Is MSG actually bad for you?

MSG, monosodium glutamate, is safe, and the science on this is not close. Glutamate is the same amino acid that occurs naturally and abundantly in tomatoes, parmesan, mushrooms, and human breast milk; MSG just delivers it in purified form for the savory umami taste. The FDA classifies it as generally recognized as safe, and controlled double-blind studies have repeatedly failed to reproduce the headaches and symptoms attributed to it, even in people who report sensitivity, at normal dietary amounts.

The panic has a specific and unflattering origin. In 1968 a letter to a medical journal coined Chinese Restaurant Syndrome based on one doctor's anecdotal symptoms, the idea spread faster than any evidence for it, and researchers have since noted the episode was tangled up with anti-Chinese bias, since the same glutamate in Doritos and canned soup never drew the same alarm. Merriam-Webster even revised the term's entry after pushback. If you genuinely notice a reaction, avoid it, individual quirks exist, but as a population-level health threat, MSG is a myth that outlived its debunking by decades.