Chinese Restaurant Syndrome
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Your limbs go limp, you have a splitting headache and your cheeks feel as though someone is trying to tear them apart...Chinese Restaurant Syndrome is linked to MSG and I am susceptible to it.
I get attacks at wedding dinners and some Asian restaurants, but rarely at hawker centres. Dining at the latter, I become very thirsty at the most. As a result, I avoid the sharks' fin soup and vegetables in gravy at weddings.
Does anyone else have similar experiences? Perhaps you could list the places where you have been hit. I remember Parkway Thai (Centrepoint) and Ivin's in Bt Timah in particular. -
not me
Many people believe they are allergic or sensitive to MSG, and it has been blamed for causing a wide variety of physical symptoms such as migraines, nausea, digestive upsets, drowsiness, heart palpitations, asthma and a myriad of other complaints all the way up to anaphylactic shock. Symptoms that have sometimes been mistaken for heart attacks or allergic reactions are sometimes called "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome". A considerable amount of research and testing into MSG allergies has been performed over the past few decades, and the vast majority of controlled studies show no link at all between glutamate in food and any allergic reaction. Critics of the testing believe that the tests were unfairly biased towards finding no result. In particular, they consider flawed a 1993 study in which aspartame was used in the placebo, because aspartame itself has been accused of causing many of the same symptoms as MSG sensitivity in susceptible people, and also because volunteers with asthma, allergies, migraines or other symptoms of potential susceptibility were automatically excluded from the test group. Some researchers have suggested that specific individuals might be hypersensitive to MSG while others are entirely unaffected by it, but no conclusive results have emerged along those lines.
Alternatively, some (especially those in alternative medicine) consider MSG to be a potent neurotoxin which is yielding mass neurological retardation in affected populations.
The United States Food and Drug Administration lists monosodium glutamate as "generally recognized as safe", along with salt, vinegar, baking powder, and sodium tripolyphosphate. In East Asia, it is sometimes included in nutritional supplements.
Despite this, many American Chinese restaurants have taken to advertising "No MSG" menus. More traditional establishments both in Western countries and in China make no such efforts, but gourmet chefs tend to view the excessive usage of MSG as cheating and some of the more opinionated ones eschew it entirely. -
me oso never experience tat b4
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i get them bad...
any high-level MSG food causes severe headaches.. and an unreasonable thirst... -
maybe its just you dying...Originally posted by Kuali Baba:Your limbs go limp, you have a splitting headache and your cheeks feel as though someone is trying to tear them apart...Chinese Restaurant Syndrome is linked to MSG and I am susceptible to it.
I get attacks at wedding dinners and some Asian restaurants, but rarely at hawker centres. Dining at the latter, I become very thirsty at the most. As a result, I avoid the sharks' fin soup and vegetables in gravy at weddings.
Does anyone else have similar experiences? Perhaps you could list the places where you have been hit. I remember Parkway Thai (Centrepoint) and Ivin's in Bt Timah in particular. -
This website makes for interesting reading: http://www.msgtruth.org/
But debating the cause of CRS wasn't my original intention.
Instead I want to know if anyone else (apart from Bear and I) is affected, and which places in S'pore to avoid. 
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Maybe u can ask a doctor whether ur reactions will go away after some time if u repeatedly consume MSG? Your body may be able to develop tolerance, and the symptoms may go away.
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hmm don't think I've heard of it
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Drink lots and lots of coca cola. It works!
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nope, besides i dont eat restaurants much
btw, u may have a health problem u may not noe, like my mum, who has high blood presssure, and couldnt stand that little bit of salt in her diet, gives her headache... -
high salt is okay.. dunno why MSG not okay for me...
as for coca-cola, i think it's the caffeine coz coffee lessens the headache too..,
and eating high concentrations of MSG to "desensitise" oneself is not an idea
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The misconception is that MSG is always an added ingredient to make food tastier. BUT MSG is actually already present in alot of food and I dun mean added MSG. Like for Chicken, when you cook or boil it, itself contains MSG. When those restaurants or food items that says No MSG, they are actually breaking a regulation here in Singapore but in here Singapore, most probably you would see is no ADDED MSG, which means other than the natural MSG that comes from the food itself, they do not add in those "POWDER" or "FLAKES" or "AJINOMOTO" which we generically call MSG.