No. I would’ve thought the meta tag would be enough. I’ve never needed to set a PHP header for content-type before.
I’ve tried with MySQL 5.5.27 and 5.5.32.
Here’s the creation script, but with just the table in question:
SET @OLD_UNIQUE_CHECKS=@@UNIQUE_CHECKS, UNIQUE_CHECKS=0;
SET @OLD_FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=@@FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS, FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=0;
SET @OLD_SQL_MODE=@@SQL_MODE, SQL_MODE='TRADITIONAL,ALLOW_INVALID_DATES';
-- -----------------------------------------------------
-- Table `MessageTemplates`
-- -----------------------------------------------------
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `MessageTemplates` (
`MID` INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
`name` VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
`subject` VARCHAR(255) NULL,
`msg` VARCHAR(255) NULL COMMENT 'my comment',
`msgLong` TEXT NULL COMMENT 'my comment',
`lastupdated` DATETIME NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`MID`),
UNIQUE INDEX `name_UNIQUE` (`name` ASC))
ENGINE = InnoDB;
SET SQL_MODE=@OLD_SQL_MODE;
SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=@OLD_FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS;
SET UNIQUE_CHECKS=@OLD_UNIQUE_CHECKS;
Here is an export of the table with data. One row is for an INSERT. The other is what happens after an UPDATE (when using the text supplied from the database. If I delete and type something, the UPDATE doesn’t introduce the extra character).
Note that I have a PHP function that trims the string to 160 characters. Since each  character adds to the string length, there is a difference between the two strings.
SET SQL_MODE="NO_AUTO_VALUE_ON_ZERO";
SET time_zone = "+00:00";
/*!40101 SET @OLD_CHARACTER_SET_CLIENT=@@CHARACTER_SET_CLIENT */;
/*!40101 SET @OLD_CHARACTER_SET_RESULTS=@@CHARACTER_SET_RESULTS */;
/*!40101 SET @OLD_COLLATION_CONNECTION=@@COLLATION_CONNECTION */;
/*!40101 SET NAMES utf8 */;
--
-- Table structure for table `messagetemplates`
--
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `messagetemplates` (
`MID` int(11) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
`name` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
`subject` varchar(255) DEFAULT NULL,
`msg` varchar(255) DEFAULT NULL COMMENT 'my comment',
`msgLong` longtext COMMENT 'my comment',
`lastupdated` datetime DEFAULT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`MID`),
UNIQUE KEY `name` (`name`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 AUTO_INCREMENT=14 ;
--
-- Dumping data for table `messagetemplates`
--
INSERT INTO `messagetemplates` (`MID`, `name`, `subject`, `msg`, `msgLong`, `lastupdated`) VALUES
(12, 'INSERT Test', '', 'Due to inclement weather, the primary event location will be closed on 1/4/14. We apologize for the inconvenience. Please visit example.org for updates.', '', '2014-03-24 17:43:40'),
(13, 'UPDATE Test', '', 'Due to inclement weather, the primary event location will be closed on 1/4/14. We apologize for the inconvenience. Please visit example.orgÂ', '', '2014-03-24 17:43:59');
/*!40101 SET CHARACTER_SET_CLIENT=@OLD_CHARACTER_SET_CLIENT */;
/*!40101 SET CHARACTER_SET_RESULTS=@OLD_CHARACTER_SET_RESULTS */;
/*!40101 SET COLLATION_CONNECTION=@OLD_COLLATION_CONNECTION */;
