Re: frensh dressing and italian dressing and ranch dressing

"James Silverton" <not.jim.silverton@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

John wrote on Thu, 4 Sep 2008 20:56:53 -0400:

But most of the people I know who complain about MSG
headaches claim to not get them at Chinese restaurants that
advertise not using it (which have become more prevalent as
restaurants realized that it was a selling point).
Presumably the recipes don't otherwise differ all that much.

At least once in a while, someone goes to a Chinese restaurant
and then has a headache. Post hoc propter hoc. So the next
time he goes to a restaurant that says it doesn't use MSG and
sure enough he doesn't get a headache. Suspicion confirmed!

Yeah, that would be dumb. So why don't we pretend that that wasn't
the anecdote I was giving, since I'm not an idiot. By "people I know
who complain of MSG headaches", I meant people (highly plural) that
say that they *regularly* got headaches soon after eating Chinese food
in places that used MSG and *very rarely* got headaches soon after
eating Chinese food in places that didn't (or in the same places after
they switched to not using MSG).

Many people eat in Chinese restaurants quite a lot. Even if a
saliency bias means that by "I always get headaches", they mean that
it happens 70% of the time, and "I never get headaches" means no more
than 30% of the time, it only takes about ten trials of each to
establish significance.

That doesn't mean that the effect isn't perfectly real for
other people. As you say, what's needed is a controlled test.

In this instance, that's what is needed and, AFAIK, it has never been
done. Most of the evidence is anecdotal.

Going to the web site for Ac'cent Flavor Enhancer

http://www.bgfoods.com/accent/accent_products.asp

which is the main MSG product, they point to

http://www.msgfacts.com/

owned by The Glutamate Association. This web site seems to alternate
between pushing MSG as a wonder nutrient and being extremely defensive
about people associating it with health problems (of which headaches
would appear to be minor). Their statement on MSG sensitivity is at

http://www.msgfacts.com/safety/msgsafety02.html

It starts off by saying that there are people who report reactions to
"almost every known food ingredient". (My reading: "so why single out
MSG"?) It then goes on to assure people that "research is underway to
test people who believe they have reactions to MSG" and "most people
who believe they adversely respond to MSG do not when evaluated in
carefully controlled testing situtations". Unfortunately, they don't
actually point to any studies, so it's hard to tell how much to
believe. Finally they say

If you believe you may react to a particular food or ingredient,
you should seek a medical diagnosis from a board-certified
allergist and not rely on self-diagnosis.

In other words, "Don't stop using our product just because when you
stop your headaches seem to go away."

I'm sorry, but if that's the best a lobbying organization can do, I'm
not impressed. The controlled test is so easy to do and so
inexpensive that if it would show that all of the anecdotes were
wrong, they'd be trumpeting it and encouraging people to read it.

--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |The vast majority of humans have
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |more than the average number of
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |legs.

kirshenbaum@xxxxxxxxxx
(650)857-7572

http://www.kirshenbaum.net/


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