Plaidophile

There seem to be three camps in the ongoing debates about MSG as a cause of migraines:

1. Zealoty MSG-conspiracy folks who think that any form of glutamate (bound or unbound) is WRONG WRONG WRONG and all MSG in all its forms should be stamped out FOREVER
2. People who are out to disprove the MSG-conspiracy folks, who use any use of "I am MSG-sensitive" or "MSG is one of my migraine triggers" as evidence that someone is in camp 1 who are all experiencing psychosomatic/psychogenic symptoms and are WRONG WRONG WRONG
3. People who have MSG as a trigger for migraines, usually among many other triggers

I am in the third group, but I always end up in debates with people in the second group.

I have quite a few migraine triggers. They are far from consistent. Various things can abate or prevent migraines (such as caffeine). But of course I'm going to avoid things that trigger migraines, because who the hell wants to have a migraine?

I suppose it's possible that MSG leading to migraines with a high degree of correlation has just been a coincidence, and there is some other underlying cause (or something that acts along with the MSG to cause a migraine), but migraines themselves are very difficult to study to begin with.

The general consensus out there (based on reading about migraines) is that bright/flashing lights, prolonged loud noise, and overwhelming smells are perfectly legitimate migraine triggers, and taste-controlled studies about MSG sensitivity (with ingestion of them in a gel capsule or the like) indicate that it's not the ingestion of MSG which causes migraines, so what's so hard to believe that it's the taste of the MSG itself which causes it? The flavor of MSG sets up a prolonged reaction in the taste receptors, and I don't see why it's so far-fetched for that to indicate that it's just another sense being overloaded in a prolonged manner that's causing a migraine.

Basically I need to stop getting into debates about MSG sensitivity because there's a huge amount of crap on the two extreme positions and neither one wants to allow for what seems to me to be a quite rational possibility (which is inherently hard to figure out). I don't give a crap if other people eat MSG (even though it has been linked to various long-term health effects, namely obesity), but I don't see why I shouldn't be allowed to avoid MSG because it gives me a migraine.