If people are afraid of monosodium glutamate, then shouldn't they fear pizza as well? That's the tongue-in-cheek message from MSG supplier Ajinomoto, which planted a conspiracy theorist on TikTok to lay out—jokingly—why pizza should be “canceled” just as MSG was 60 years ago. 

As the actor points out in the #CancelPizza campaign from Edelman, MSG is a naturally occurring ingredient in pizza toppings such as cheese and tomatoes. “Our bodies cannot distinguish the difference between the MSG that's in this and what's in this stuff,” holding up a bottle of MSG seasoning.

Indeed, the “glutamate in MSG is chemically indistinguishable from glutamate present in food proteins,” according to the FDA.

“People want to cancel MSG,” he says, “but shouldn't that mean we should also cancel pizza.” The @CancelPizza TikTok account posted its first video on July 24, but Ajinomoto waited until today to reveal that the conspiracy theorist was an actor and that it was behind the campaign. 

The supplier tapped influencers including chef Jonathan Kung, home cook Roice Bethel, Food Science Babe, as well as dietitians Shana Spence and Dalina Soto, to debunk some of the common myths surrounding MSG, which has long been thought to be unsafe despite studies showing that not to be the case. One of the reaction videos garnered 8 million views.

MSG began getting a bad reputation in the 1960s when a small group of doctors blamed it for causing them to experience numbness, headaches and palpitations after eating Chinese food. The published reports fueled Chinese xenophobia and many Americans began associating MSG with being dangerous, even though it is “generally recognized as safe,” according to the FDA.

MSG isn't just found in Chinese restaurants, either, but also in fast food, condiments, pizza and other products. 

This isn't the first time Ajinomoto, a Japanese company, has fought against the misconceptions about MSG. In January 2020, it tried to persuade Merriam Webster to update the entry, “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome,” the umbrella term for that numbness, headaches and palpitations doctors wrote about. The entry includes a disclaimer that the term is “dated” and “sometimes offensive.”

During the height of pandemic lockdowns, months following the “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome” campaign, Ajinomoto and Edelman ran a campaign showing celebrities eating Chinese takeout in their homes and encouraged others to order from Asian restaurants, which had been severely impacted by COVID-19.

In 2022, Ajinomoto took aim at the term “clean eating” by inviting Goop creator and actor Gwyneth Paltrow to a dinner that had MSG, which Goop had indicated was not part of a “clean eating” regimen.