Plaidophile

5:40 PM: Mixed one can of Campbell's condensed clam chowder with one can of milk analog (about a 50/50 ratio of half-and-half and water, as I don't normally keep milk around). Microwaved for a few minutes to bring to temperature. The condensed soup smelled absolutely horrid; even if I have no negative reactions I'll probably not be diving head-first into MSG-based foodstuffs.

5:50 PM: Drank a large glass of water to rule out dehydration, and began to eat the soup, along with some nice toasted local sourdough. This soup is pretty salty. I'm not detecting any specific flavor of MSG, though. Distracted myself from low-quality food by watching America's Test Kitchen.

6:05 PM:Chris Kimball just compared white chocolate to playing Guitar Hero: "Why not just buy an actual guitar and learn to play it? Why not eat actual chocolate?" Remind me to stay off of his lawn. No headache so far, and no prickly electric sensations either. Kimball is trying to gag down several varieties of white chocolate and basically being an ass.

6:07 PM: His favorite white chocolate was the artificial crap without any actual cacao derivatives in it. To be fair, so was the test panel's. The winning brand was Guittard so of course he called it "Guittard Hero." Maybe I will sit on his lawn just because.

6:09 PM: Still not feeling any MSG effects. I think that normally I'd have gotten it by now. I'm thinking that it was definitely stress + dehydration + generally poor eating habits, maybe helped with high sodium levels in my food in general. Regretting that I can't drink any of the nice beverages I have in my refrigerator for fear of skewing results though. Last night I bought a bunch of natural colas (Cricket, and Taylor's Tonics Chai, both delicious) and also stocked up on beer. I guess I could do Torani and seltzer though.

6:12 PM: I am pretty dang thirsty, though. That was some salty-ass soup. Chris Kimball referred to the chocolate mousse cake as "in the software business, this would be called a 'killer app.'" I don't think he knows what "killer app" means.

6:18 PM: This is not unlike the last time I ate a McDonald's cheeseburger: so salty that I felt like I had to keep on drinking water for the next several hours. I do notice on McDonald's ingredients page that they do use MSG in their scrambled eggs and sausage — things I've eaten there without trouble since deciding I was MSG-sensitive. Also, a week ago I emailed Louisiana Fried Chicken (I place I eat at fairly often) to ask if they use MSG, although they haven't replied yet.

Okay, so that's it for now. I'll add more commentary later if I do happen to end up with some standard effects, but I think at this point it's pretty clear that at present, MSG itself doesn't cause what I experienced back in college.