MSG or monosodium glutamate has been blamed for many health problems over the years ranging from headaches to nausea. MSG is used as a food enhancer and can be found in processed foods, soups, and many more foods. MSG is considered an unhealthy food additive, and it goes by different names in the ingredients.
MSG is an Excitotoxin
Glutamic acid is considered the culprit in MSG and is known as an excitotoxin. An excitotoxin is something that excites the brain cells. They cause the brain cell to fire their impulses rapidly until they are exhausted and sometimes killing the brain cells.
Why Use MSG
MSG is a flavor enhancer and some say used to actually make you want more of the food you ate that had MSG in it. MSG as a flavor enhancer makes cheap food taste better, so a company can use less real food to make a product by adding more MSG flavor enhancing additives.
There is a saying that MSG can make dirt taste good, and it could be true.
Is MSG Safe
There have been many reports from individuals concerning how eating foods with MSG affect their health in a negative way. In 1995, the FDA reaffirmed the safety of MSG and found no evidence that it causes long-term health problems.
The FDA did admit that some people could have short-term reactions to MSG. The negative symptoms of eating MSG include:
- Headaches
- The feeling of swelling in the face
- Flushing and or sweating
- A rapid fluttering of heartbeats or heart palpitations
- Nausea
- Chest pain
- Shortness of breath
- Numbness, burning or tingling around the mouth area
- Weakness
If you ate enough foods all day that contained MSG, it would build up and accumulate in your body. This could lead to some of these symptoms later at night including the heart palpitations.
As people are now growing up eating more MSG containing foods, we could be getting more sensitive to it, which makes its reactions in our body worse when we eat it.
Does MSG Cause Obesity
The old joke about eating Chinese food and being hungry an hour later is no joke when it comes to MSG and our health. Studies have shown that MSG does cause obesity in mice. It does this by down-regulating our body’s appetite suppression, in other words, it makes us feel hungry sooner.
MSG could be considered the anti-appetite suppressant since it does make you feel hungrier sooner. MSG stimulates the pancreas, which in turn causes it to produce insulin, even when there is no reason to produce it. Blood sugar then drops and you are hungry again sooner.
Dr. John Olney, a neuroscientist and an expert on the effects of aspartame and glutamic acid on the brain found that MSG caused obesity in lab animal tests in the 1960s.
The belly fat that MSG causes to accumulate is the more dangerous type of fat that gathers around the waist, which is more dangerous for the heart.
In 1969, Dr. Olney published a study using mice, where he found MSG given to mice caused obesity and other neuroendocrine disorders due to lesions of the hypothalamus portion of the brain.
Among its many important functions, the hypothalamus controls body temperature, hunger, thirst and sleep cycles[PubMed].
When scientists do obesity and diabetes studies using mice, they first have to make them obese since there aren’t any obese mice, to begin with. To make them obese they give them MSG when they are first born.
MSG and Disease
Scientists now believe that they have found a link to increased levels of glutamate in the brain to multiple sclerosis and there are studies that claim MSG can cause autism in children. The effects of MSG can be worse in children, where an adult might just get a headache, a child could get behavioral problems, autism or ADD (Attention deficit disorder).
Currently, pharmaceutical companies are coming out with glutamate blocking drugs to help with Alzheimer’s disease. Glutamic acid is associated with Parkinson’s disease, MS, Huntington’s disease, ADHD, Alzheimer’s, ALS and migraines.
Who Paid For The MSG Studies?
How To Avoid MSG
Glutamate, monosodium glutamate, MSG, calcium caseinate, autolyzed yeast extract, hydrolyzed protein, hydrolyzed vegetable protein, hydrolyzed plant protein, yeast extract, plant protein extract, textured protein, hydrolyzed oat flour and sodium caseinate, monopotassium glutamate, glutamic acid, gelatin, and Ajinomoto.
The following additives often contain or create MSG during processing:
Flavor(s) and flavoring(s), natural flavor(s) and flavoring(s), natural pork flavoring, bouillon, natural beef flavoring, stock, natural chicken flavoring, broth, malt flavoring, barley malt, malt extract, (the word "seasonings"), carrageenan, soy sauce, soy sauce extract, soy protein, soy protein concentrate, soy protein isolate, pectin, maltodextrin, whey protein, whey protein isolate, whey protein concentrate, natural beef or chicken flavoring, anything protein fortified, protease, protease enzymes, anything enzyme modified, enzymes, anything ultra-pasteurized, anything fermented.
There are so many additives it is impossible to keep track of, you practically have to be a chemist to know exactly what is in your food today. If MSG concerns you, the best rule of thumb is to avoid foods that have ingredients you can’t pronounce and or don’t know what they are.
About the Author
Sam Montana is a certified Food Over Medicine instructor from the Wellness Forum Health Center and certified in optimal nutrition from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
© 2009-2019 Sam Montana
