation has been linked to memory impairment and neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, which is why research has been done into how midlife weight loss might interact with long-term brain health.

    Most recently, a mouse study found: Weight loss aggravates obesity-induced hypothalamic inflammation in mid-aged mice

    Now, that’s a mouse study and not too exciting in and of itself, but the underlying science is quite applicable, because as it turns out:

    ❝Combined overconsumption of fat and sugar, but not the overconsumption of fat per se, leads to excessive CML production in hypothalamic neurons, which, in turn, stimulates hypothalamic inflammatory responses such as microgliosis and eventually leads to neuronal dysfunction in the control of energy metabolism.❞

    Read in full: Dietary sugars, not lipids, drive hypothalamic inflammation

    Which becomes further relevant when: Diet triggers specific responses of hypothalamic astrocytes in time and region dependent manner

    Now, that’s about diet, but what of weight loss itself? What if you don’t change your diet but you lose weight for some other reason (intentionally or otherwise; perhaps you changed your exercise routine, perhaps you got ill, etc)?

    The short answer is: stability of weight is generally better than strong fluctuation in either direction

    Now, this one’s about men rather than mice, so its applicability to women (most of our readers) is not as strong as if it were about women, but it’s worth bearing in mind in any case. It looked at 1,160 men aged 40–59 years at the start of the experiment, and was then a prospective study, i.e. looking at the next 15 years of follow-up, and found:

    ❝Results: Overall, 183 deaths were observed among the 505 men. Only weight fluctuations had a clear significant impact on all-cause mortality. Adjusted hazard rate ratio (HRR (95%-CI)) was 1.86 (1.31-2.66) after adjustment for age group, pre-existing cardiovascular disease or diabetes mellitus, smoking and socio-economic status. The risk rate due to weight loss was borderline significant (HRR = 1.81 (0.99-3.31)). Risk of death due to weight gain (HRR = 1.15 (0.70-1.88)) or stable obesity (HRR = 1.16 (0.69-1.94)), however, were not significantly increased compared to men staying non-obese for the first 15 years after cohort recruitment.

    Conclusion: Weight fluctuations are a major risk factor for all-cause mortality in middle-aged men. Moreover, stable obesity does not increase further mortality in men aged 55-74 years in long-term follow-up.❞

    Read in full: Weight change, weight cycling and mortality in the ERFORT Male Cohort Study

    So, in other words, even beyond brain health, and even for all-cause mortality, stable is best.

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    You might like this book that we reviewed a while back:

    “You Just Need to Lose Weight” And 19 Other Myths About Fat People – by Aubrey Gordon

    Take care!

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  • CLA for Weight Loss?

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    Conjugated Linoleic Acid (CLA) is a fatty acid made by grazing animals. Humans don’t make it ourselves, and it’s not an essential nutrient.

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    ❝CLA reduces bodyfat in humans❞—True or False?

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    00.00–00.05 kg per week. That’s between 0–50g per week. That’s less than two ounces. Put it this way: if you were to quickly drink an espresso before stepping on the scale, the weight of your very tiny coffee would cover your fat loss.

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    ❝The evidence from RCTs does not convincingly show that CLA intake generates any clinically relevant effects on body composition on the long term❞

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    Research reveals self-monitoring behaviors and tracking tools key to long-term weight loss success

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    Curious to give it a go? Check it out at Noom.com (you can get the app there too, if you want)

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  • Our Top 5 Spices: How Much Is Enough For Benefits?

    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.

    The 10almonds Team

    A spoonful of pepper makes the… Hang on, no, that’s not right…

    We know that spices are the spice of life, and many have great health-giving qualities. But…

    1. How much is the right amount?
    2. What’s the minimum to get health benefits?
    3. What’s the maximum to avoid toxicity?

    That last one always seems like a scary question, but please bear in mind: everything is toxic at a certain dose. Oxygen, water, you-name-it.

    On the other hand, many things have a toxicity so low that one could not physically consume it sufficiently faster than the body eliminates it, to get a toxic build-up.

    Consider, for example, the €50 banknote that was nearly withdrawn from circulation because one of the dyes used in it was found to be toxic. However, the note remained in circulation after scientists patiently explained that a person would have to eat many thousands of them to get a lethal dose.

    So, let’s address these questions in reverse order:

    What’s the maximum to avoid toxicity?

