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Tampering with Taste Buds for Better Coffee?
An anonymous reader writes "A Globe and Mail article states that scientists are busy working on making everything taste great: " In a small office just west of the New Jersey Turnpike, researchers are taking the human taste bud into a brave new world.
Here, it is not cream or milk that the employees of Linguagen Corp. add to their morning java, but a dash of a biological compound that fools their brain into thinking that black, bitter coffee is as smooth as a milky double latte"
There goes my experience with making good coffee... Now instead of being careful and buying good coffee, grinding it themselves, brewing it properly, everyone will buy folgers and percolate it and sprinkle some pixie dust stuff into it and it will taste good. Assholes...
/usr/games/fortune
Hopefully they'll be able to use these compounds in medicines and other neccesary, but distasteful products...
Or they'll release it in paste form and it'll become a sex toy. Ah, America!
Every fast food restuarant ( cough McDonalds) will add this to their coffee and secret sauce to their big macs. God knows whats in their patties.
Isn't this true they add fat and chemicals to their fries so they taste better ?
http://saveie6.com/
We don't need some mad scientist in jersey to cook up funky chemicals that make bitter into sweet, mother nature already did it a long time ago with the miracle berry.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
is made from people!
We'll call it soylet green!
| - | - |
According to the article, the alterations in perception are very temporary. So while you're drinking that black, bitter coffee it probably tastes great, but in about five minutes you'll get that aftertaste and want to brush your teeth.
then I could...
;)
Sorry, thats just wrong.
- gtaluvit (prnc. GOT-tuh-LUV-it)
...a biological compound that fools their brain into thinking that black, bitter coffee is as smooth as a milky double latte
Can I really be the only human left on earth who belives coffee should be black and bitter? If you want a drink that tastes like warm milk, I'd suggest a nice cup of warm milk, or perhaps some hot chocolate. Coffee is meant to be alarmingly black and strong.
Sailing over the event horizon
Some of us already LIKE black coffee...don't go messing it up for us you insensitive clod! I like my coffee like I like my women...bitter.
How is this different from Starbucks?
The ______ Agenda
Often listed on labels as "natural flavors", MSG is found in seaweeds, and it makes things taste much better. Unfortunately, too much MSG can backfire - it makes things taste great, but for many hours afterward, I get extreme heartburn :(
As many prepared foods use "natural flavors", it makes shopping more than a bit of a chore, in that I need to read *all* that tiny print of "ingredients", on everything I buy. Grrrr. And all this stems from a childhood spent eating cheap food flavored with Accent, which is mostly MSG.
Lemon curry?
Taste is very important in determining what is safe to consume. When milk turns sour, it has gone bad and generally is no longer safe to drink. The first bad-tasting drop results in the milk being spit out, and disaster prevented.
Imagine if that milk has been redesigned to taste fresh long after it has already gone bad...
A large part of the experience of having a cup of really good coffee, is the smell, the deducing aroma that fills you with an eager anticipation of the magnificent black gold that is about to wash down your throat (oh my god, someone gimme a coffee right NOW! :). Even coffee haters like the smell of good coffee. Serving icky bitter coffee that fools the brain into thinking it tastes good, won't change the sentiment of "something's wrong here".
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
From the article:
Mr. Jacobson said he recognized the obvious need to alter the flavour of drugs, "particularly life-saving drugs, where taste is an impediment to taking them." But he also raised concerns that these new compounds could allow food manufacturers to use "cheaper, crappy ingredients."
"I once asked a pasta sauce maker how come you sometimes see corn syrup on the list of ingredients in a tomato sauce and he told me it was to mask the taste of cheaper tomatoes," said Mr. Jacobson. "We could see more things like that."
I just went for a checkup with my doctor. One of the things we discussed was nutrition. He spoke of the nutritional value of foods being degraded, what with over farming, mass production of food, corporate farming, and the like. I know this is vulgar, but this is another way to make shit taste like ambrosia. Ever think there is a reason why things taste bad?
I probably sound alarmist or anti-technology. I'm not. At the same time, I'm not one to blindly say technology or so called progress is a good thing. This seems to me to be another way to increase profit and reduce costs. Good for business, not so good for consumers. But we're sheep. What do consumers know?
