this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2023
307 points (98.7% liked)
Asklemmy
43806 readers
938 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It's basically just salt. Salt can be bad for you if you eat too much of it. Don't over salt your food and you're fine.
That was the conclusion i came to, it's just another seasoning like paprika or salt. The opposition to it is what keeps me skeptical, if it's just a seasoning why are people so randomly against it? I think it's because it's used in lots of fast food.
It's rooted in racism. Chinese American food was cheap and delicious, steadily growing in popularity. Non-Chinese restaurant owners viewed us as a threat. So the racists among them used dubious studies, which have since been discredited, to try to spread this myth that Chinese food was unhealthy because it contained MSG.
Of course it was all a fabrication. People would claim to feel bloated/sick even after eating Chinese food containing no MSG, probably because it tastes so damn good and people are bad at eating in moderation. Likewise, people could eat non-Chinese food containing MSG and somehow there are minimal complaints.
My family's restaurant was put through the ringer over this in the 80's-90's and almost went out of business, but thankfully the science prevailed in the end.