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MSG. People will swear it gives them all manner of ailments
I bought a big pack of msg from the Asian supermarket and use it instead of normal salt for many things. My partner and I call it wonder salt.
(Of course, msg like normal salt or anything should be used in moderation lol)
I bought a big pack of msg from the Asian supermarket and use it instead of normal salt for many things. My partner and I call it wonder salt.
I hear the voices of my ancestors cry in confusion.
But seriously speaking, I’ve never encountered MSG being used in place of salt. We use it here to give food more of that nondescript meaty taste (aka umami).
Personally, if I need both salty and umami tastes I’d reach for soy or fish sauce first (depending on what’s being cooked). I’d only add MSG and/or salt if I really have to—usually to make minute adjustments.
I’m sorry for offending your ancestors. I hope they can find it in their hearts to forgive me lol
Tbh, I’m not very good at cooking and I rarely add salt to my food. If I want saltiness, I usually get it through ingredients like soy sauce, for example. I guess I don’t mean that I use the msg instead of salt, but I do use in foods where you might add salt, and I just happen to not since I added something else that serves a similar purpose. Does that make sense? But then, like I said, I’m not good at cooking and I just try to make things and experiment a bunch (a lot of experiments have failed horribly)
Also - maybe it also makes a difference that I eat vegan/vegetarian and I don’t always know how to fill in the “meaty” gap that I feel like can be missing.
The purpose of salt in cooking is as a flavour enhancer. It brings out the other flavours that already exist in the food. Salt is not a flavour. It’s why a lot of recipes call for salt to taste, as how much you add can vary a bit. Next time you cook something that tastes a bit dull, try adding a small amount of salt and note what it does to the flavours as you add more. If it tastes “salty” you probably added too much.
Source - I was a chef/cook for 9 years
That makes sense, thank you! I will try experimenting with salt later :)
They seem to be a lot more confused than angry, lol!
But yeah, thanks for the explanation about your use case. This, and your comment about using MSG on tomato-ey stuff has clarified things for me. The reason I brought up soy and fish sauces earlier is because they too, have MSG, and depending on the flavor profile I’m after, I might elect to use one or the other. That usually takes care of MSG in a lot of cases.
I just happen to not since I added something else that serves a similar purpose
… Taken that way, we both do a similar thing.
I eat vegan/vegetarian and I don’t always know how to fill in the “meaty” gap that I feel like can be missing.
Ah, that explains a lot, thanks! And I don’t really have experience in vegetarian/vegan cooking so I am afraid I can’t help with that. There are meat substitutes, of course, but the one I had experience with relied on gluten to achieve a meat-like texture. I’ve heard, too, that mushrooms can used to give that earthy taste that can be enhanced with MSG. Tofu as well. But please take these with a pinch of… MSG, lol!
I really appreciate the explanation! I’ve learned a lot from you and the others, and I have some ideas for things I want to try for the next time (which is probably very soon, since it’s almost lunch time lol)
I actually bought some mushroom sauce a couple of days ago, and I’m looking forward to giving that a go. I only recently discovered this amazing Asian supermarket near where I live (in Germany) and it has been so fun learning to use things I didn’t know I had such easy access to before!
My ancestors are happy to have reeled one in. HAHAHAHAHAHA!!
But yeah! Have fun exploring the various (weird) flavors that you can find in Asian supermarkets. Some of them might be a bit too weird for your tastebuds, but I think that’s part of the fun. You might also want to explore Buddhist vegetarian cooking as well, if you haven’t already, since there are a lot of techniques there might be useful for you.
I remember when I was looking up diet videos years ago everyone was VEHEMETLY advocating against MSG and how bad it was for you, especially for diabetics. I’m still not entirely sure what to believe, but I know MSG isn’t as bad as everyone thought it was.
MSG isn’t “bad” at all, it’s just another ingredient really. The campaign against it was entirely bullshit that was driven by racism against Asian people because it’s a common ingredient in Chinese food.
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It’s almost like a cheat code to make almost anything taste better!
But I also I don’t understand people who think that it literally is cheating and shouldn’t be used because of that. If msg is cheating, salt is also cheating.
