Is This Silent Killer Lurking in Your Kitchen Cabinets

Is This Silent Killer Lurking in Your Kitchen Cabinets

mercola.com.sites.articles

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.

MSG Bahaya

MSG IS DANGEROUS — THE SCIENCE IS IN

www.foodrenegade.com.msg

Ask anyone if MSG is dangerous, and you’ll get a myriad of responses. Some of the more scientifically-minded among us will scoff at the notion that MSG is dangerous or poses real health risks. Sure, they’ll allow, there are a few sensitive people who get headaches or migraines when they eat it, but MSG doesn’t actually harm the rest of us.

Or does it?

Are you one of the many who don’t believe that MSG is dangerous? Or do you, like me, believe that because it is a newfangled substance invented in 1908, we should inherently distrust it as a food additive and seriously question its safety?

And, if you are like me, what scientific research do you use to convince the doubters among your circle of family and friends? The good news is the science proving MSG is dangerous is out there, and I’ve collected a lot of here for you.

Research on the dangers of MSG continues to mount, albeit slowly. Some contend that funding for such projects is inevitably sparse. After all, why would the food industry (which funds most of these sorts of research ventures) want to spend money proving the detrimental effects of one of its chief money makers?

There are a growing number of people who report immediate, adverse reactions within minutes eating MSG. Perhaps you’re one of those people? Or, maybe you know someone who is sensitive?

Typical MSG complaints include:

·         burning sensations of the mouth, head and neck, (1)

·         weakness of the arms or legs, (1)

·         headaches, (1)

·         upset stomach, (1)

·         hives or other allergic-type reactions with the skin.(2)

Wait! You say. I call foul. How do they know that what these people experienced was actually because of eating MSG? How were these experiments controlled? Were they double-blind? That’s the only real way to do epidemiological research like this.

It’s true that when people self-report what they’re eating or how they’re feeling their own bias tends to get in the way. They misremember exactly what they ate. They make associations between what they ate and how they think they ought to feel.

But double blind studies on the effects of MSG have been done. These are studies where neither the participants nor the ones administering the study know who consumed MSG. Everything’s randomized and controlled by researchers a step removed from the process.

And, guess what? Even these double blind studies also found that MSG exposure caused muscle tightness, fatigue, numbness or tingling, and flushing in sensitive people.(3)

But what if you’re not one of these people? What if MSG causes no noticeable or immediate reaction in you?

SHOULD YOU STILL CONSIDER MSG A DANGEROUS FOOD ADDITIVE?

Yes!

That’s because the effects of MSG are cumulative. Just because you don’t react to MSG now, doesn’t mean you won’t later. According to Dr. Russell Blaylock, who wrote a book on the subject called Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills, sensitivity to MSG builds up in our bodies until we reach what he calls our “threshold of sensitivity.”

That’s because MSG overstimulates our nervous system — exciting our nerves and causing an inflammatory response. With time, these repetitive inflammatory responses cause our nerves to start producing more and more nerve cells that are sensitive to this kind of stimulation. The more overly-sensitive nerve cells we have, the stronger our immediate response to MSG will be.(4)

THAT SAID, YOU STILL MAY BE SCRATCHING YOUR HEAD ABOUT MSG.

If the worst that can happen is a migraine headache or some hives, why worry about eating it now, when it causes no reaction in you?

Way back in 1957, a team researchers decided to see if glutamate could help repair a diseased retina. Remember, glutamate is a common and necessary amino acid in our diet (arguably the most common neurotransmitter in the brain), so this presupposition isn’t so far fetched. The researchers fed rats MSG and were shocked by their results.

Rather than repairing the disease, the MSG destroyed the retinal cells that allow vision!

A decade later, the neuroscientist Dr. John Olney used their method of destroying retinal cells so that he could study visual pathways to the brain. He found that MSG not only destroyed retinal vision cells, but also parts of the brain. This brain damage was done as neurons became over excited, virtually exciting themselves to death. He called this “excitotoxicity,” and that has led subsequent researchers to describe MSG as an “excitotoxin.”

While the naturally occurring glutamates in food aren’t dangerous, processed free glutamic acids like MSG are.