I guess I'm bitter. Maybe I can use some.
"Give a woman two glasses of wine and some pad thai, and they'll agree to just about anything." the Sports Guy
Okay, so we're talking about AMP which although as the article says is a 'natural' chemical, is also one of the very basic molecules used by every cell in our bodies as part of the mechanism for determining their metabolic needs and monitoring what's going on within them. This gives me a case of the screaming heebie jeebies.
I somehow can't help thinking of Monosodium Glutamate here... Flavour enhancers don't have what you might call a *glowing* record of healthiness...
What this compound is doing is bitter-blocking, and I don't know about you, but there are bitter flavours I actually find rather enjoyable - strong black coffee being one of these... But an awful lot of foods contain bitterness to a greater or lesser degree, and it makes up one of the five tastes we're actually able to percieve - the effect of using this stuff widely would have to be tantamount to knocking out the blue channel in our eyes! It's going to do all kinds of really bizzare things to how things taste, not all of them good...
Besides which, the article mentions that the side effect is to induce a flavour of raw fish... I dunno, I'll take my coffee with a kick please, not with a side order of sushi...
Shooting heroin turns any unpleasant experience into a pleasant one not just tasting crappy coffee into tasting smooth coffee.
And much of what has been passed off in the past as a substitute for 'meat' has been pretty unpalatable. Even food that was not passed off that way sometimes isn't very great, tofu for instance.
But one good use for this taste altering method might be to make a veggie burger actually taste decent. Add that to getting the texture right, and some of these products might actually take off.
Tofu? Well, maybe never...It doesn't even look good!
- Gasoline that makes your dashboard always report that you have a full tank - even if you're about to run out of gas
- A helmet that convinces defendants to confess - even if they're innocent
- A panacea that stops children from ever crying - even if they've just been hit by a car
- An instrument that tells pilots they're flying at a safe altitude - even if they're about to hit the ground
Really, what's the point in celebrating creating something whose only purpose is to make our well-evolved biological sensors and filters fail.Quiquid latine dictum sit altum viditur
You did read your EULA, didn't you?
42. Easy. What is 32 + 8 + 2?
Is it just me or has this not been around long enough for there to be any meaningful safety studies? I for one don't want to eat something until its been tested.
CitrusTV (http://www.citrustv.net): the Nation's Oldest & Largest Entirely Student-Run Television Station
I personally don't want anyone messing with my coffee's flavour. I like it black.
If others don't like the taste, why are they drinking it?? It can't be for the caffine content, since then they could drink tea or Coke, or hell, even take caffine pills.
People don't just crave tastes, whether they know it or not they want fats and carbohydrates and the various chemicals in their foods.
I don't believe that all the artificial sweetners and diet drinks have solved people wanting sugar. They may well help someone who is consciously applying will power, but it isn't just a matter of "I had something sweet so I'm satisfied".
When someone wants a bacon sandwich they'll doubtless associate that with the taste of the sandwich because that's one of the most obvious conscious effects of eating the sandwich. But if you produce a fat free substitute that taste identical I thikn they'll still feel empty, or missing something, and they'll still remedy that by going and getting some food that IS fatty, whether they rationalise that by taste or anything else.
What really gets me is that this is America's response to having pretty much the worst coffee in the world. My wife doesn't care for coffee, but while we were living in Germany, she started drinking it because of how smooth it is compared to American coffee. I thought I was going to die when we moved back and had to start drinking this swill American's call coffee again. It's so bad that I've asked some friends of mine in Germany to ship me some coffee. My only fear is that the problem is as much in how we brew our coffee as it is in how the beans are prepared. I'll find out any day now. Does anybody in Germany know the appropriate method for brewing coffee? Do I need to switch back to a percolator instead of automatic drip?
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
I've always wondered if it would be possible to make some sort of mint or pill, etc, that would highten senses in the taste buds to make kissing better... ...not that I have a girlfreind or anything.
...then it's been over-extracted. Learn how to brew coffee.
"I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years." -- Warren Zevon
The bitterness of coffee is what makes it attractive: many cultures have similarly bitter things to drink and chew, and the pleasure comes from the long-lasting sweet taste you get a few minutes afterwards.
