MSG: Is This Silent Killer Lurking in Your Kitchen Cabinets?

[Guest guest]

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/04/21/MSG-Is-This-Silent\

-Killer-Lurking-in-Your-Kitchen-Cabinets.aspx

 

MSG: Is This Silent Killer Lurking in Your Kitchen Cabinets?

 

by Dr. Mercola

A widespread and silent killer that’s worse for your health than alcohol,

nicotine and many drugs is likely lurking in your kitchen cabinets right now.[1]

“It†is monosodium glutamate (MSG), a flavor enhancer that’s known widely

as an addition to Chinese food, but that’s actually added to thousands of the

foods you and your family regularly eat, especially if you are like most

Americans and eat the majority of your food as processed foods or in

restaurants.

MSG is one of the worst  food additives on the market and is used in canned

soups, crackers, meats, salad dressings, frozen dinners and  much more. It’s

found in your local supermarket and restaurants, in your child’s school

cafeteria and, amazingly, even in baby food and infant formula.

MSG is more than just a seasoning like salt and pepper, it actually enhances the

flavor of foods, making processed meats and frozen dinners taste fresher and

smell better, salad dressings more tasty, and canned foods less tinny.

While MSG’s benefits to the food industry are quite clear, this food additive

could be slowly and silently doing major damage to your health.

What Exactly is MSG?

You may remember when the MSG powder called “Accent†first hit the U.S.

market. Well, it was many decades prior to this, in 1908, that monosodium

glutamate was invented. The inventor was Kikunae Ikeda, a Japanese man who

identified the natural flavor enhancing substance of seaweed.

Taking a hint from this substance, they were able to create the man-made

additive MSG, and he and a partner went on to form Ajinomoto, which is now the

world’s largest producer of MSG (and interestingly also a drug

manufacturer).[2]

Chemically speaking, MSG is approximately 78 percent free glutamic acid, 21

percent sodium, and up to 1 percent contaminants.[3]

It’s a misconception that MSG is a flavor or “meat tenderizer.†In

reality, MSG has very little taste at all, yet when you eat MSG, you think the

food you’re eating has more protein and tastes better. It does this by

tricking your tongue, using a little-known fifth basic taste: umami.

Umami is the taste of glutamate, which is a savory flavor found in many Japanese

foods, bacon and also in the toxic food additive MSG. It is because of umami

that foods with MSG taste heartier, more robust and generally better to a lot of

people than foods without it.

The ingredient didn’t become widespread in the United States until after World

War II, when the U.S. military realized Japanese rations were much tastier than

the U.S. versions because of MSG.

In 1959, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration labeled MSG as “Generally

Recognized as Safe†(GRAS), and it has remained that way ever since. Yet, it

was a telling sign when just 10 years later a condition known as “Chinese

Restaurant Syndrome†entered the medical literature, describing the numerous

side effects, from numbness to heart palpitations, that people experienced after

eating MSG.

Today that syndrome is more appropriately called “MSG Symptom Complex,â€

which the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) identifies as " short-term

reactions " to MSG. More on those “reactions†to come.

Why MSG is so Dangerous

One of the best overviews of the very real dangers of MSG comes from Dr.

Blaylock, a board-certified neurosurgeon and author of “Excitotoxins: The

Taste that Kills.†In it he explains that MSG is an excitotoxin, which means

it overexcites your cells to the point of damage or death, causing brain damage

to varying degrees -- and potentially even triggering or worsening learning

disabilities, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Lou Gehrig’s

disease and more.

Part of the problem also is that free glutamic acid is the same neurotransmitter

that your brain, nervous system, eyes, pancreas and other organs use to initiate

certain processes in your body.[4] Even the FDA states:

“Studies have shown that the body uses glutamate, an amino acid, as a nerve

impulse transmitter in the brain and that there are glutamate-responsive tissues

in other parts of the body, as well.

Abnormal function of glutamate receptors has been linked with certain

neurological diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease and Huntington's chorea.

