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.
"It"
is monosodium glutamate (MSG)1, 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," 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. Russell 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."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." 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.
