> Takeout food is generally unhealthy, though. The pho I've eaten has off the charts amounts of sodium

Is there something takeout places usually put in it that people who make it at home don't?

You can mask poor ingredients by dumping salt and sugar into dishes. Sugar actually stops you from tasting all the salt.

Most people have trouble adding MSG directly to their food, restaurants have no such qualms.

MSG is not unhealthy AFAIK. Wikipedia covers that for one. For anecdata see Japan. Highest life expectancy, most msg usage. And it's commonly used in home cooking

Arguably, MSG itself isn't unhealthy (in limited doses), but it enhances taste so much, that it's often used to cover up for poor quality or even expired products. For example, lower quality hot dogs without MSG and other additives are basically inedible, for the same reason junk food is tasty as well.

It's just salt and glutamic acid (naturally occurring in mushrooms, tomatoes, etc), and it immediately dissolves to each of those components in water. Usually the problem isn't with MSG but with too much salt at places that also add MSG.

I spent almost two months in Vietnam and ate tons of pho (the easiest thing to order since most restaurants have no menus and spoke no English). The amount of vegetables, if any, was very small.

I'm not sure where you were, but my wife and I just returned from 14 days in Vietnam. There was so much diversity in the food: Lemon grass, garlic, ginger, morning glory, two types of basil, onions, two types of cilantro, carrots, three types of peppers, lettuce, green onion, peanuts, sesame, shallots, cucumber, tomato, mint, banana flower, cabbage, papaya, mango, dragon fruit, breast fruit, lime. I'm sure I'm still missing a dozen.

I was referring to pho specifically. But in general, vegetables are harder to find if you are away from the tourist areas. I traveled the entire length of the country, over 2000 miles on a motorcycle, from the Cambodian border to the south, to the "North Pole" (border with China). If you saw a menu, then you ate at touristy places.

At one point, while in the extreme north, I might have eaten dog once or twice. Who knows? No one spoke English and Vietnamese is a very difficult language. Of course, no menus.

I've never seen pho with any appreciable vegetables.