If you're ever chewed kola nuts, you will know what I mean. Intensely bitter when you bite off a piece, but over minutes, you get a sweet reaction that is much smoother than a "real" sweet substance.
It seems to be part of the addictive process: think of bitter chocolate and those tiny espressos.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
I recall a scene from a (bad) movie called Brazil where diners in a restaraunt were served blocks of blue stuff with a picture of what it was suppose to be.
If the above could be made a reality, we could eat the exact same thing, day after day, and pick what we wated to taste, while eating foods that were perfectly designed for proper digestion, glucose controll (for diabetics) or any number of things. Imagine no more worry about gaining weight because of what you ate? 3 meals a day of Dutch Cholcolate Cake? No problem!
The only concern I have about this, is the following:
Frankly, I'd prefer to have children's medication NOT taste good enough for them to desire it. It's tempting enough for a child got get into sweets without throwing medications into the mix.
When VCR's are outlawed, only outlaws will have VCR's.
This brings to mind the Terry Pratchett book Good Omens, where Famine, one of the four riders of the Apocalypse (although there used to be five, I thought Kaos was awesome ;) creates fast food that tastes great, but is essentially dust. This could be very dangerous. People could feel they are eating something really good, when in fact, they are starving their bodies. Some people may think this a good thing, but what would happen if people didn't stop? IMO people should learn to just control themselves, and give up those temptations (ice cream, crap food etc.) and just learn. What kind of world will it be, where we don't know how to control our every impulse? I think it would be very sad. We would become like animals. I agree with many other posters. We should be concentrating on things that really matter, like cures for AIDS and ways to curb global pollution.
Folger's coffee. MMMMM! Tastes like chicken!
How ya like dat?
a reduced fat oil
Is that anything like "low moisture water"?
Will I retire or break 10K?
The best thing that could happen would be to mask tingling in the tongue. Tongues can tell bitterness, sweetness, etc. apart, and the texture of the food, but that's all.
(OT, but BTW: I remember reading some time back that those popular "taste" regions on a tongue aren't really accurate since your whole tongue can taste the difference between bitterness, sweetness, etc.)
SMELL is the key to taste.
slash. posts suggest that spoiled milk could 'taste' delicious, but your tongue is useless at taste unless it is genetically super-calibrated. The way you can 'TASTE' something is with the SMELL before and while the food is in your mouth. If you close your nose and drink spoiled milk with the texture and flow of normal milk, you won't know you did until you get stomach poisoning.
Yes, although bitterness is associated with toxicity (stuff-you-shouldn'-put-in-your-mouth) and it does apply to most everything,, smell is what really tells you if something is bad or not. You won't be able to tell the taste mandarine and an orange, and maybe even an apple and orange (except for texture obviously) if your nose and eyes are closed.
You might have learned this on Bill Nye the Science Guy or by reading a book, or the internet. Or some of us participated in all three.
Follow this lab:
Here's a link to a 4th grade lab assignment on this.
Cover your eyes and click this link!
Won't this be a tad bit dangerous? As the article points out, bitterness helps us avoid noxious foods. Once this additive gets put everywhere, won't there be people getting sick because they happily ingested a whole gallon of spoiled milk or gulped down moldy pizza?
I can already see a small bottle of this being sold in a package along with a 12-pack of viagra.
You should read the amazing "Fast Food Nation" by Eric Schlosser. One of the chapters talks about the "taste" industry ('flavorists') and all these companies setup along the NJ turnpike. They make a liquid chemical agent that smells exactly like a flame-broiled burger. The reason: the food is so shitty that the taste disappears when it is processed. It has to be added 'back'...
Same idea coming to a Starbucks near you? Great world we live in!
there's no place like ~
I'd agree with that. If you have the advantage of living in a city, find out where the Italians drink (and buy) their coffee. They won't settle for the domestic swill.
Interesting note: the Scandinavians drink the most coffee per capita, with Finland well in the lead.
"If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
a lot of european coffee is cafe crema, not percolated or automatic drip like here in the US.
the difference is that the hot water is forced through the grounds under high pressure which helps
to get the crema foam and tasty organic compounds without getting the last part of the bitter dregs.
the resulting coffee is strong but smooth and not bitter, dark with a lighter colored foam on top even
before you add cream or milk
www.capresso.com is one web site that sells machines that make cafe crema.