Not only do they cause brain damage and lead to nervous disorders, but they also cause radical hormone fluctuations. Mice injected with MSG become rapidly obese, inactive, and have other hormonal issues.(5)

Wait! You say. Those are mice and rats. We’re people. We’re bigger, biologically different. Surely it won’t affect us the same way.

Unfortunately, that argument doesn’t hold much weight. Humans are 20 times more sensitive to MSG than monkeys, 5 times more sensitive than rats.(6) We have glutamate receptors on every major organ, hard-wired into our brains, and even on the tip of our tongue! That means that one fifth the level of MSG used to cause obvious brain damage to a rat will do the same to you.

And what about growing babies? It turns out that MSG is especially harmful to pregnant or nursing mothers because infants and young children are four times more sensitive to MSG than adults!(7) Dr. Blaylock elaborates:

Many studies have shown that glutamate plays a major role in how the brain is formed during development. There is a programmed rise and fall in brain glutamate levels during brain formation, which occurs in humans not only during intrauterine life, but until the age of 27.

This oscillation in brain glutamate is very critical, and any disruption in glutamate levels has dire consequences. It has been shown that during pregnancy, a diet high in MSG increases the developing baby’s glutamate levels to those twice as high as the mother’s. This can significantly alter how the baby’s brain forms and functions.

Very high MSG intake (of any excitotoxin) can cause abnormal learning, addiction risk, and behavioral, emotional control, and endocrine problems later in the baby’s life.

We now know, for instance, that glutamate is the main control neurotransmitter for the hypothalamus. This section of the brain controls most of your hormones, eating behavior, temperature control, pain regulation, and sleep habits, as well as the autonomic control of your heart, GI tract, lungs, and bladder. When animals are fed MSG early in life, they develop severe abnormalities, which include a short stature, small endocrine organs (pituitary, adrenal glands, thyroid, ovaries, testes and pancreas), and a high risk of seizures and impaired learning. (8)

I don’t know about you, but this is enough to raise alarm bells.

Not only is MSG not a traditional food, not only are many people immediately sensitive to it, but it can also interrupt the hormonal and biological development of my children!

Lest you think this is all fanciful, it’s important to remember that a number of studies have found that the effects of MSG can occur cumulatively over time with subsequent exposure. For example, a study done with animals found that MSG exposure over a period of 3-6 months led to significant risk for damage to the retinas of the eyes.(9) Initially, there was no visible damage, but multiple exposure over a period of time led to the irreparable injury.

It’s simply not worth the risk.

SO, IF YOU WANT TO AVOID MSG, HOW CAN YOU DO IT?

Turns out, it’s harder than it looks.

If all you had to do was read food product labels and put anything that said “monosodium glutamate” back on the shelf, you could maybe handle it without much difficulty. Or, if you could trust a food manufacturer’s claim that there is “No MSG added” to their food, that would be relatively simple too.

But, MSG hides in more than 40 other FDA-approved ingredients. Because the manufacturer didn’t add an ingredient called “monosodium glutamate,” they can “truthfully” claim “No MSG added” on their label. Yet, nothing is stopping them from adding ingredients that contain MSG. In that case, the manufacturer only has to list the name of the actual ingredient added, not the ingredients within those ingredients.

So, they can say a food includes “spices” or “flavorings” when that spice mix includes MSG. They can say the food includes “yeast extract” or “hydrolized soy protein” without telling you that the process of creating those ingredients also creates processed free glutamic acids (also known as MSG).

FOR MORE ON WHERE MSG MAY BE HIDING IN YOUR FOOD LABELS, I’VE CREATED A HANDY, DOWNLOADABLE, EASY-TO-PRINT GUIDE FOR YOU.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD A LIST OF MSG-CONTAINING INGREDIENTS

Premis Makanan Bersih Selamat & Sihat

Premis Makanan Bersih Selamat & Sihat

Semua orang mau makan makanan yang bersih, selamat & sihat kerana ada pendapat yang mengatakan kebanyakkan penyakit berpunca dari makanan yang anda makan.

Justeru, untuk mencari kedai nmakanan yang betul betul bersih serta mengikut peraturan dan undang undang adalah sukar namun ada di luar sana.