    In the case of the spices we’ll look at today, the human body generally* has high tolerance for them if eaten at levels that we find comfortable eating.

    *IMPORTANT NOTE: If you have (or may have) a medical condition that may be triggered by spices, go easier on them (or if appropriate, abstain completely) after you learn about that.

    Check with your own physician if unsure, because not only are we not doctors, we’re specifically not your doctors, and cannot offer personalized health advice.

    We’re going to be talking in averages and generalizations here. Caveat consumator.

    For most people, unless you are taking the spice in such quantities that you are folding space and seeing the future, or eating them as the main constituents of your meal rather than an embellishment, you should be fine. Please don’t enter a chilli-eating contest and sue us.

    What is the minimum to get health benefits and how much should we eat?

    The science of physiology generally involves continuous rather than discrete data, so there’s not so much a hard threshold, as a point at which the benefits become significant. The usefulness of most nutrients we consume, be they macro- or micro-, will tend to have a bell curve.

    In other words, a tiny amount won’t do much, the right amount will have a good result, and usefulness will tail off after that point. To that end, we’re going to look at the “sweet spot” of peaking on the graph.

    Also note: the clinical dose is the dose of the compound, not the amount of the food that one will need to eat to get that dose. For example, food x containing compound y will not usually contain that compound at 100% rate and nothing else. We mention this so that you’re not surprised when we say “the recommended dose is 5mg of compound, so take a teaspoon of this spice”, for example.

    Further note: we only have so much room here, so we’re going to list only the top benefits, and not delve into the science of them. You can see the related main features for more details, though!

    The “big 5” health-giving spices, with their relevant active compound:

    • Black pepper (piperine)
    • Hot pepper* (capsaicin)
    • Garlic (allicin)
    • Ginger (gingerol)
    • Turmeric (curcumin**)

    *Cayenne pepper is very high in capsaicin; chilli peppers are also great

    **not the same thing as cumin, which is a completely different plant. Cumin does have some health benefits of its own, but not in the same league as the spices above, and there’s only so much we have room to cover today.

    Black pepper

    • Benefits: antioxidant, anti-cancer, boosts bioavailability of other nutrients, aids digestion
    • Dosage: 5–20mg for benefits
    • Suggestion: ½ teaspoon of black pepper is sufficient for benefits. However, this writer’s kitchen dictum in this case is “if you can’t see the black pepper in/on the food, add more”—but that’s more about taste!
    • Related main feature: Black Pepper’s Anti-Cancer Arsenal (And More)

    Hot Pepper

    Garlic

    • Benefits: heart health, blood sugar balancing, anti-cancer
    • Dosage: 4–8µg for benefits
    • Suggestion: 1–2 cloves daily is generally good. However, cooking reduces allicin content (and so does oxidation after cutting/crushing), so you may want to adjust accordingly if doing those things.
    • Related main feature: The Many Health Benefits Of Garlic

    Ginger

    • Benefits: anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, anti-nausea
    • Dosage: 3–4g for benefits
    • Suggestion: 1 teaspoon grated raw ginger or ½ a teaspoon powdered ginger, can be used in baking or as part of the seasoning for a stir-fry
    • Related main feature: Ginger Does A Lot More Than You Think

    Turmeric

    Closing notes

    The above five spices are very healthful for most people. Personal physiology can and will vary, so if in doubt, a) check with your doctor b) start at lowest doses and establish your tolerance (or lack thereof).

    Enjoy, and stay well!

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  • Which Gadgets Help, & Which Are A Waste Of Time?

    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.

    The 10almonds Team

    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’m a 67- year old yoga teacher and runner. A lifelong runner, I started long distance running when I was 58. One of my friends loves rucking? I recently bought a rucking vest. Your thoughts? Any risks?

    As a perk of my yoga instructor job I get cryotherapy, red light therapy, infrared sauna, and Normatec boots for a nominal fee. Even though they are almost free, I don’t take advantage of them as I can’t find evidence of their value and don’t want to waste my time. Do you recommend any of them?❞

    On rucking and rucking vests

    First, for any unfamiliar, this is about walking/running/exercising in general, with a weighted backpack or weight vest.