For me, msg has become almost as important “tool” in the kitchen as salt.
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The holy trinity 🤤.
My understanding of “cheating” when it comes to cooking is that you’re becoming reliant on something that might be/become difficult to get ahold of. Pure salt is ubiquitous in western cuisine, so most would feel comfortable relying on it. That’s not the case with MSG.
Well if people won’t use it because it’s “cheating”. Then it’ll never make it to bw ubiquitious next to salt, like it imo deserves to be.
There’s glutamate, although not MSG, in breast milk. Also sugar in the form of lactose. That’s because that’s what gets babies to keep sucking.
MSG is naturally in certain foods too, like tomatos and seaweed.
I remember reading something from Chef John being against MSG (he was commenting within one of his YouTube videos). But not for health reasons. He just felt the flavor punch it gave lead to addictive overeating.
I’m like bitch, that delicious food you showcase does the same thing, you don’t hear me bitching about it.
That’s actually a misconception within a misconception.
It’s not that MSG allergies don’t exist, it is that they are often downplayed for the same reason that Celiac’s disease is downplayed. When a few people fake or overexaggerate their symptoms, credibility is taken from the rest of us who actually suffer from it. Now people are always quick to invalidate those who are symptomatic.
Yes, it’s true that some of the rumors around MSG are racially motivated, and that some people who claim to be affected are lying. But that doesn’t mean that MSG related symptoms aren’t real for the rest of us. Speaking as someone who is from Hong Kong, grew up with MSG, and absolutely loves the taste of it, but developed health conditions that were comorbid with MSG intolerance.
As a chronic pain and migraine sufferer, large quantities of MSG is a common trigger for migraines (or headaches when I’m lucky). I’ve been blind tested before with someone else’s help using the same quantities of salt vs MSG in a cellulose capsule. Each time, I would happen to be fine after taking the salt capsule with a glass of water. But after taking the MSG capsule with a glass of water, I would have have a headache or a painfully tense sensation around my head. This was done multiple times across separate days to rule out confounding factors.
It’s likely true that for the vast majority of people MSG doesn’t trigger a reaction. However, a few of us have an intolerance and we are frequently dismissed and medically gaslit. Please believe us. I’m so tired of people telling me that what I’m experiencing isn’t real. I wish it didn’t have to be real so I could go back to eating whatever I want and not worry about migraines.
LGBTQ people and drag queens.
First the gay agenda, now the trans agenda, when will the agendas end?!?
I’m telling ya, it’s all a part of Big Agenda…
Resist Big Agenda! Spontaneity only!
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Well dressed people that can often dance (in high heels) and sing and are comfortable in their bodies. What the hell
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Speak for yourself, sis. I’m a dangerous homosexual. 💅🔪
For my country (Germany): Catching a draft. Basically people believe that a light breeze from an open window will make you ill.
We have a similar one here in the US. People think if you go outside when it’s too cold, you’ll get sick.
It’s not completely baseless. You can’t get sick from the cold itself, but lower core body temp does weaken your immune system until you warm up, making it easier for you to get sick if you do get exposed to something.
The cold, dry air during the winter can also dry out the mucus membranes in the sinuses which can make it easier for pathogens to enter the body. Again, doesn’t make you sick directly but does interfere with your body’s defense mechanisms.
In the US, I hear this more when your hair is wet: “Don’t go outside, it’s cold and your hair’s wet, you’ll get sick!”
Not only colds, but you also get stiff necks! According to my mother, it’s almost instantly. Leaving two windows open makes here neck stiffer than a priest in a kindergarten, but only inside. Standing in the wind outside is perfectly fine.
Also Russia and probably most eastern European countries. One of my kids will catch a cold and the first thing my mother or grandmother will ask is if they were somewhere drafty.
It’s even in the name! A “cold”, huh!
God, on one hand, catching a draft makes you die and then on the other STOSSLÜFTEN!!
Tja ein STOSS ist halt kein ZUG!
