Monosodium Glutamate, Pro Or Con?

[mnm]

I'd like to use this as a salt replacement for blood pressure reasons, but I've read objections mainly related to carcinogens. What does the TN collective wisdom say?

 

Thank you in advance.

[Mike Steele]

Try Morton Lite salt, no BP problems and tastes the same, and allows you to use less so eventually you dont crave as much.

[Ivanhoe]

Yeah, any of the potassium chloride salts available at the grocery store will do. Been using them for decades. Key thing is that you cannot use KCl to replace NaCl in 1:1 ratio. It'll taste awful. By volume, use maybe one third or one fourth. You can also supplement with sea salt, its supposed to "taste saltier" per unit volume than pure NaCl.

 

But keep in mind that you simply aren't going to reduce your sodium intake unless you pretty much cut out all restaurant, frozen, and canned foods. If you eat one or more meals a day from those 3 sources, what you put in your salt shaker is completely irrelevant. There is nothing you can eat at restaurants that isn't loaded with salt. Meats, condiments and sauces, even salad dressing is loaded with salt. One meal and you've blown way past your daily target for sodium.

 

Also keep in mind that if you're of primarily Caucasian ancestry, it will probably take rather huge reductions in sodium intake to achieve minor reductions in BP. Folks with bad kidneys and folks with primarily African ancestry are very sensitive to sodium intake, the rest of us not so much. Somewhere I read a factoid that asserted that most people only experience something like a 5mm reduction in diastolic pressure after a 50% reduction of sodium. That's great if you're consuming 4000 mg a day, you've got the potential for two halvings or say 10mm Hg reduction in diastolic. But if you're at 2000, sodium reduction apparently isn't going to help your BP much.

 

And there's some brewing controversy on the ideal sodium intake. The medical profession has been pushing the recommended intake level ever downward, but there's a risk that they are going to push it too low (as they apparently did with cholesterol). Currently, the minimum may be around 750 mg/day, optimum 1000, reasonable daily target 1500. But there's a lot more dogma than science out there.

 

Some light reading;

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/03/opinion/sunday/we-only-think-we-know-the-truth-about-salt.html?pagewanted=all

 

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=its-time-to-end-the-war-on-salt

[Simon Tan]

MSG is for umami. Salt is for salty.

[John(txic)]

After dining at several "Cantonese" restaurants where MSG is piled on with a shovel, I used to wake at 03.00hrs with a mouth like the bottom of a budgie's cage and a raging thirst. Uck!

[BP]

There's a billion+ Chinese, so it can't be that bad for you. . .

[Guest Jason L]

Yeah, any of the potassium chloride salts available at the grocery store will do. Been using them for decades. Key thing is that you cannot use KCl to replace NaCl in 1:1 ratio. It'll taste awful. By volume, use maybe one third or one fourth. You can also supplement with sea salt, its supposed to "taste saltier" per unit volume than pure NaCl.

 

But keep in mind that you simply aren't going to reduce your sodium intake unless you pretty much cut out all restaurant, frozen, and canned foods. If you eat one or more meals a day from those 3 sources, what you put in your salt shaker is completely irrelevant. There is nothing you can eat at restaurants that isn't loaded with salt. Meats, condiments and sauces, even salad dressing is loaded with salt. One meal and you've blown way past your daily target for sodium.

 

Also keep in mind that if you're of primarily Caucasian ancestry, it will probably take rather huge reductions in sodium intake to achieve minor reductions in BP. Folks with bad kidneys and folks with primarily African ancestry are very sensitive to sodium intake, the rest of us not so much. Somewhere I read a factoid that asserted that most people only experience something like a 5mm reduction in diastolic pressure after a 50% reduction of sodium. That's great if you're consuming 4000 mg a day, you've got the potential for two halvings or say 10mm Hg reduction in diastolic. But if you're at 2000, sodium reduction apparently isn't going to help your BP much.

 

And there's some brewing controversy on the ideal sodium intake. The medical profession has been pushing the recommended intake level ever downward, but there's a risk that they are going to push it too low (as they apparently did with cholesterol). Currently, the minimum may be around 750 mg/day, optimum 1000, reasonable daily target 1500. But there's a lot more dogma than science out there.

 

Some light reading;

 

http://www.nytimes.c...?pagewanted=all

 

http://www.scientifi...the-war-on-salt

 

Perhaps more importantly in addition to all of that, there are other things (and especially one thing) that you can do that are overwhelmingly more beneficial. The one thing is loose weight. It is the primary factor related to high BP in basically every. single. study. on. the. subject. ever. done.

 

You're going to go crazy restricting sodium for little gains, while you could be managing your weight and seeing massive gains.

Edited November 22, 2012 by Jason L

[BP]

Try Morton Lite salt, no BP problems and tastes the same, and allows you to use less so eventually you dont crave as much.

 

Excuse me?!?

[shep854]

How much exercise are you getting?

[Mike Steele]

Try Morton Lite salt, no BP problems and tastes the same, and allows you to use less so eventually you dont crave as much.

 

Excuse me?!?

Well if anyone can raise blood pressure I would imagine it would be you.

[mnm]

Thank you all for you help.

 

I do exercise a bit every day, at least I walk to and from work, 3kms each way up and downhill at a fast pace. I'm 56, BMI is on the limit to slightly overwheight, and I have no problem climbing 7 stair flights at one go. I have sleep apnoea and sleep with a CPAP, and Sl.Ap. does raise the BP. Not to mention work related stress, which is the real killer (literally), trying to keep a marketing company alive in a chickenshit country (one of the PIGS)!

 

I do my own cooking and use the minimum salt already, but per the opinions above this is not the real problem. I was curious about this S.Glut. but I see this is rather irrelevant after all. I'd do much better if I got back to building airmodels and chasingh them all over the field as I used to do Thank you very much for your advice!

[Simon Tan]

MSG is for flavor. It is naturally occuring in things like seaweed. Indeed the classic konbu dashi in japanese cuisine is essentially an extraction methodology. So is bone stock. MSG brings out the 'fifth taste' or umami.