.. to want to share my Chinese 'fakeaway' tip with y'all

MSG gives me a headache every time

I love Chinese food but something/s in it can trigger migraine and a raging thirst. Parmesan, Stilton, Walnuts, chocolate, Smoked Mackerel or haddock trigger my migraine too. My daughters lips resemble Pete Burns/Katy price after some Chinese dishes but we can't work out the trigger. I'm going to buy some msg now as our local South Asian supermarket sells it & see how we go with it. I'm dieting and hungry, visions & smells of Chinatown food now evoked by this thread!

Amazon sell it.

Double blind studies would mostly disagree. My favourite was the one where they split a restaurant into two halves; one half got MSG, one half didn’t. But they told the conditions they were the other way around.

Guess what happened?

Also, Parmesan has the most naturally occurring glutamates of any food but there’s no ‘Italian restaurant syndrome’. Because it’s mostly racism. Now there may be people who are sensitive to any number of ingredients. I have a weird thing with some citrus. But there’s widespread belief and therefore a nocebo effect of MSG. Nocebo is just as powerful as placebo, which has been shown to be extremely powerful indeed.

That sounds like a histamine reaction. A lot of Chinese ingredients are fermented and full of it.

Can I come for tea please?

MSG is also very common in Japanese cuisine - particularly in dashi, miso, ramen, curries, rice marinades, snacks, seaweed wraps for sushi etc - yet people don’t report feeling the same effects, because it isn’t as widely known that it’s used outside of Chinese cookery and they don’t know it’s in there.

It was a Japanese chemist who synthesised MSG. Msg is not found in quality Japanese food. Ajinomoto is the original and most well known msg seasoning! Msg is found in a lot of street food in SE Asia because the common condiments and seasonings come loaded with it. I can usually identify the msg regardless of cuisine because while it doesn't make me sick, it produces a distinctive thirst. I don't accept that msg is a toxic substance but neither do I believe that people's physiological responses to it are imaginary.

Its bad for you if you are coeliac or have a gluten intolerance!

It also gives me palpitations so I avoid it.

I always cook my egg fried rice in sesame oil (and stir fry my Chinese veggies /meats in it as well).

I didn’t know you could buy MSG (where do you get it?)

I always start a stir fry with finely chopped spring onions then take them out but use the oil to brown the meat and veg, add them back in at the end.

if you buy a bunch and prep them, you can freeze them then just add a handful to the oil at the start

I didn’t know you could buy MSG though

It’s a really interesting phenomena, because so many people report experiencing weird symptoms after eating Chinese food, but MSG sensitivity does, in studies, seem to be entirely based on the knowledge or belief of it being there when eating Chinese food. People will report “Chinese restaurant syndrome” in blind studies when they’re eating something which they’re told contains it but doesn’t.

MSG is also very common in Japanese cuisine - particularly in dashi, miso, ramen, curries, rice marinades, snacks, seaweed wraps for sushi etc - yet people don’t report feeling the same effects, because it isn’t as widely known that it’s used outside of Chinese cookery and they don’t know it’s in there.

I’m sure this is true, msg tastes absolutely delicious to me which is unfair because it gives me the most debilitating migraine.
I LOVE the taste of those golden curry melty blocks, but the msg does not love me. Likewise those fish n chip crisps. Instant msg migraine.
I only made the connection after eating a couple of portions of crispy ‘seaweed’ one night when everyone else had a Chinese takeaway, and became extremely ill.
I suppose some people are just super sensitive/ intolerant to it, but these days I know within minutes if I’ve eaten it accidentally. For me it’s like the feeling of the very worst hangover.
My teenagers though obvs love TikTok and cook with it liberally with no ill effects.

You need to use the right noodles too.......lucky boat are the ones takeaways use. Farmfoods have them sometimes

you can buy it from Ocado

My daughter is sensitive to it. She phoned me up panicking about some weird symptoms she was having. I found out her Asian boyfriend had been cooking for her and used MSG. When we googled MSG sensitivity the symptoms were textbook. She'd never heard of it before. They stopped using the MSG and her symptoms went away.

MSG brings me out in a rash. It only took me 30 years to realise.

Ohhh, what’s the name of the book please?

It's pretty obviously a joke.

Thank you. I thought it was entirely obvious too. But there you go.

Or mushrooms, or grapes, or some types of cheese, or most meat.

It was very obviously a joke

I have absolutely no issue with the use of msg and absolutely love chinease food. I am diabetic and takeaway or restaurant chinease food absolutely plays havoc with my blood sugars, however, the equivalent homecooked does not. Also, a relative who is a bit of a foodie likes experimenting and gave me a soup which unexpectedly shot my sugar levels sky high. He'd used msg in it, so now chinease is a rare treat as my diabetes doesn't like it!

I can’t use it because it makes me sneeze obsessively. I can’t eat Chinese takeaway for this reason. It’s in a lot of other things too, which I have to avoid, so I always cook from scratch. I’ve just got used to it, from well before healthy eating was a thing. I don’t have any other allergies as such.

I've voted YABU for using the word "y'all"

Just FYI Fringle, I thought it was funny (and obviously a joke - you mentioned enzymes, esters and alkaline ffs!!)