Amalan Pengendali makanan:

1.   Telah menghadiri kursus pengendali makanan bersih, sihat & selamat.

a.   Tidak berkuku panjang → bakteria merbahaya boleh membiak dan bersarang dibawahnya.

b.   Tiada luka atau pembalut plaster luka → bakteria merbahaya boleh membiak dan bersarang dibawahnya.

c.   Tidak memakai cincin → bakteria merbahaya boleh membiak dan bersarang dibawahnya.

d.   Tidak mempunyai perangai buruk seperti menggunakan air liur untuk membuka bekas plastik.

e.   Tidak merokok semasa memasak → habuk rokok masuk ke dalam makanan.

f.     Tidak menggunakan minyak goreng berulang kali sehingga minyak menjadi hitam dan tidak lagi sesuai untuk menggoreng makanan.

g.   Tidak membakar sate sehingga hitam hangus.

h.   Tidak meletak makanan di atas lantai → makanan atas permukaan rendah lebih senang dicemari oleh habuk tanah bakteria dsbnya.

i.     Tidak memakai slipar → Selipar dilarang pakai kerana boleh meleting air lantai yang kotor masuk ke dalam makanan yang mahu dihidangkan.

j.     Membasuh telur sayur, buah dsbnya sebelum dimasak.

k.    Memakai apron dan topi tutup kepala yang bersih.

l.     Mempunyai sekurang kurangnya tiga helai kain lap yang berlainan warna untuk mengelap perkakasan makanan serta pinggan mangkuk.

m. Bebas daripada penyakit berjangkit seperti Hepatitis B, Hepatitis A, HIV, TB dsbnya.

2.   Telah disuntik pelalian Typhim yang sah untuk 3 tahun.

3.   Mengetahui serba sedikit mengenai :

a.   Bakteria berbahaya yang boleh membiak dalam makanan dan menyebabkan keracunan makanan.

b.   Bahan tambah (Food Additives) dalam makanan

c.   Logam berat (heavy metals) dalam makanan

d.   Pewarna makanan tiruan (artificial food coloring)

e.   Perasa makanan tiruan (artificial food flavour)

f.     Bahan Awet Makanan.

Premis makanan:

1.   Mempunyai bekalan air bersih yang sempurna termasuk kemudahan tandas dan kemudahan tempat membasuh tangan yang disertakan sabun.

2.   Bebas dari agen pembawa penyakit seperti lalat, nyamuk, lipas, tikus dan monyet.

3.   Mempunyai sijil pengiktirafan premis bersih daripada KKM dan Majlis Perbandaran.

Makanan mentah:

1.   Disimpan dalam peti sejuk dibahagian bawah bersuhu minus 8°C.

2.   Tidak disimpan dengan makanan yang sudah dimasak bagi mengurangkan kejadian pencemaran makanan silang.

3.   Tidak menggunakan surat khabar sebagai pembalut makanan kerana cat huruf dalam surat khabar dikenalpasti mempunyai logam berat (Plumbum) yang merbahaya kepada kesihatan anda.

Makanan yang telah dimasak:

1.   Dimakan segera kerana makanan yang telah lama tersimpan pada suhu bilik akan menggalakan pembiakan pelbagai serotypes bakteria merbahaya seperti E. Coli, Salmonella, Staphylococcus dsbnya.

2.   Tidak diletakkan dalam pinggan plastik atau bekas makanan yang terdiri daripada keluarga plastik kerana kebanyakkan plastik adalah merbahaya kepada kesihatan anda. Pinggan melamin juga adalah diperbuat daripada plastik. Plastik diperbuat daripada minyak mentah (crude oil).

3.   Pastikan makanan dihidangkan dalam pinggan kaca yang tidak mempunyai corak bunga kerana corak bunga pelbagai warna dikhuatiri mengandungi logam berat seperti Timah Hitam (Plumbum). Plumbum boleh menyebabkan anemia kerosakkan saraf dan kerosakkan buah pinggang.

4.   Makanan boleh juga menggunakan pinggan stainless steel.

Terpulang kepada anda kerana dayung dan sampan telah disediakan , menunggu anda sahaja untuk membuat keputusan yang paling bijak, selamat & sihat.

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://nutrition.moh.gov.my/wp-content/uploads/201705/FA-Buku-RNI.pdf

 

http://nutrition.moh.gov.my/artikel/

 

 

.