Thursday, October 26, 2006

MSG?

Last night the project my team at work has been working on finally came to an end. Not like we won't have follow-up work to do but it was a wonderful milestone for a lot of long nights and weekends. I felt such a huge sense of relief that I threw my budget to the wind and brought home $40 of Chinese food for Eric and I to feast upon.

Sadly, soon after eating said feast, Eric retreated to the bedroom where he rolled around in pain with a migraine and then he had Chinese food again... but the wrong way... a few times.

He was feeling a little dehydrated but generally ok before the food eating began. We both ate the same food so its likely not food poisoning, and I don't know of a food borne thingy that would cause the migraine. I went to the "fancy" Chinese place and assumed they don't use MSG, but I could be wrong. Does anyone know if MSG can do this to a person?

(update: Eric woke up (on the couch) feeling just fine this morning and went to work with a lot of energy so thankfully he got out or slept off whatever it was)

(update to the update: Not thinking about the headache, nausea and all the fun he had with the Chinese food the night before, he ate the leftovers the next night with not a hint of understanding as to why I was concerned. Thankfully there were no repeats.)

5 comments:

J said...

I believe I have heard that MSG can do this to a person, but I'm not sure. I do know that my MIL cannot have it, because it triggers problems with her heart. She asked her heart doctor if he knew of any Chinese restaurants that were HONEST about not using MSG. (He's chinese american, by the way). He said, NONE. They all use it, just like restaurants use lots of salt and butter, because it makes the food taste better.

Clearly E doesn't ALWAYS have this reaction to Chinese food, or you'd both know about it by now, so maybe one of the dishes that he ate just had more MSG than he's capable of tolerating. Poor E. Bring home a treat, torture the fiance'. (Heh heh...I said fiance'.)

Tracy said...

Poor E! I'm glad he's feeling like himself again.

Anonymous said...

This was a normal reaction to chinese food. Please check out msgmyth.com for a list of ingredients which act just like msg. This site saved my life!!

Maya's Granny said...

Not only can MSG do this, but I once ate Chinese food while taking cold medicine adn I fell asleep at the wheel. Really dangerous.

Ami said...

MSG does that to me, too. If I want Chinese, I have to cook it myself, or drive five hours to Eastern Oregon where there's a little teeny restaurant that I know for SURE does not use it. It's also in just about everything else... from Doritos to soup. I also have a problem with anything that has molasses in it. I read somewhere that msg is a derivative of molasses by-products? I make my own bbq sauce etc, too. Amazing what you find when you read labels.