    As for whether this is beneficial, it depends on your goals. Once upon a very long time ago when this writer was a soldier, it was vitally important to for me be able to [fall from the sky and then] run about 2km carrying a certain (hefty) amount of weight and still be able to fight at the other end of it, or else I would die. Thus, between deployments, I’d often carry a sturdy rucksack with concrete slabs in it, to keep myself accustomed to that burden (funny story: someone once tried to steal that when I had put it down while doing something—the would-be thief fell over instantly and then ran away empty-handed). And, here’s the thing: this kind of training did for me what I needed it to do for me. As a 67-year-old yoga teacher, your needs are probably very different.

    A common reason to use weight vests is in an effort against osteoporosis, but the evidence is lacking (or very weak, at best), as we wrote about a while back:

    Weight Vests Against Osteoporosis: Do They Really Build Bone?

    With regard to risks… Let’s put it this way: my old regiment, in addition to the usual soldierly problems like hearing damage and PTSD, has quite a reputation for producing veterans with spinal compression injuries. And that’s entirely because of the whole “running with a large amount of weight strapped to us” thing. So, you probably don’t want that.

    If you are going to do that though, then:

    • a weight best is a lot better than a backpack (better distribution of weight)
    • start with low weight and work up, and don’t push your limits

    We’re not the boss of you, so by all means do as you see fit, but unless there’s a special reason why being able to run with a heavy weight is important to you, then running with a light weight is already more than good enough.

    About those job perks

    Again, of course, it depends on what you hope to get out of them, but in some cases there is a lot of evidence for benefit.

    On cryotherapy: Ice Baths: To Dip Or Not To Dip? ← there are definite benefits for most people!

    On red light therapy: Red Light, Go! Casting Yourself In A Healthier Light ← there are some caveats re people who should not do this or at least should be very wary, but for most people, this does a lot of good, and is very well-evidenced to be beneficial

    On infrared saunas: we’re unaware of any special evidence in favor of these. However, traditional saunas have plenty of well-evidenced benefits: Saunas: Health Benefits (& Caveats)

    On Normatec boots: for the unfamiliar, this is a brand name for compression technology. Again, it depends on what you want to get out of it, though. If you are in good health, then what it’s generally being advertised for is to prevent/reduce exercise-induced muscle damage caused by the stress that endurance training can place on skeletal muscle. Just one problem—it doesn’t seem to work:

    ❝Athletes attempt to aid their recovery in various ways, one of which is through compression. Dynamic compression consists of intermittent pneumatic compression (IPC) devices, such as the NormaTec Recovery System and Recovery Pump

    Clinical Question: What are the effects of IPC on the reduction of Exercise-Induced Muscle Damage (EIMD) in endurance athletes following prolonged exercise? Summary of Key Findings: The current literature was searched to identify the effects of IPC, and 3 studies were selected: 2 randomized controlled trials and 1 randomized cross-over study. Two studies investigated the effect of IPC on delayed onset muscle soreness and plasma creatine kinase in ultramarathoners. The other looked at the impact of IPC on delayed onset muscle soreness in marathoners, ultramarathoners, triathletes, and cyclists.

    All studies concluded IPC was not an effective means of improving the reduction of EIMD in endurance-trained athletes.❞

    Read in full: The Effects of Intermittent Pneumatic Compression on the Reduction of Exercise-Induced Muscle Damage in Endurance Athletes: A Critically Appraised Topic

    However! If you have lipedema and/or lymphedema and want to manage that, then compression gear may help:

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    Take care!

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  • Nasal Hair; How Far To Go?

    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.

    The 10almonds Team

    t’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

    ❝As a man in his sixties I find I need to trim my nasal hair quite frequently, otherwise it sticks out in an unsightly manner. But I’m never sure how severely I should cut the hairs back, or even how best to do it. Please advise.❞

    As you might know, those hairs are really important for our health, so let’s start by mentioning that yes, trimming is the way, not plucking!

    In an ideal world, we’d not trim them further back than the entrance to our nostrils, but given the constant nature of hair-growing, that could become a Sisyphean task.

    A good compromise, if you’re not up for trimming when you get up and having visible hairs by evening, is to put the scissors away (if you haven’t already) and use a nasal hair trimmer; these are good at a) trimming nasal hairs b) abstaining from trimming them too far back.

    By all means shop around, but here’s an example product on Amazon, for your convenience!

    Enjoy!

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    Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

    Learn to Age Gracefully

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