I saw a commercial yesterday for Campbell’s that said there is no msg in over one hundred (and twenty? eighty? I don’t remember) soups of theirs.
I don’t know if they just didn’t include the soups that I have in that commercial, or if the soups that I have are old, and they switched their recipe.
Either way, I think “less than 2% msg” still counts as msg.
I saw this commercial yesterday for some canned soup. Not sure of the brand, and I don’t want to falsely advertise. (Based on this and the previous post, one would think I’m watching a lot of television. o_O)
The commercial was playing, but I wasn’t really paying attention until they mentioned “no msg” in their ingredients. I thought, why would you advertise something as obvious as that? Who uses msg in their products other than Asian foods?
Well that just goes to show how oblivious I am, because lo and behold, after the commercial ended, I got up and checked the Campbell’s soups I had, and yup there it was, monosodium glutamate.
There was a study I found once, I don’t know where, that rats who were fed large amounts of msg went blind. (I guess it was this study cited in Wikipedia.) But the amounts they were fed were much greater than any amount that humans would eat, so it wasn’t really a health risk.
I don’t really worry about msg in my food, mostly because I was going on the assumption that it’s only found in products sold at Mitsuwa or other Asian foods in the grocery store. I just keep my intake of those items to a minimum. Maybe no more than once or twice a week.
The soups that I have here (Campbell’s Chunky salisbury steak, condensed homestyle chicken noodle and condensed minestrone) all say “contains less than 2% of … monosodium glutamate.” The Chunky one actually says 1% and not 2%, but it also has disodium inosinate and disodium guanylate. (Although I don’t really know what they do, health-wise or chemical-wise. I just don’t consider them all that natural or healthy.)
The condensed split pea with ham & bacon soup does not have msg, although it says “flavoring” (and not “natural,” hmm…) which is sort of ambiguous, and “natural smoke flavoring.” What the heck is natural smoke flavoring?! Did they pump smoke into the soup through little tubes??? (Sorry, I just thought it was funny.)
I don’t eat soups often anyway, because of all the sodium (my soups here range from 1780 to 2400 mg of sodium for the whole can), but knowing that there’s msg as well will make me think twice if I’ve eaten a lot of Asian food recently. :3
[Addendum, March 5, 2021: Wikipedia now says:
The controversy about MSG has been tied by some to alleged racial stereotypes about East Asians,[60][61][62] saying that East Asian cuisine is being targeted while the widespread use of MSG in other processed food hasn’t been stigmatized.[63] These activists have claimed that the perpetuation of the negative image of MSG through the Chinese restaurant syndrome was caused by “xenophobic” or “racist” biases.[64]
I just wanted to clarify if anyone reads this ancient post that I don’t think MSG is any more unhealthy than anything else one can ingest in large, unhealthy amounts. I’d worry more about the amount of salt I’m ingesting at a restaurant, be it an American fast food restaurant, the fanciest steakhouse, or cuisine from a different country. Even at home in a can of soup. Everything in moderation!]
Darn, I keep running out of time to write here. Mrr. Maybe I should watch less Clean House every day … ? *gasp* Nevar!
Oh well. Notes to self: gas, facial regime, reviews.
Just to make this more of an entry, and less of … something junky that I’ll want to delete in a few months …
After about half a year (more?) of regularly watching Clean House on weekdays, I’ve decided to “take a big girl pill” and am getting rid of two childhood dolls! The reason I was keeping them was because … they were from my childhood.
Well, the pink doll I kept because I found while viewing a home video that I got it for my first Christmas. (Still having reservations about getting rid of it, but I have to look at it when I get home.) The purple doll I kept because I thought Mum told me one of my aunts bought it specially for me, and it was handmade. I had to rethink that when I saw a JCPenney tag printed on it. (JCPenney didn’t print tags on socks, right? This doll was made from sock-ish material.)
Now that summer’s here (or at least a week or two for me, then it’s work for the rest of the summer), I’ve got free time for my annual cleaning out and reorganizing of my closet, and I will more mercilessly look at the things I’m keeping and try to free up some dearly needed space.
Then my room can show off how I am now becoming an adult! (Another line from the show, excuse me, I have Clean House fever…)
I now have 16 more spam added to my Akismet hold. I forgot to delete the ones that were there when I wrote my last entry…
But I’m moving on!
My site has now been declared lucky by one comment spammer. Is that lucky for spammers, or lucky for me? Or lucky for visitors? (I think that would be the best way to increase traffic, don’t you? “Visit my site! Click three times and your wish will be granted, guaranteed!”)
Another comment read “what percent of people born here are illegal and legal”
I can answer that right here: none! That’s because you can’t be both at the same time. The comment should have read “What percent of people born here are illegal, and what percent are legal?” Break up the classifications of legal and illegal. Even “What percent of people born here are illegal or legal?” would have made a bit more sense. People just can’t be “illegal and legal”!
Argh, typos and grammatical errors. It’s getting harder and harder to be a closet grammar nazi.
The first shocking instance I saw was a local political print ad using a newspaper headline with a typo. I don’t remember the typo. Something involving an apostrophe. I just thought it was sad that not only did the newspaper editor miss it, but the political ad designer missed it as well — or saw it but decided to use it anyway, which I find even more sad.
Then I saw a typo in a storefront. I don’t suppose this should have shocked me much; people can’t spell nowadays and your average minimum wage worker isn’t exempt. Can’t remember what it was … argh. It’s probably better for my blood pressure that my mind is nice enough to wash away memories of typos.
After that I read a comment somewhere on songmeanings.net … which I can’t find. Probably for the best. But oh man, was it painful to read! It seemed like the author was purposely mangling the English language. It wasn’t even “leet speak”! (Sorry, won’t use the numbers.) Shouldn’t it be obvious that if you want to communicate, you do it so that the intended audience can understand you? (Or maybe it was, and the intended audience was himself.)
The final kicker was an improper use of it’s/its (can’t remember which one) in one of those links that appears on top of Gmail. Noooo! Even Google is infected! The world is doomed! Dooomed, I tell you!
[comments closed to, ironically, combat spam on this entry]
Over the weekend I remembered when my brothers and I were young, grammar school or middle school. We were out with Grandma and Grandpa for some reason or another, and Hidek asked them for a quarter for the machine that dispenses little toys or candy. They gave him one, but he asked for another one to spend because this one had his birth year on it and he didn’t want to spend it. (If you get a coin with your birth year on it, it’s good luck!)
Later (maybe a week or two) Grandma and Grandpa dropped by with a whole container full of coins that were minted in the years we were born. They said we had to separate them and we could have them. After we thanked them and got our coins, we didn’t know what to do with it all. The specialness was in randomly getting a coin with your birthyear, not collecting them and hoarding them. With all those “special” (to us) coins, they lost their fun.
(It was very sweet of my grandparents to do that, don’t get me wrong. Whenever they found something that we liked, they would tend to deluge us with it though. Too much grandparent love!)
I don’t know if we deposited them in our savings or if we turned them in for bills. But after I thought about those coins it dawned on me that as I get older, coins from my birthyear will become more and more rare. And I still want that specialness! I want that this coin is as old as I am feeling. So right then and there I decided to find coins with my birthyear and save them. I have a penny and a dime. Still need a quarter and a nickel. But no one better find these coins for me!
