I think that's exactly what I mean by "paranoia". It's certainly true that MSG makes food taste better than it "really does", and makes you want to eat more-- as do added salt, sugar, or any seasoning for that matter.
For some reason only in MSG does this quality inspire distrust.
I think it's a distinction of scale. It's like the difference between chewing on a cocoa leaf and smoking crack cocaine. They both have an effect, just one is so much more refined in a way that our bodies haven't co-evolved with for thousands of years.
The same holds true for the difference between eating fruit and drinking HCFS soda or the difference between drinking beer and distilled spirits.
One might even liken it the difference between gnawing on a stick of sugar cane and eating ice cream, or licking a rock and eating a salty potato chip :) I still haven't seen the thing that makes MSG especially sinister.
I've got some foggy memories about this from talking to a nutritionist a few years ago. A quick google search brought up an abstract to a study from some time ago.
Indeed, the most important finding concerning MSG showed that motivation to eat recovered more rapidly following a lunchtime meal in which MSG-supplemented soup was served as the first course (compared both with the effect of unsupplemented soup and no preload)
Regardless, MSG is exactly the sort of "industrial edible food-like product" that I'm avoiding for aesthetic reasons, if nothing else.
For some reason only in MSG does this quality inspire distrust.