At the grocery store I only see "MSG Free" labels on soy sauce, ramen, noodles, etc. but nothing for chips, burritos, burgers, etc.

I know there are people who dislike MSG, but the MSG scare was also racist scaremongering, and I wonder how many people think they dislike MSG because the media said Chinese food will kill them while gulping down a big mac and bag of doritos every day

    • berrytopylus [she/her,they/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      The idea of MSG being bad basically came from a bunch of racist white idiots who would go to a Chinese restaurant, get headaches/other bad feelings a few days later for completely unrelated causes and then try to blame it on the food they ate a few days back because they were racist idiots. They even literally called it "Chinese restaurant syndrome".

      This eventually spiraled into a full on hate for MSG and now it's hard to find in Asian American food and restaurants because so many customers are convinced it's bad they lose profits despite there being no good reason not to.

    • mittens [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      MSG is just like some sort of salt. It's sold as a "flavor enhancer". It's pretty inert stuff really. Except that it was revealed to me that MSG does very little if you put it in food that is already very savory, so you would typically use it to fix bland shit. I think people should be wary not of the side effects of MSG itself but that if MSG appears in a processed item with a bunch of other shit, then that means that a crapton of money went into making a bunch of cheaply-made fried tortilla chips with little to no nutritional value be as appealing to the human taste bud as humanly possible, and that's enough cause of concern to me, personally.