Injections of glutamate in laboratory animals have resulted in damage to nerve

cells in the brain.â€[5]

Although the FDA continues to claim that consuming MSG in food does not cause

these ill effects, many other experts say otherwise.

According to Dr. Blaylock, numerous glutamate receptors have been found both

within your heart's electrical conduction system and the heart muscle itself.

This can be damaging to your heart, and may even explain the sudden deaths

sometimes seen among young athletes.

He says:

“When an excess of food-borne excitotoxins, such as MSG, hydrolyzed protein

soy protein isolate and concentrate, natural flavoring, sodium caseinate and

aspartate from aspartame, are consumed, these glutamate receptors are

over-stimulated, producing cardiac arrhythmias.

When magnesium stores are low, as we see in athletes, the glutamate receptors

are so sensitive that even low levels of these excitotoxins can result in

cardiac arrhythmias and death.â€[6]

Many other adverse effects have also been linked to regular consumption of MSG,

including:

Obesity

Eye damage

Headaches

Fatigue and disorientation

Depression

Further, even the FDA admits that “short-term reactions†known as MSG

Symptom Complex can occur in certain groups of people, namely those who have

eaten “large doses†of MSG or those who have asthma.[7]

According to the FDA, MSG Symptom Complex can involve symptoms such as:

Numbness

Burning sensation

Tingling

Facial pressure or tightness

Chest pain or difficulty breathing

Headache

Nausea

Rapid heartbeat

Drowsiness

Weakness

No one knows for sure just how many people may be “sensitive†to MSG, but

studies from the 1970s suggested that 25 percent to 30 percent of the U.S.

population was intolerant of MSG -- at levels then found in food. Since the use

of MSG has expanded dramatically since that time, it’s been estimated that up

to 40 percent of the population may be impacted.[8]

How to Determine if MSG is in Your Food

Food manufacturers are not stupid, and they’ve caught on to the fact that

people like you want to avoid eating this nasty food additive. As a result, do

you think they responded by removing MSG from their products? Well, a few may

have, but most of them just tried to “clean†their labels. In other words,

they tried to hide the fact that MSG is an ingredient.

How do they do this? By using names that you would never associate with MSG..

You see, it’s required by the FDA that food manufacturers list the ingredient

“monosodium glutamate†on food labels, but they do not have to label

ingredients that contain free glutamic acid, even though it’s the main

component of MSG.

There are over 40 labeled ingredients that contain glutamic acid,[9] but you’d

never know it just from their names alone. Further, in some foods glutamic acid

is formed during processing and, again, food labels give you no way of knowing

for sure. 

Tips for Keeping MSG Out of Your Diet

In general, if a food is processed you can assume it contains MSG (or one of its

pseudo-ingredients). So if you stick to a whole, fresh foods diet, you can

pretty much guarantee that you’ll avoid this toxin.

The other place where you’ll need to watch out for MSG is in restaurants. You

can ask your server which menu items are MSG-free, and request that no MSG be

added to your meal, but of course the only place where you can be entirely sure

of what’s added to your food is in your own kitchen.

To be on the safe side, you should also know what ingredients to watch out for

on packaged foods. Here is a list of ingredients that ALWAYS contain MSG:

 Autolyzed Yeast

 Calcium Caseinate

Gelatin 

 Glutamate

Glutamic Acid

Hydrolyzed Protein 

 Monopotassium Glutamate

Monosodium Glutamate 

Sodium Caseinate 

 Textured Protein

Yeast Extract

Yeast Food 

 Yeast Nutrient

 

        

These ingredients OFTEN contain MSG or create MSG during processing:[10]

 Flavors and Flavorings

Seasonings 

Natural Flavors and Flavorings 

Natural Pork Flavoring

Natural Beef Flavoring 

 Natural Chicken Flavoring

Soy Sauce 

Soy Protein Isolate 

Soy Protein 

Bouillon 

 Stock 

Broth 

Malt Extract 

Malt Flavoring 

Barley Malt 

 Anything Enzyme Modified

Carrageenan 

Maltodextrin 

Pectin 

Enzymes 

 Protease 

Corn Starch 

Citric Acid 

Powdered Milk 

Anything Protein Fortified 

 

Anything Ultra-Pasteurized 

 

 

 

So if you do eat processed foods, please remember to be on the lookout for these

many hidden names for MSG.