The automatic machines would be great in a office if people can clean up after themselves
After instantaneous adoption from fast-food restaurants and chain coffee shops, the substance will later be found to be allergenic/carcinogenic. Moral corporations will discontinue use, and the rest will face class-action lawsuits to remove the substance from their food.
You read it here first.
Anyway, there was one show where they visited a coffee factory. Man, these guys take coffee seriously. They had people checking the beans to make sure they are the right color, size, etc. They also had this one room where a group of people do nothing but taste batches of coffee all day long. Hopefully, they medical fully covers medication for insomnia.
Also, if you ask for a latte over there, you'll get a glass of milk. And if I remember corretly, if you want what we refer to as a latte, you have to ask for a cafe americano. Crazy Italians.
This was a fictional cartoon, of course. In real life, the three laws of toast-making appliances prevent an artificial intelligence from causing harm to toast (or through inaction, etc.).
Personally I do not believe children should watch scenes like the one you describe - there should be some sort of ratings system governing these matters.
Could I interest anyone in some toast?
Taste buds keep us from eating poison! Why would you want to change your taste so that poison would taste good? Sounds like a bad idea to me. Rancid meat tastes bad to us because it is bad for us, but at least now we can make it taste great!
... EEEEEEeeeeekkkkk!!!! Don't be messing with my taste buds!!!! It's taken millions of years of evolution to make butter and ice cream and salt and pig meat and ..... to be perceived as Tasty. Don't take that away from us!
.nosig
What most people aren't aware is that by the time you buy your beans, they're already stale. Whether you get them from the local supermarket or from a Starbucks, they've been prior-roasted, shipped, and in most cases, have sat around for far too long. Roasted beans last about a week before they start losing their flavour.
If you've never tried freshly roasted coffee, make it a point of going to a specialty roaster in your city and getting the freshest coffee they have - if you can get some that was roasted the previous day, pay whatever they ask for it.
Use a French press, there's really nothing better for black coffee (except for an espresso machine) and make sure not to let it sit for two long - 4 minutes with boiling water should do the trick.
You'll never go back. (and if you do some research on roasting it yourself [which is incredibly simple], you'll be amazed at how cheap green beans are)
Hate to call this Orwellian, but it seems so to me.
Winston and Julia had a hard time finding genuine food (except from the proles). I remember them drinking "Victory Coffee". The same applied to cigarettes and chocolate.
This isn't so absurd. While it's not so hard to find a GOOD cup of coffee (yet), most people don't care. They'll drink Tim Hortons (Canadian. Think Dunkin' Donuts) coffee and complain that "Gourmet Coffee" is overpriced. I had the hardest time convincing my mother that bigass cans of Maxwell House don't TASTE the same as fresh-ground Kenya AA (or AAA or Green Mountain blends, etc) -- UNTIL she tried it; now she grinds her own, and doesn't store it in the freezer.
The same is true of chocolate. Think about GOOD chocolate (high-quality). Now, think about any drug-store Easter chocolate. The latter is more like brown WAX with very little taste (and when it "melts" it turns into some sort of foamy paste).
And speaking of foam, the same comparison can be made to generic vs. "natural" ice cream. I regularly pay 2-3 times the price of "cheap" ice cream, for the good stuff. You know, the kind actually MADE from cream, and not milk plus a dozen gums to make it gellied enough to hold shape, then whipped full of air.
GOOD beer (premium, expensive, micro-brewed, FRESH) vs. Budweiser, or Coors, or Molson, or Labatt is another example.
Sorry, now I'm ranting. My point was: LEAVE MY COFFEE ALONE. I like the stuff the way it is. And if you MUST meddle with my favourite bean beverage, I can only hope that it doesn't further affect the price of high-quality coffee.
I sound elitist.. and, I guess, in this case, I am.
S
... particularly for those with problems losing weight. If you haven't noticed, foods with sugars (carbohydrates) and fats taste better than those that don't, pretty much as a result of eons of natural selection*. Tricking the taste buds into thinking that indigestible/low-calorie food is more appetizing than it is would be a good thing for this application imho.
