MSG in pregnancy

[Adi's mom]

My sister is expecting, after 7 years of marriage. This is a very precious child, since she had to go thru IU several times, before she could conceive...what no one has  been able to clarify is ...how dangerous is consumption of Ajinomoto, or Mono sodium Glutamate during pregnancy...please help!!

[jake-the-peg]

Looking around the web, the situation seems to be that the American FDA  ( who are pretty conservative at the best of times ) catagorise it as "Generally recognised as safe".

There seems to have been some bad results in mice but these have not been replicated in humans and the situation is complicated by the fact that some people have reactions to MSG irrespective of pregnancy.

Probably best avoided pregnant or not but I wouldn't panic over having eaten it  (it's E621 if you want to watch out for it) 

[Gef]

Firstly, congratulations to your sister, I hope all goes well. I know that many Westernised Chinese dishes are not "authentic" but I think that products using MSG are part of their traditional cooking. If MSG was harmful why would China have one of the highest birth rates in the world? Not an expert but she should eat whatever she fancies.

[morg_monster]

I read an interesting article in the Times a few weeks ago about MSG (nothing about pregnancy though).  It seems there is natural MSG (time consuminngly extracted from seaweed) and artificial (created from scratch in a lab).  Some bodies are against the artificial stuff but not the natural stuff, although they have to admit is chemically and molecularly identical to the natural stuff, it is a bit mad.  The author of the piece had a friend who claimed he got awful migraines from MSG, so he invited him round for lunch, put about 2 tablespoons of pure MSG in his soup, no complaints whatsoever!

There is NO proof of a general problem with MSG, though of course some people can be allergic to it as with almost anything.  If she's never had a problem before then there is absolutely no need to worry - fretting about it will be probably worse for the baby!  As long as she has a balanced diet, she'll be just fine.

I sometimes think it is funny that people like your sister worry about things like this, where they are clearly highly responsible parents with regards to their health and that of their babies, and so their kids are the least likely to have problems, regardless of individual things like MSG or things like bottle/breastfeeding or co-sleeping.  I wish that people from worse off backgrounds would worry more about things like smoking and drinking when they are pregnant!

Sounds like your niece or nephew will have everything going for it and be so well loved.  Bless!