Choosing to be MSG-Free

Making a decision to avoid MSG in your diet as much as possible is a wise choice

for nearly everyone. Admittedly, it does take a bit more planning and time in

the kitchen to prepare food at home, using fresh, locally grown ingredients. But

knowing that your food is pure and free of toxic additives like MSG will make it

well worth it.

Plus, choosing whole foods will ultimately give you better flavor and more

health value than any MSG-laden processed food you could buy at your

supermarket.

[1] Mercola.com “The Shocking Dangers of MSG You Don’t Know,†video Part 1

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2007/08/28/dangers-of-msg.asp\

x?aid=CD12

[2] Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation, s, Jack “MSG Dangers and

Deceptionsâ€

http://www.ppnf.org/catalog/ppnf/Articles/MSG.htm

[3] Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation, s, Jack “MSG Dangers and

Deceptionsâ€

http://www.ppnf.org/catalog/ppnf/Articles/MSG.htm

[4] MSGTruth.org “What Exactly is MSG?â€

http://www.msgtruth.org/whatisit.htm

[5] U.S. Food and Drug Administration “FDA and Monosodium Glutamate (MSG)â€

August 31, 1995

http://www.foodsafety.gov/~lrd/msg.html

[6] eMediaWire “Athlete Alert: Renowned Neurosurgeon Identifies Aspartame &

MSG in Sudden Cardiac Death†April 15, 2005

 

http://www.emediawire.com/releases/2005/4/emw225071.htm

[7] FDA Consumer Magazine “MSG: A Common Flavor Enhancer†January-February

2003

http://www.fda.gov/fdac/features/2003/103_msg.html

[8] TruthinLabeling.org “This is What the Data Say About Monosodium Glutamate

Toxicity and Human Adverse Reactionsâ€

http://www.truthinlabeling.org/Proof_AdverseReactions_AR.html

[9] Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation, s, Jack “MSG Dangers and

Deceptionsâ€

http://www.ppnf.org/catalog/ppnf/Articles/MSG.htm

[10] Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation, s, Jack “MSG Dangers and

Deceptionsâ€

http://www.ppnf.org/catalog/ppnf/Articles/MSG.htm

 

Love, Gabby. :0)

http://stemcellforautism.blogspot.com/

 

" I know of nobody who is purely Autistic or purely neurotypical. Even God had

some Autistic moments, which is why the planets all spin. " ~ Jerry Newport

 

 

[Guest guest]

Thanks, Gabby -

 

Josh is allergic to MSG - something found out when he was quite young when he

had a respiratory reaction to something containing it (just don't remember what

the food was at the moment).  His reaction follows the same pattern - starts

with dark circles under his eyes, then he gets very tired, then it's like he

gets totally congested and " spurgles " up horrible phlegmy stuff - if we don't

catch it by then, he goes into an asthma attack.  Not fun.  Thanks for

printing up the list of what else may contain MSG or produces MSG in the food

processing.  I've had that list for years (although my list didn't containt the

ultra-pastreurized stuff - could explain a reaction he had not long ago when I

bought organic, yet ultra pastreurized, milk), have passed it on to family

members, and I'm really careful about making sure foods prepared at other places

is MSG free.  There are some items on the list that he doesn't seem to have as

much of a reaction to, if

any.  I know the MSG itself, anything autolyzed or hydrolyzed, and some of the

other ones do cause more severe reactions. 

 

Thanks again for posting this for everyone.

 

Sherry and Josh