Imagine if you could trick your tongue/tastebuds into thinking celery tastes like chocolate.. Particularly helpful if you could introduce textured cellulose food products with vitamin enrichment that could be used in snack foods.
Now if someone can only make treadmill grinding (and repetitive exercise in general) LESS BORING..
*whenever a political vegetarian bugs me (at a party for example), my reply: "If we weren't supposed to eat animals, they wouldn't be so delicious!".. It works as both a smartass remark and a statement on the evolution of human nutrition biology...
so now there will be no reason for good tasting food. rather we'll be stuck with shitty pre-packaged food like KD, McDonalds, etc and it will taste good. This food will be/is full of so much chemicals cancer will be hitting people before puberty. The french (France not french Canadians) eat 30% more fat and have 40% less heart disease (G&M article) because they don't eat crappy food. Europe has a much higher food quality than NA does.
Guy: Mrmff. Mrffmfsf. (lifts head) I know, but I thought I'd give it a try because I love you and stuff.
Girl: You're the best, I'm going to treat you to a steak dinner tonight. (moans, titls head back, closes eyes)
Guy: (Sprinkles more powder).
They fool their customer into thinking that their milky double latte is coffee.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
Actually, if you do a little research on MSG on the net, you'll find a fairly hot debate going on as to the side-effects/dangers of MSG.
. ht m?site=http://www.geocities.com/HotSprings/2455/ba k%2Dmsg.html
The official FDA stance on it is pretty well summed up here:
http://chinesefood.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite
Basically, they seem to say it's safe for the general public, but do acknowledge that there seem to be some individuals who are sensitive to it, and get such side-effects as headaches from it.
Personally, it doesn't really concern me. If you discover you're senstive to MSG and it upsets your stomach, gives you a headache, or whatnot - then obviously avoid it. I've never had any problem eating foods that contained it though - and to me, it's no worse than the hundreds of other modifications made to commercial foods. (Coloring and dyes to enhance the look of a food, for example.)
I frickin' LIKE black, plain, bitter-tasting coffee! Of course, I also do it for the caffeine, but I like the way coffee tastes. For me in the morning, the first taste of coffee is like the first taste of an ice-cold beer after working in the yard all day!
Always been pretty simple to me, if ya don't like the way shit tastes, don't drink it. I always get a laugh at the losers at Barnes and Noble drinking they're super-duper triple expresso with everything but the kitchen sink in it.
IMHO, plain old black coffee, strong as heck, frickin' rulez!
Spread the RC luvin'
The big conglomorates have so abused food, that sometimes when I serve food to people, they look puzzled (like home made mayo).
I agree 100% about coffee and chocolate. Three products where I spend good money (and probably totally spend the same, as a bar of Green and Blacks organic choc lasts me a long time, as I only need a little to get a good rush).
I mostly buy premium ice cream, but have made my own. There's a great book called Ices by Caroline Liddell and Robin Weir (I think the same book is called Frozen Desserts: The Definitive Guide to Making Ice Creams, Ices, Sorbets, Gelati, and Other Frozen Delights in the US). You need very few ingredients, and it's wonderful. Machines cost about £40 in the UK, don't know US prices.
As for beer, in the UK it's funny. Beer like Budweiser (the US stuff, not to be confused with an excellent Czech beer) is marketed and sold as a premium beer. You can buy locally produced ale for a much lower price, which tastes wonderful.
BTW I'm trying to develop a portal to do with excellent food on the web, a bit like slashdot but for food and drink. It will mostly be UK based, when I get some time.
No. Do NOT boil coffee. The ideal temperature for brewing coffee is just short of boiling, like 98C or so. If you could keep it at exactly that temperature, that would be best. But, if you do not posess the means to keep water at exactly 98C, simply boil the water, let it sit for like 15-30 seconds, and mix in the grounds.
If you are going to add the grounds directly to the water, it is best to grind them fairly coarse, so you will be able to filter them well, and control the brewing better. The finer the grind, the more sensitive it is to the time it is brewed for. Espresso can be finely ground because it is only being brewed for a few seconds. If you underbrew the coffee, by grinding TOO coarse, water too cold, or not brewing long enough, the coffee will be weak and watery. If you overbrew the coffee, by grinding too fine, water too hot, or brewing too long, it will be bitter. You have to experiment to find the ideal time. Also, if the water is too hot, it will cook the coffee, and ruin the flavour.
