I had bought a bag of the flamin’ hot cheetos last year and was munching away in the car driving home from work. They sure are hot and since I like hot I kept munching away and thinking ‘what kind of pepper are they using in these things to get that certain spicy flavor?’ I thought they might be using 2 different kinds of pepper perhaps so when I got home I scope out the ingredients and…NO PEPPER AT ALL! --From what I could figure they obtain their unique hot and spicy zing from a combination of MSG and citric acid. In fact the MSG is pretty far up there on the list. So unless I’m mistaken, I was once…— at any rate I haven’t touched them since.
Interesting too that the Doritos- I also like the Salsa Doritos- also have alot of MSG; also very high on the list of ingredients. Maybe I’m overly wary of msg due to all the ‘we use no msg’ signs at Chinese food places. Anyone have any thoughts or more knowledge on this? -mike
If you are concerned that you have may have problems with MSG - and you ate those Cheerios or Doritos and didn’t have problems, don’t worry.
I don’t need to look at ingredient lists or ask if something has MSG in it. I can tell within 15 minutes of ingesting something that does. My face will get flushed and hot. My sinuses will start to swell. And, if I get a high enough “dose”, I’ll loose my voice and start to have some breathing trouble.
MSG stands for “monosodium glutanate” and it’s a “flavor enhancer”. Certain flavors present themselves better on the tongue when the tongue has been “primed” by something else. Fat is a flavor enhancer - that’s why fat free foods taste pretty bland. MSG is the same thing. It primes the taste buds to accept the salty / sweet / acid and bitter flavors (all other “flavors” aren’t sensed by the tongue, but are actually aromas that are sensed by the nose, that’s why when you have a cold, food taste weird).
So - unless you are “sensitive / allergic” to MSG, there’s really nothing “wrong” with it. And, like I said, you would have known you were sensitive after eating that bag of Cheerios.
Missy
Missy, I hear what you’re saying and no I don’t have allegic reactions to msg but am still not so sure it’s ok and not to worry. I may not have ‘problems’ with alot of things like artificial sweeteners but I avoid them like the plague. I’m just thinking that msg may still not be good for you even though it doesn’t cause an allergic reaction. - mike
it is best to avoid all of that artificial processed food…but oh so hard to do it.
They nasty.
hi miwokhill—Well I’m sure one mega dose won’t hurt you even if it’s best to avoid it. I don’t know the research on msg. But I do remember once in a Chinese restaurant I started feeling sort of strange. I was with a pretty large group of people and I finally blurted out that I thought I might be going crazy because my cheeks felt numb. Then everyone else said that they were feeling the same way. We decided it must have been a very large dose of msg we got. Or maybe I was actually going crazy and the others became hysterically crazy. But I’ve never had those symptoms since.
I can just see you peering away at the label 
, hunting and hunting for something that would explain the flavor----one of life’s odd little moments.
missy, he wasn’t eating flamin’ hot Cheerios, they were Cheetos. Maybe you don’t eat that much junk food. I would be mighty surprised to see Flamin’ Hot Cheerios on the shelf.
But I surely found your response most informative.
Sometimes one can find hot versions of Chex mix, with Cheerios. 
:roll: Well, okay, and I suppose you might find them in haggis too on occasion. And what are those things crawling on you?
Nooo, my dear! It’s not difficult at all!
At least, not after you get beyond a certain point.
After you’ve been off the junk for even a short while, it will taste just terrible when you do happen to eat some. You realize it’s basically tasteless, dry yuck with a lot of salty flavoring.
It’ll taste overwhelmingly nasty, to such an extent that you will be inspired to leave it alone.
Frogs. They’re on Jeff Corwin*, though, not me.
*The hottest non-whistle playing man in the world, of course.
From now on, cran, whenever I think of you, I’ll think of you as Jeff Corwin with frogs on him…in a pair of really cute hemp sandals 
Peggy, I swear, you just look so you.
Thank you.
The reason I brought it up, about the hot cheetos, is that they were so hot and spicy I was curious as to what kind of peppers they had in them. I was shocked to not see any peppers listed at all but the msg/citric acid combination seeming to be what makes them spicy. This made me also check the Doritos and they are loaded with msg as well. Nothing to do with allergic reactions but I’ll avoid these in the future and be a little more careful about checking the snack food ingredients.
I think Peggy got it right. – I think this stuff is potentially unhealthy, to say the least.
- or maybe Cranberry said it best, ‘they nasty’
-mike
Doritos also have beef fat in them.
At least, they did when I last checked, a couple years ago.
On the ingredient list, it was listed as ‘naural flavor’.
A bit deceptive, if you ask me…
Deceptive is right. At the moment Doritos is putting ‘0 grams trans fat’ on a banner on the front of the bag as if to suggest ‘eat all you want, no fat’ when the whole bag has a total of 91 grams of fat. It’s like the recent low carb craze. All of a sudden you’d see all these low carb banners plastered on the front of the box as if that’s all you’d need to know to mindlessly purchase the product.
I like Fritos better. They only have three ingredients: corn, oil, and salt.
Mmmm… Aji no Moto
[Weekender ponders hijacking thread to enumerate nastiest snack foods of the salty chippy variety]
It all started with Pringle’s and has been downhill ever since. I remember when they came out. The uniform shape, that sorta reminded one of a potato chip, so they would stack perfectly. The novelty can, guaranteeing they wouldn’t crush. But the dryish texture always bugged me. I still don’t like em not to mention the principle of mashing up a potato then re-forming it. I think Bugles mighta come out around the same time. I still don’t know why they taste so weird. Other oddities: Funyuns.
I think Cheetos have been around a long time though.
When I was a teenager, you had to go to a dinkly little Mexican restaurant in San Pablo to get these chips: they had cut up corn tortillas and deep-fried 'em. People talked about em like Krispy Kreme donuts. They were in a basket! And you could dip em! Eventually they became the universal tortilla chip but it wasn’t always so, to you young’uns. There was a time, not so long ago, that you could not buy a bag of tortilla chips anywhere (at least in this part of Calaforney). Isn’t that shocking? We’re talking mid-60s. Now I think you can buy em on Mars.
As for salsa, it used to be a side-relish to serve with meats. Hard to imagine really!! No cheeps!