Schon, wenn meine Mutter lüftet. Alle Fenster im Haus (auch im Winter) und das ist nicht mehr ein Zug, aber ein ganzer Hauptbahnhof lol
Sei froh! Wenn sie die Fenster nur kippen würde wärt ihr wahrscheinlich schon tot oder zumindest schwer krank. Soweit ich weiß ist so ein kleiner Zug, den man kaum spürt, am gefährlichsten. Weil dann fühlt sich der Körper sicher und Killerviren haben leichtes Spiel!
The hero we need, but don’t deserve 😔
- meine Mutter, wahrscheinlich
That’s totally cultural, in the US it’s dehydration
I didn’t know it’s a thing in Germany too. 😊 Drafts are also blamed for pretty much any unexpected ailment, from rheumatism to toothache. And off course cold, flu and so on.
Similar in France, also airco giving you all kinds of symptoms
Yeah, but then they go and open all the windows to “change the air” no matter the weather.
I used to work with a bunch of Germans in the US. I came in to the office one time at about 4:30am in February. One of the guys had all the windows open when the outdoor temperature was something like -20F.
Like Moritz, I think that avoiding the draft is more important than changing the air at that point. 🙄
I also had an old manufacturing guy tell me that drinking cold water in the summer would kill you because of the shock to your system.
Same in Czechia.
Similar to “fan death” in Korea, where they think running a fan in your bedroom while you sleep can kill you.
Staying in hostels when traveling overseas. The amount of people who tell me I’m crazy and going to get murdered if I stay in a hostel is ridiculous.
Hostels are great, and not any more dangerous than hotels are, you just have to look at reviews and go for the type you want. You can also rent private rooms at a lot of them. I always stay at one’s with a kitchen so I can save a bunch on food, too.
That fear is what happens when the only exposure people have to hostels in the US comes from horror movies. I didn’t know that you can rent private rooms and get a kitchen - sounds like a nice setup.
Living near a nuclear plant.
Little do they know, that they get more than 50x more radiation effect from the natural surroundings and the rocks in earth than from the nuclear plant 🤭 And our body is really capable of dealing with that since the beginning of our evolution (DNA repairs and co).
https://pages.vassar.edu/ltt/files/2011/04/Screen-shot-2011-04-21-at-1.18.09-AM1.png
here is a chart showing radiation intensities for various sources of radiation
Living near a coal plant, on the other hand, is really, REALLY bad for you.
it’s not the background radiation that worries people, it’s the risk of a Fukushima-type incident.
Ehhhh, those are the ancient light water designs. Fuck light water, even though it’s actually pretty safe. Advanced sodium reactors are where it’s at. One loop is molten salt and nuclear fuel. The salt makes it less dense so it can’t melt down like a traditional reactor. A second loop of salt is what steals heat from the fuel, which loops around to a water boiler further away. In essence, it’s airgapped. While corrosion can be an issue, the lack of water in the salt loops helps a ton.
Solar towers with molten salt generators also work in the same way. The salts are molten and continue pumping out power for 12 hours after the sun has set, which makes them an excellent source of power for cities :)
I’d live next to a nuclear plant any day of the week! Especially if the homes are less expensive because of it :D
While the modern technology is relatively safe, it’s not a technical issue with the reactor design. It’s a trust issue with the humans, particularly for-profit companies, that operate it.
And even then, despite the catastrophe it was, it only had 1 death attributed to it.
TIL. That’s a good point. 20k deaths due to the earthquake but only 1 due to the power plant itself.
Woah, this one is actually surprising to me. Even though I am in favour of nuclear power, I do have some fear of living in close proximity of such plants, especially seeing how even the clothing used in the facility is mixed into the barrels of radioactive wastes.
Not all the clothing anyone wears in a plant. Clothing special for contamination areas. They also do scans at thresholds and anything you carry with you that gets contaminated is confiscated. Nuclear plants genuinely have a level of safety in the us that is pretty hard to comprehend, it’s all done out of an abundance of caution more than a genuine need for it. Not quite security theater, just a very high degree of security.
The Tor Browser, it’s just a normal Browser with some functionality to improve privacy.
Like many tools, it can also be used for nefarious things, but that’s not its only use.