BTW, auto drip isn't that bad if you know what you are doing. Percolation is BY FAR the worst method. Auto drip is qute consistent, and easy. If you do it right you can get great coffee. Its not the best method, but it is OK. Auto drip makers with a hot plate should be avoided. If the coffee remains on the hot plate, it will get bitter very quickly. The best ones have a thermal carafe, which keeps the coffee hot by insulation. They work quite well.
BY FAR the best thing you can do for coffee is to buy good beans, and grind them yourself. Get a burr grinder, which has two thingies that look like the balls from those IBM ball typewriter thingies, rather than one that has the little spinning blade. It will grind the coffee much more evenly, and not heat it up as much.
/usr/games/fortune
...like their coffee the way they like their humans: ground up and vacuum-sealed into a little brick-shaped bag.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
MSG is a neurotoxin. It excites brain cells to death. I, at least, am incredibly sensitive to it.
:-(
It wasn't always that way. For years and years I was able to eat it without problems. However, I started drinking a lot of diet pepsi, and after a couple of years of that, got very, very sick. Couldn't pin down what the problem was. My vision was damaged, my memory was shot, my ability to focus/concentrate was gone. I was having coordination problems. When they examined at me at one neurologist, I couldn't even walk heel and toe; I lost my balance. Every time. I was really a mess. At the time they thought I might have multiple sclerosis. They ruled that out with an MRI, but I still had many of the same symptoms. (it turns out aspartame poisoning is frequently mistaken for MS).
Things started improving after I stopped aspartame (which is a much stronger neurotoxin than is MSG), but it wasn't until I realized that MSG was also (now) causing me trouble that I started to get back to anything approaching normal. I don't think I'll ever be what I was, but I'd call myself 90% recovered at this point.
I don't know why I reacted so badly to aspartame/MSG and many people don't. However, they are both documented neurotoxins, and I tend to think that any group of people that relies primarily on their brains to function should avoid them.
MSG makes food taste good because it excites nerve cells; they are fooled into thinking that the food you are eating has more 'goodness' in it than it actually does. That tingly feeling you sometimes get after you've had a lot of MSG? (lips and fingertips are common). That's nerve cells being overstimulated, often to death.
This stuff sneaks up on you; I was having minor symptoms I didn't think were important for at least a year before I got really sick. You don't get really visible symptoms until you have lost about 75% of the brain cells in a given functional area; the brain is highly resilient to damage. But it doesn't last forever.
There used to be a really wonderful site with tons of information about MSG at www.123recipes.com. They had a great section on what it can do to you and the (MANY!) ways that manufacturers try to hide the fact that they have added it to food. (it's in probably 90% of the foods on the shelf-- you're probably getting a whopping great dose of MSG every day without even knowing it.) But 123recipes.com seems to have gone away.
I would suggest reading up on MSG -- you should realize just how many things it's in. (basically almost everything on the shelf). Due to a curiosity of Federal regulation, only 100% pure MSG needs to be labeled as "monosodium glutamate". So manufacturers just put in 90% pure MSG instead and call it something else.
They hide it in all sorts of ways.... the most common label is "natural flavors". Another very common one is any type of "hydrolyzed" protein. Yeast extract and autolyzed yeast extract are two more. (I avoid anything with a -lyzed suffix now). "Caseinate" is another trigger word; I usually see it as "milk caseinate" but I've seen it used as a modifier on other source foods as well. "Modified starch" is the most recent trick I'm aware of.
For more on aspartame, www.aspartametruth.com has many links to studies, etc. Before getting sick, I probably wouldn't have paid that much attention to it, but I can tell you from personal experience that many of the described symptoms are absolutely real and valid -- I have had them myself. I presume, since I had so many of the listed problems, that most of the links are truthful. Read carefully, but I can assure you that there is definitely a real core here. It is not just hysterical armwaving.
One thing I sometimes think about... over the lsat 20 years, there has been an enormous rise in the use of neurotoxins in food. At the same time, there seems to be an overwhelming rise in stupidity. I don't know if these two are causally linked, but I do wonder.
