I think the underlying issue re “no evidence” is that amount of evidence is weighted factor arguing, not decisive criticism. They aren’t trying to come up with conceptual explanations and refutations; they’re trying to say their side has a higher score than the opposing side.
I have a friend who has a strong negative reaction to MSG and sometimes accidentally eats some and immediately experiences their problem. So it’s very predictable relationship. They said they looked at the studies and the amount of MSG that people were given in the studies they looked at was extremely low, and that their own reaction is highly dose-dependent. So assuming that’s the case, that’s one concrete example of a way in which the studies did not sufficiently investigate the matter.
This post is a good example of the kind of thing I was talking about where people say “there is no evidence”. He is “debunking” the “MSG myth”.
Quotes from the post:
Moreover, I have not found any consensus and compelling scientific evidence at all that supports even a minor incidence of MSG sensitivity.
But is there any evidence that MSG is dangerous to humans? In a word, no. Here are some of the many meta-reviews and high-quality clinical trials that debunk the MSG myth
He titles that section “Best scientific evidence about MSG”, and then lists eight studies or meta reviews.
I didn’t go through any of the studies he linked. I just found it and wanted to share it because I thought it was interesting, and thought someone else might like to go through the studies first without seeing my opinions. I have looked at MSG meta reviews before, and was not impressed with what they had actually studied.
Another quote from that section of the post:
These review articles, which are meta-analyses of a large number of primary research articles, along with clinical trials, just don’t support the MSG myth. There might be a small subpopulation of people who are sensitive to MSG, but even that has little support in the scientific evidence and is completely dismissed in systematic reviews.
He think the systematic reviews are enough to completely dismiss MSG sensitivity. From what I looked at before, they just literally had never studied enough to be able to tell. (I am planning on going through the linked studies later though, since he claims they are the best scientific evidence about MSG.)
I will say though that I DO agree that most of the anti-MSG sentiment people have is racism. A lot of the people who are against MSG do not care about food additives in general. They happily eat a diet full of processed American food that is full of stabilizers and gums and preservatives and chemical ingredients that they can not pronounce. Those things don’t bother them at all. But they are super concerned about MSG cuz that is weird and Asian.
I tried the first link, which goes here
I searched for “migraine”. I found this:
Glutamate has also been described as a trigger for migraine headache exacerbations (Woods, Weiner, Abramson, Thien, & Walters, 2006). Radnitz (1990) suggested that glutamate causes a generalized vasomotor reaction, which causes throbbing pain at the temples and a throbbing sensation across the forehead. His claim derived not from a clinical trial but from an advice [sic?] from the Diamond Headache Clinic. She also argued that those who experience migraine headaches are more susceptible to headache triggered by glutamate; however, this suggestion is not substantiated by any clinical data. Leira and Rodriguez (1995) postulated that glutamate can trigger a migraine headache because of interference with acetylcholine synthesis. However, in the absence of clinical data, it is premature to make any conclusions about glutamate as a potential trigger for migraine headaches. With no consistent data to suggest that glutamate causes any type of headache, much more extensive clinical research would be required to establish a link between glutamate and migraine headaches.
This sounds to me like they haven’t studied the issue sufficiently and it’s an open question, and that they don’t think the existing evidence is good enough to come to conclusions. Similar language is repeatedly in the conclusion shortly after. That’s very different in tone than the part the blogger chooses to quote, which is from the abstract and says:
The abstract creates the impression that the issue has been extensively studied and the matter has been decided against the MSG-causes-migraines hypothesis, but the actual paper concedes that it’s an open question and more research is needed.
This is actually really egregious, considering that migraines are a debilitating issue for many people, with no treatments that actually work for many of those people.
So there are a bunch of people out there who get debilitating migraines that stop them from being able to work or take care of their children (let alone do household chores, run errands, or pursue hobbies, entertainment, or socialization). And there is this one small thing that MIGHT help at least some of them, and all they have to do is remove one completely unnecessary additive from their diet. But this paper is arguing that we just don’t have enough data to recommend people even TRY it???
And not because we studied it and found over and over again that there was no link - because we haven’t studied it enough, so we have no data.
I know we can’t actually make conclusions based on no data, but it is just egregious that people are making it sound like there is MORE evidence than there is, and that they are writing blog articles claiming it has been thoroughly studied and no link was found, and that people on online forums are attacking & calling it pseudoscience when people try things like cutting out MSG to help with their debilitating health conditions.
Yeah, good point.
Incidentally, some combination of what of the changes I’ve made recently – and I suspect that diet, exercise and quitting caffeine all played a role – has caused my migraines (which I have had since 14, with variations in frequency and severity) to essentially cease. I wasn’t getting a ton before, but I’m not even getting migraine-adjacent sensations now.