It’s more than just privacy. It allows you to visit
.onionsites, which will not load in a traditional browser. As a harmless example, this is Duck Duck Go: https://duckduckgogg42xjoc72x3sjasowoarfbgcmvfimaftt6twagswzczad.onion/. Trying to click that in a normal browser doesn’t work because they don’t support the onion network. But using the Tor browser unlocks that as well as all sorts of nefarious sites that you can’t access through a “normal browser”
Jet fuel.
People seem to have the impression that it’s some extremely explosive stuff that has to be handled with the upmost care, but it’s just highly refined kerosene. It can be used as a replacement for Diesel fuel in many cases - in fact, U.S. military vehicles can run off either. We put it Toyota Hylux pickups up in northern Greenland because it doesn’t gel up like Diesel fuel.
It doesnt even melt steel beams, so…
In case anyone is not aware, “upmost” is a word, but it’s often substituted incorrectly for “utmost.” https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/utmost-vs-upmost-difference#:~:text=Utmost means “greatest” or “,mean “greatest.” Use utmost
Yes, people expect it to be MORE volatile than gas for your car, but actually it’s heavier and harder to burn. It’s like diesel, only a bit more so.
Nuclear power in general.
It’s just the radioactive waste we don’t know what to do with and becoming a military or terrorist target parts that are dangerous.
No, we’ve known what to do with the waste for decades. Put it in cans, fill the can with cement, coat the can in cement, put the cans in a facility that is protected from geological events like earthquakes, and periodically check the cans/facility. In the US for example, The Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository was being made before political pressure shut it down.
The waste issue is and always will be one of political pressure and ignorance by the masses, not an actual logistical issue
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Political pressure comes in part from people like me who live around here and where they’d look for other sites. I don’t want trucks full of nuclear waste constantly being trucked through my area (and your area!), I don’t want to be viewed as a bomb target by enemies. I don’t want trucks of nuclear waste around the country being viewed as dirty bomb targets.
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Even without the political pressure, how is nuclear power clean when massive massive holes in the ground have to be created and maintained with huge trucks and cranes using fossil fuels so we have a place to store waste that will be dangerous for tens of thousands of years? Yucca Mountain has taken decades to approve and build, any other sites will likely also. Spent nuclear fuel having to be trucked across the country using fossil fuels and tires, at best can be converted to battery power.
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Nuclear plants take a decade or more to build, we don’t have that kind of time when it comes to climate change.
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Nuclear power makes nuclear disarmament that much less likely
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All of this is also assuming our current civilization continues for tens of thousands of years unbroken. If for some reason 500 years from now civilization broke down or was taken over and the average person couldn’t read English anymore, how would we transmit the idea of everlasting danger in a geographic region to those who may see things very differently?
Sorry I somehow just saw your response. Here’s mine:
- Nuclear waste being trucked through my area is completely fine because not only has it already been contained and simply being trucked to it’s longterm storage site, it’s not some glowing ooze that’s super hard to keep from seeping into places. It’s a solid. Have the trucks stay away from running water and don’t drive on days that it’s raining, and even if there’s a crash it’s not gonna get into the ecosystem. Add to that, the alternative for baseload power has been fossil fuels, which are shown to not only be more hazardous to the immediate area and people, but more hazardous to the planet. So the options for the past several decades has been between a verifiably bad thing, and a verifiably not bad thing. This is just more either uninformed or alarmist rhetoric.
- A similar question can be turned around on solar, what with the huge amount of material that needs to be mined in toxic processes for the rare earth metals that are needed for photovoltaics + battery banks. And you’re complaining about needing tires for moving nuclear waste? Really? The addition would be negligible compared to what’s already on the roads. This is just grasping at straws.
- We don’t have that kind of time because people like you have been preventing us from building safe plants for decades. This is the same kind of energy as when republicans defund government agencies and then use the now lower productivity of the agency as an example of governments being bad at jobs. We’ve lost time because you’ve been holding our head underwater.
- Realistic nuclear disarmament is a pipe dream that gets obliterated with 5 seconds of thought. The countries we truly want disarmed will never do such, and better countries disarming would just lead to those first countries becoming emboldened to use their arsenal. The only realistic result of nuclear disarmament is a nuclear war perpetrated by dictators.
