What Experts Say About MSG

General Safety

"It is impracticable to list all substances that are generally recognized as safe for their intended use. However, by way of illustration, the Commissioner (of FDA) regards such common food ingredients as salt, pepper, sugar, vinegar, baking powder and monosodium glutamate as safe for their intended use."

The U.S. Code of Federal Regulations (21 Part 182.1(a), Substances that are generally recognized as safe, 1998).

"On the basis of available data (chemical, biochemical, toxicological, and other), the total dietary intake of glutamates arising from their use at the levels necessary to achieve the desired technological effect and from their acceptable background in food do not, in the opinion of the Committee, represent a hazard to health."

Joint Food and Agriculture Organization/World Health Organization Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA), Scientific Monograph, 1988.

"...the data support the safety of MSG in food. Since (1968), clinical trials have failed to conclusively demonstrate that MSG is the causative agent (of Chinese Restaurant Syndrome), and a physiologic mechanism has not been elucidated."

P.J. Taliaferro, "Monosodium Glutamate and the Chinese Restaurant Syndrome: A review of food additive safety", Journal of Environmental Health, Vol. 57. No.10, 1995.

"There is no evidence in the available information on L-glutamic acid, L-glutamic acid hydrochloride, monosodium L-glutamate, monoammonium L-glutamate, and monopotassium L-glutamate that demonstrates, or suggests reasonable grounds to suspect, a hazard to the public when they are used at levels that are now current and in the manner now practiced."

Life Sciences Research Office, Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, 1980.

Possible Sensitivity

"Work over the past 17 years has consistently failed to reveal any objective sign accompanying the transient sensations that some individuals experience after the experimental ingestion of monosodium glutamate and it is questionable whether the term 'Chinese Restaurant Syndrome' has any validity."

R.A. Kenney, Department of Physiology, George Washington University, School of Medicine and Health Services, "The Chinese Restaurant Syndrome: An Anecdote Revisited," Food and Chemical Toxicology, Vol. 24. No. 4, 1986.

"Monosodium glutamate (MSG) is not an allergen. MSG is considered to be a safe food ingredient, and the vast majority of people experience no ill effects after eating foods high in MSG."

American College of Allergy and Immunology (renamed the American College of Asthma, Allergy and Immunology), November, 1991.

"Although a number of anecdotal accounts of negative personal experiences attributed to MSG have been reported, the scientific record does not support the conclusion that MSG or L-glutamic acid as either exogenously-added flavor enhancing substances or naturally-occurring components of food proteins pose a significant public health risk."

Report of the Council on Scientific Affairs, American Medical Association, 1992.

Possible Effect on Brain

"I cannot conceive of any situation in which people could possibly consume glutamate in sufficient concentrations to produce brain damage (if, in fact, primates, including man, are susceptible to such damage)."

R.J. Wurtman, Department of Nutrition and Food Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, published in Glutamic Acid; Advances in Biochemistry and Physiology, edited by L.J. Filer, Jr., et al. Raven Press, New York, 1979.

"No evidence exists to support the ability of orally ingested glutamate to produce neurotoxic or lesioning effects in humans."

Life Sciences Research Office, Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, 1995.