However, most consumers (maybe due to the stupifying effects that you've described) refer to any form of free glutamate as "MSG", which is incorrect.
For that reason, if you see a label on food that says "No MSG", or "No Added MSG", the FDA requires that it be free of all "free glutamate" additives, including MSG and hydrolized protiens.
Aspartame appears to have a far larger impact on the general populace and much of it's documented. As for MSG problems, a lot of it is anecdotal and clinical studies have not shown that it has any detrimental effect on brain or nervous funtion.
Being that the same salt occurs naturally in seaweed and is used frequently in both Chinese and Japanese cooking, I would expect that the Japanese and Chinese should be raving idiots after thousands of years of use if it were actually toxic.
While I don't doubt there are people including yourself who are sensitive to MSG and other additives (eg. aspartame), most people don't consume enough to even come close to toxic levels. You're just as likely to die from consuming honey, the perfect anaerobic environment for botulism.
I typically avoid any artificial sweetener, simply because I don't think they taste very good. For the occasional Diet Pepsi I have (8-20 ounces/week), I haven't noticed any health problems that weren't present when I've gone for months without any intake of artificial sweeteners.
Like all else, moderation is the key. The person that puts 5 packets of sacharine in his iced tea is the same as a smoker. We all haves choices and we make them daily. The consequences are ours to pay.
* As is generally the case, my opinions do not reflect those of my employer.
Just FYI: MSG was discovered in Japan, and the Japanese use trace amounts of it to enhance the taste of certain dishes. In China, you won't find MSG at all; it's only used in Chinese restaurants outside of China in an attempt to maximize profits while minimizing cost of ingredients.
I've read that in North America, we consume insane quantities of food additives that are not consumed or are consumed in very conservative levels elsewhere.
Wow... interesting to see that there are a few others here on slashdot who know the annoyances of being highly sensitive to MSG and L-glutamic acid in general.
I've been avoiding monosodium glutamte, hydrolyzed proteins, autolyzed yeast, modified starches, and a list of about 20 or more things for a couple of years now and I've never felt better. Most of my symptoms prior to eliminating MSG from my diet were as yours, albeit perhaps not as severe. I suffered from panic attacks, migraines, memory loss, dizziness, heart palpitations, disorientation, and general feelings of very unpleasant weirdness. All of those have long since gone away. To top matters off, when I quit eating food additives (I figured if I was cutting out MSG, I'd cut them all out and eat naturally), I shed 67 lbs in less than six months without cutting my diet and without doing a lick of exercise. I certainly wasn't complaining about that, as I'd always fought to keep my weight in check my entire life!
I don't know if you're aware of this, but I find that I'm able to eat trace amounts of MSG if I take Vitamin B6 prior to the meal that might be suspect. Apparently, from what I've read, B6 speeds up the metabolization of MSG. I find this a helpful technique for when I want to eat out at a restaurant that I'm fairly sure is safe (I've had particularly good luck with Thai restaurants, and they generally seem to be MSG-informed) but that may still use certain questionable ingredients that contain things like "natural flavours". YMMV, but I thought that I'd pass along the tip all the same!
This article had my rapt attention until I got up to this:
"So far, the company has found the only drawback of adding too much AMP to their coffees, either in the mug or the grinds, is that it generates the taste of raw fish in your mouth, said scientist Stephen Gravina, Linguagen's associate director."
Ok, so the coffee's not bitter, but instead it tastes like raw fish. This is an improvement?
And yes, I realize it says that's only if you don't use the AMP properly. But coffee's only bitter if you don't make it properly too. If I had to choose between the two tastes of a bad brew - bitterness or the taste of raw fish - I don't even need to think about which one is worse.
Next thing you know the music industry will want to make an enchantment that fools your brain into thinking that the TeenbandCorporated is actually good.
They have a term for it already: Lobotomy.
Screw that. You go to the machine, you put in 50 cents, you get a cup of something dark that you can pretend is coffee and you drop a slug of bourbon in it. Then you go to the meeting and complain that "We have never done it that way before and when we did, it failed".
What's the point of grinding beans and measuring water temperature if you are going to pour cheap bourbon it?
If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem