Glutamate: A Double Edged Sword…….. Part 3: MSG – Fueling Disease, Obesity, Depression, Cancer, Suicide, etc

Who doesn’t enjoy a quick and easy meal for the family from Kentucky Fried Chicken, Chick-fil-A, Burger King, McDonalds, or Pizza Hut? What about eating french fries dipped in Hidden Valley Ranch dressing (my past favorite) or munching on flavored Doritos, Cheetos, or Pringles? How many times have we opened a can of food to eat a quick meal such as Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup or added a little Accent seasoning to our food? Not coincidence, all these foods, and thousands more, contain a common addictive ingredient called “monosodium glutamate”, which prior to the mid-20th century, never existed before in the United States. Like GMO foods, it is one of the most debated topics, concerning the safety of its consumption and on our health. While these debates continue to take place, both items also continue to damage not only our health, but the brains of our children and grandchildren as well as how their nervous systems are being formed during development. As the future unfolds, will we contemplate on this point in time with regret as we witness our children or grandchildren victims to learning problems; or as adults, experiencing emotional or hormonal difficulties such as obesity, infertility or cancer?

Monosodium Glutamate, better known as MSG, is the sodium salt of glutamate, which possesses the same excitotoxic properties as pure glutamate. For thousands of years, Japanese cooks prepared their dishes with seaweed kelp also known as “sea tangle” or “kombu”, to enhance their foods. They often referred to this heightened flavor as “umami”, a Japanese word for basic taste. It was only in the 20th century that the active chemical of this ingredient was isolated, synthetically replicated, and shortly afterwards, turned into a worldwide multi-million dollar industry.

Today, MSG is used everywhere as a food additive to greatly enhance the flavor of even the blandest foods. Ironically, even though MSG does not have a particular taste, it has an unremarkable ability to make even the poorest quality of food taste wonderful. The only purpose for adding MSG to food is to chemically stimulate the taste cells on our tongue, which immediately send a signal to our brain fooling it into thinking something actually tastes better than it does. When we like what we eat, we consume more; therefore, food manufacturers are able to sell additional products, increasing their profits. If we were to eat food that already tasted good, there would be absolutely no reason to add MSG. Simple as that!

MSG was introduced in the United States in 1948 and, since that time, the amount of MSG, within our food system, has doubled every decade. MSG, minus the salt, is better known as pure glutamate! It is because of the use of this food additive, MSG, that we are now seeing such a dramatic increase in glutamate-related health problems. It is involved in or affected by every illness, health disorder, disease, and cancer. Most of us are unaware of this MSG (glutamate) connection, but ironically, the pharmaceutical companies are not. While you are reading this article, they are busy concocting the next big line of money-making drugs, which coincidently happens to be “glutamate-blocking” drugs. Although we need glutamate, God provides our bodies enough, without having to supplement it with additional glutamate by way of adding MSG.

The human body was never meant to be exposed to the devastating amount of glutamate contained in our food today. You have to wonder what God must be thinking as he’s looking down. We are consuming MSG, a food additive, which is increasing our body’s natural glutamate levels above capacity, making it now highly toxic to our nerve cells. Instead of simply removing this additive, mankind is spending more time and money to create yet another drug to miraculously block or make the glutamate effects disappear. This is not the answer! Biologically, God designed our body’s nerve system to depend on an extremely delicate balance of what is called excitatory neurochemicals, such as glutamate and inhibitory ones such as GABA. One chemical excites our nerve cells so they can perform a certain task and the other calms the nerve cells down. Glutamate is necessary but only in the minutest amounts, with the ratio inside to outside the brain cell being 1,000 to 1. When in excess to God’s designed ratio and regardless of where it comes from, glutamate becomes an “excitotoxin” causing severe damage and death to our cells. The detrimental effects from this glutamate excitotoxicty are being shown in studies at an increasingly alarming rate:

A growing list of neurological, psychiatric and cognitive disorders, including: Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, ALS, Huntington’s, Depression, Anxiety, Schizophrenia, Autism, ADHD, Obsessive-compulsive disorder, chronic pain, addiction, strokes, and brain injury. (1,2,3)
Significant inflammation, central obesity, type 2 diabetes, liver inflammation and dysplasia (4,5,6)
The explosion of obesity which is a metabolic and hormonal disorder, such as hypertension, with serious social and psychological impacts among the young and even among older people. (7,8)
Excessive dietary glutamate during pregnancy and early childhood that can cause a child’s brain wiring to develop abnormally. This can lead to learning and language difficulties, as well as behavioral problems such as depression, anxiety, aggressiveness, impulsive violence, and risk-taking. (9,10)

As the debate on MSG continues, let us seek our knowledge from what is known about the use of this additional glutamate, added to our food. The Life Sciences Research Office of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) prepared a safety report in 1995 on MSG for the FDA. The safety information, presented to the public by the news media, left the impression that the FASEB gave MSG a clean bill of health. THIS WAS NOT TRUE AT ALL! The in depth analysis, which the media DID NOT apparently read or report on, clearly stated that NO studies had ever been performed to show the safety of MSG and, in fact, that there were several clinical, as well as research, evidence to support the real danger of MSG ingestion. According to the FASEB report, the amount of glutamate found in foods was easily sufficient to cause brain injuries in babies and small children, as well as being sufficient to cause damage in adults, especially the elderly. This damage is cumulative in nature, taking place over a long period of exposure. (11)

MSG, like GMO foods, exists only to increase the profits of others, at the expense of our health. Neither items has ever been proven to be safe and therefore, should not exist in our food. This topic has been debated for decades, just as the debate on smoking and whether it causes cancer. As an example, the link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer was first demonstrated by German researchers as early as the 1920’s, yet it remained largely ignored by the United States. It was decades later that the U.S. scientists finally came to agree that tobacco kills about 400,000 Americans every year and causes 80 to 90% of lung cancers. When Tokyo’s National Cancer Center Research Institute showed that lung cancer was twice as common among the non-smoking wives of smokers, as among those of nonsmokers, again it took another decade before the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released data showing that secondhand smoke was responsible for 20 to 30% of all lung cancer, that is, the deaths of 3,000 Americans a year. (12)

As I end this 3rd-part series on “glutamate” and the unprecedented amounts used in our food today, I share what may be one of the boldest statements I’ve read, concerning the jeopardy of our future generations. It was made by Dr. David Ludwig, director of the obesity program at Children’s Hospital Boston. As one of the authors of a published report in the New England Journal of Medicine on the prevalence and severity of obesity in our children, he stated that our generation of children could basically be the first in the history of the U.S. to live shorter lives than their parents. (13,14) Should this be surprising since MSG is purposely used to create obese mice for diabetic studies? (15) Are our children now replacing these mice as test subjects? We should all pray that it doesn’t take decades before more eyes and minds are opened because the lives of our children, grandchildren and future generations are now at a great risk!

“Watch carefully then how you live, not as foolish persons but as wise making the most of the opportunity because the days are evil.” (Ephesians 5:15-16)

Books/Additional Resource Info:

“Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills” by Dr. Russel Blaylock, MD

“In Bad Taste: The MSG Symptom Complex” by George R. Schwartz, MD

MSGTruth.org

Msgmyth.com

References:

(1) www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25777273

(2) www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16400245

(3) www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2428340

(4) www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18178378

(5) www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2724042/

(6) www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21616776