That’s great :)
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I’m bothered by how easy it was to find a problem. I did the laziest, most minimal cite-checking I can conceive of. I literally clicked on the first article in the list and searched one keyword that I was particularly interested in. I’ve seen Elliot cite-check plenty of things and have done plenty myself, and it still is always a bit unreal to me how bad and low quality things are when you spend 5 mins looking into the matter.
Here is another example of MSG stuff:
The reddit thread is titled: “Are people still stupid enough to genuinely think that MSG is bad for you and that Chinese Restaurant Syndrome is really a thing?”
People are really hostile to the idea that MSG could cause reactions in some people. For some reason they want it to be impossible for MSG to cause a reaction in anyone at all ever? But people can literally be allergic to sunlight or water on their skin. (I’m not sure if it’s really an allergy, but it is commonly called an allergy - they get hives or rashes from exposure. But I don’t know if it meets the definition of allergy.)
I do get that there are a lot of people who make a big deal about saying they are MSG sensitive, and then being totally fine eating a bunch of foods that have MSG in them that they are unaware of. And a lot of those people are fine with American MSG foods, but not fine with Chinese foods. For some of those people, they are sensitive to something else in the Chinese food and they just think it’s MSG. And I’m sure there are a lot of people who are just making it up or having psychosomatic reactions.
But people are SO against it that they are unwilling to even consider that anyone could ever have any kind of sensitivity to MSG.
I find this comes up with lots of things - people are super tribalist, and they take a position against another tribe. And then you can’t argue anything to them because they have just decided that anything that disagrees with their opinion is wrong, and part of the other tribe, and you are just stupid and saying stupid things and they don’t have to listen or critically evaluate it at all. And often they are right and the other side IS stupid, but their side is stupid TOO.
Fair enough – so don’t make the conclusion that mono sodium glutamate is fully safe and doesn’t cause migraines…
The “evidence based” people don’t conclude “we don’t know” about this stuff. They conclude “safe”…
I’ve noticed papers often have biased titles, abstracts, introductions and conclusions, but more accurate factual claims in the middle. They want to support politically or otherwise popular trends while also having some much more mild claims to retreat too if criticized. You can see it in e.g. papers about covid where they will present facts and data with little explanation of their meaning, and then conclude something unreasonable with obvious political motivation and little real analysis. I think the facts and data are real because why falsify them in a way that’s actually bad for your position, and flat out falsifying data is somewhat uncommon in our society.
ya 
It indicates how badly the world needs Paths Forward; how little productive debate and criticism is taking place (and how little you can trust “the evidence” because it might have decisive flaws and get published anyway with no real pushback, critical discussion or useful debate.)
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Yeah, thanks 
Some of the progress I’ve made has just been about being willing to take my own observations seriously and try stuff out.
As an example: with the migraines, I noticed quite a while ago and quite by accident that exercise can help when I’m having a migraine attack, and help about as well as the best/newest medicine I’ve tried. So, IME, exercise functions not just to reduce the frequency as a preventative measure, which is what the literature I’ve seen talks about, but as a treatment in the middle of an attack. Exerting oneself (outside, under the sun no less) is very counter to the normal advice and to my own intuitive desire when having a migraine, which is to lie in bed in a dark room and wait it out. And I discovered this “remedy” because, basically, I was very very stubborn about getting my daily exercise in, migraine be damned. This has definitely encouraged me to exercise more.
Some people have reported that keto helped with migraines too. I still don’t think there’s a good explanation of the exact causal mechanism of migraines, but if keto helps with inflammation and pain in general, it seems plausible that it could help with migraines in particular.
With caffeine, I think it’s uncontroversial at this point that it’s a migraine trigger.
Food additives can also be a trigger for many people, so that’s another thing I recently changed that I just thought of as something that could help. I never noticed a particular relationship between some particular additives and a migraine, but I wasn’t really tracking that stuff carefully.
Speaking of, just tried this, very good
Just a PSA: https://fallibleliving.com no longer works and I’ll no longer even have the domain as of a month from now. However, the site has been permanently moved to https://fallibleliving.justinmallone.com/ , so the STWTR archives and TCS website archives will be available there indefinitely.
I simplified some stuff for myself by turning Fallible Living and my old blog into static sites so that I have fewer things to worry about in terms of security and updates. FL actually got hacked a while ago. I also updated a bunch of the software on my Linode, which was pretty ancient and really needed updating.
I was being prematurely negative here, apparently, as I just accepted a job offer in the tax field.
Just saw this about erythritol. A study has linked it to heart attacks and strokes:
The actual journal article is here, but behind a paywall:
From the article;
When eight volunteers considered at low risk of heart attack or stroke consumed food and drinks containing 30 grams of erythritol – such as half a litre of low-carb ice cream – their blood levels of the sweetener jumped from about 4 micromoles (a measure of concentration) to about 6000 micromoles, and remained high for several hours. “As soon as you drink an artificially sweetened drink, the levels swamp the normal levels in the blood,” says Hazen.