- If human civilization breaks down to the point that top security assets are unmanageable, there’s far worse issues going on than nuclear waste getting into the ground water in a couple specific locations. Not to mention a scenario like you bring up would have to have humans falling back to the stone age, at which point the change in quality and length of life from the nuclear radiation a leak would bring wouldn’t be very substantial compared to their stone-age alternative.
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Sharks.
More people die due to things like selfies, falling out of your bed, tipped vending machines and heck, even balloons, then to a shark.
Just because something can kill you doesnt mean it will, more often than not, it actually wont.
Here there might be a confusion between danger, and statistics.
all those examples are about events or things that are far more frequent than be near a shark
if the average person could be close to a shark as many time in life than leaving a bed, be close to something that can flip, or to people taking selfies, statistics might be very different
A shark killed my brother a few years back. He was just standing there minding his own business and this shark came out of nowhere and toppled a vending machine on top of him. Poor bastard never knew what hit him.
That’s because people rarely are where sharks can kill them. If they were, sharks would quite often kill them. Much more often than vending machines, though I’d watch for those too.
Wolves are similar, but for more understandable reasons. They may leave us alone, but they really love our livestock.
My favorite has always been that falling coconuts kill more people than sharks
I’d be interested in the death numbers relative to exposure. What percentage of people who tip vending machines die compared to those who swim among sharks at the beach? How about compared to those who sleep in a bed?
The dark. Everything seems more scary in the dark
The key to feeling confident in the dark is feeling like the hunter, not the prey.
I love the dark … especially pitch blackness.
As a kid I used to crave wanting to eliminate all light when I went to bed. As a teen, I would seal the edges of my door to stop the hall light in our house from coming and put up black out curtains even at night. It always bothered me if I woke up with a bit of light. For some reason I felt better waking up in the dark. I always know where my things are and I can wander around in the dark to f find my way.
I haven’t had that in years because my wife wants some night lights on somewhere. She thought I was nuts to want complete darkness at night.
I’m actually afraid of the dark. My mind makes me see shadowy figures and scary faces. I don’t think I’ll ever get over it even though it’s illogical.
Yeah I’m not as unafraid of the dark as you’d expect. I like being in the complete darkness in the comfort of my own space that I know very well … like my bedroom or my living room or any room in my house that I know very well. But when it comes to being in the dark in a strange and unfamiliar place … yeah, I’m not comfortable and I would also start seeing figures and faces too.
Maybe I’m not comfortable anywhere then …
I was the same as a kid, then I got used to sleeping with some light and haven’t needed to block out lights since. However, I recently bought a weighted mask and omg I seriously recommend that! I really feel like I sleep a lot better with it on, wake up more rested. Could be placebo of course, but I don’t think it is.
I’m the same. Can’t sleep if there is a sliver of light. I got myself one of those sleeping masks and it’s great
I tried that for a while and it never quite worked for me. I’d always end up with it falling off, over my mouth, around my neck or over my ear. It’s been so long now, it almost just feels like a relief when I can sleep alone in the dark.
Scuba Diving. Lots of people have heard that your lungs can pop or something similar and it makes them really afraid to try it. If you hold your breath, you may have issues with your lungs but your SCUBA apparatus is such an amazing design that even if you need to throw up underwater it’s designed to filter your vomit through the apparatus so you can continue breathing even after throwing up THROUGH it (which you should do if you feel nauseous down there). Just keep the apparatus in your mouth and don’t stop breathing and you’ll have a great time.
Scuba Diving is one of my favorite things to do and I really think more people should try it!
I’m simultaneously amazed by being able to vomit while diving and just breathing normally - and disgusted when trying to imagine how that’ would look and feel like…
But thanks for the info. Never thought they’re so Great
Spiders.
Even black widows basically have to be harassed into biting.
Ya but have you taken a look at a spider lately? Yikeseeola
Muslims.
As an Icelandic guy in Palestine I confirm this is true.
ITT: people that don’t know what completely harmless means
Right? Jews aren’t completely harmless