Erythritol was also found to promote clot formation in mice and when added to samples of human blood, at levels of 300 micromoles and 45 micromoles, respectively. “Everything suggests this is not just an innocent bystander, it’s directly causing an enhancement in the reactivity of blood platelets,” says Hazen.
But Duane Mellor, a spokesperson for the British Dietetic Association, says most people wouldn’t be eating high enough quantities of it to reach the levels tested for clotting effects in this study.
Half a liter is just a pint. People eat pints of ice cream all the time. What the hell?
Mellor says the findings should not cause people to stop consuming food and drinks with the sweetener. “We need to reduce our sugar intake,” he says.
Implied false alternative between maintaining high sugar intake and using artificial sweeteners. It can be the case that we need to reduce our sugar intake and also that artificial sweeteners should not be used.
Yeah. 30 grams is just 2.5 tablespoons, or 7.5 teaspoons. Erythritol is commonly sold in blends (with e.g. monk fruit or stevia) where they recommend use as a 1 to 1 sugar replacement. 2.5 tablespoons is a totally normal amount of sugar for someone to use. Erythritol is less sweet than sugar, so if you want the same sweetness and are using it alone, you need to use more erythritol than sugar.
According to WebMD, regarding how much erythritol you can eat:
There aren’t official guidelines on using erythritol, but most people can handle 1 gram for every kilogram of body weight daily. So if you weigh 150 pounds, you can tolerate 68 grams of erythritol a day, or more than 13 teaspoons.
That example is more than double the amount used in the study.
I noticed there are multiple articles online claiming erythritol is safe. That reminded me of what Elliot said above:
There isn’t enough data, but people will claim it’s safe, as if they know. WebMD even gave an amount, which implies they know that amount is safe. And they said this on safety (in the above linked article):
Safety. Though erythritol is one of the newer sugar alcohols on the market – xylitol and mannitol have been around longer – researchers have done a number of studies of it in animals and humans. The World Health Organization (WHO) approved erythritol in 1999, and the FDA did the same in 2001.
From another website’s post, Erythritol: The Complete Guide:
IS IT SAFE TO CONSUME?
Yes, it is.
According to Healthline, a couple of studies have shown that no serious effects or issues have been detected. However, I will say that some people who eat large quantities of sugar alcohols mention some minor digestive issues such as an upset tummy.
And from another blog, in the post Sweetener Review: Erythritol | Is it Really “Natural” and The Perfect Sweetener?:
Is Erythritol Safe?
Yes.
Since 2001, the FDA recognizes erythritol as safe. It means that when used under the intended conditions [moderate amounts that we can reasonably expect someone to consume] by most people [the general population], erythritol is safe. Erythritol is not a food additive. It has a Generally Regarded As Safe (GRAS) status. Erythritol is a relatively new sweetener that was first sold as a sweetener in Japan in the early 1990s. Today, it is approved in many countries.
The safety of erythritol was reviewed by scientific experts in the GRAS notices listed below. Manufacturers of erythritol submitted GRAS notices to the FDA and received “No Objection” letters. Erythritol is made by different microorganisms in each notice below and intended to be used as a nutritive sweetener and a flavor enhancer:
- GRAS Status in 2001, Cerestar, Belgium submitted GRAS notification 76 (GRN No. 76)
- GRAS Status in 2007, Mitsubishi Kagaku-Foods Corporation, Japan (GRN No. 208)
- GRAS Status in 2011, Baolingbao Biology, China (GRN No. 382)
- GRAS Status in 2012, O’Laughlin Biotechnology, China (GRN No. 401)
- GRAS Status in 2019, Cargill, New Mexico, USA (GRN No. 789)
Safety Reviews
In 2000, a safety review of erythritol was issued by an international expert committee administered jointly by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO). The Joint is also referred to as JECFA or Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additive. See the full report here.
In 2003, the European Union (EU) Scientific Committee on Food (SCF) issued the “Opinion of the Scientific Committee on Food on Erythritol.” It concluded that erythritol is safe for use in foods, but not in beverages.
In 2010, the EU Food Safety Authority issued a Scientific Opinion evaluating the limits of erythritol use by children.
In 2015, the EU issued a Scientific Opinion on the safety of erythritol and extended the use in beverages containing up to 1.6 % erythritol.
People look at things like this and think that means there is a bunch of evidence, that a bunch of people have studied it exhaustively and come to their conclusion based on that. I haven’t clicked through all those links, but I am sure that they are not full of thorough or exhaustive research.
There have been some annoyances with the keto diet for me.
I did try keto for some months some 10 years ago.
At the start I had no problems with it, but after maybe 2 months I developed a rash all over my torso. It was painful and really persistent and I didn’t connect it with the diet for a while, but the only thing that helped me get rid of it was to reintroduce more carbs into my diet.
For years the rash would come back if I went low on carbs for ~2+ days. Apparently there is something called a “keto rash” that some people develop which is what I probably had.