Avoiding Toxins – MSG and its evil twins
Remember when we were talking about the most important things to us when it came to toxins? This one is so ingrained in me, is such a natural part of what I look for, I forgot about mentioning it. My two biggies are MSG and aspartame, and I totally forgot them. I am sensitive to MSG, and when the food manufacturers first started relabeling it, before I realized they were doing so, I had a whole lot of problems. My migraines came back with a vengeance, my feet and hands stayed swollen, I felt terrible all of the time. People were talking a lot about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome back then, and I was worrying I might have it. I’m not the hypochondriac sort, it’s not like me to hear about a sickness and be convinced I have it. When I discovered MSG could now be called all kind of other things, I was furious. I cut it out, again, and I was fine, again.
MSG, monosodium glutamate, is one of the few chemical additives most Americans know they should be avoiding. If you aren’t familiar with it, it basically tricks your body into thinking the food is protein rich, whether it is nor not. It also stimulates your pancreas and makes it create more insulin (some research says MSG triples the amount of insulin your pancreas creates), which sets up a whole chain of events we’d rather not be happening in our bodies. Long story short, feed it to rats who are eating a low calorie diet that should be starving them, and they get fat. Feed it to rats eating a moderate diet, they get even fatter. Feed it to rats eating a high calorie diet and they get hugely obese. Much, much, much more-so than rats not getting the MSG.
Oh, it also helps you create GABA, which means it’s also addictive. Very addictive. Of course they can bet you “can’t eat just one” – they know they’ve put an addictive substance in it.
It does more bad stuff than I’ve listed, but for most of us just knowing it makes you fat, can help bring on diabetes, and is highly addictive, is enough. We can add in lots of neurological and behavioral issues, including that some kids diagnosed as ADD are fine when taken off of it, and you’ve got even more reason to avoid it.
So, many Americans are avoiding it, but it makes their food taste better, makes their food addictive, and helps manufacturers produce it cheaply. What do the food companies do? They discover if they free the glutamate from the sodium, they don’t have to call it MSG anymore, but the free glutamate gives them the same effects as the MSG did. They get the FDA to agree with them that the free glutamate is “as safe as sea salt”, and then they start marketing their glutamate filled product as having sea salt. Granted, not a lot of them are being quite that in-your-face about it, but there are some, so if it says it has sea salt, read the label. (More on labels in a minute.)
There was legislation a while back that basically said we can’t sue the food companies for putting addictive substances that have been proven to be toxins into the foods we buy from them. I’m positive the manufacturers pushed that through to cover themselves for the eventual outcry over MSG and other free glutamate products.
I’ll include a fairly complete list down below, but I’ve got keywords I look for, and that makes the list more manageable in my head. I look for the words: glutamate, hydrolyzed, protein, yeast, caseinate, gelatin, vetsin, ajinomoto, umami, flavors/flavoring, malt, barley, broth, stock, seasoning, spices, carrageenan, enzyme, citric acid/citrate, pectin, protease, fermented. If it has any of those words in the ingredients, it’s likely got some form of MSG or free glutamate in it.
And the whole Umami thing just fries my bananas. They market it as MSG free, but it’s free glutamate!
Kind of a side note – naturally occurring glutamate is fine for most people. But the processed glutamate is not the same. It’s hard to explain why without writing a full paper on it. I’ve seen a few people call it “left-handed glutamate”, which is kind of accurate but I have friends who are left-handed who don’t like for the words left-handed to refer to bad things. So maybe “mirror image” might be a better term? Backwards? At any rate, the processed glutamate makes your body react in ways the naturally occurring glutamate does not.
Processed (chemically manufactured) glutamate is in almost any processed food made by the big manufacturers. It’s in just about all fast foods.
Here is a fairly comprehensive list of the things it can legally be called on a food label:
- MSG
- monosodium glutamate
- Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein
- Hydrolyzed Protein
- Hydrolyzed Plant Protein
- Plant Protein Extract
- Yeast Food
- Yeast Extract
- Autolyzed Yeast
- Autolyzed Yeast Extract
- Glutamic acid
- Glutamate
- Sodium Caseinate
- Calcium Caseinate
- Monopotassium glutamate
- Calcium glutamate
- Monoammonium glutamate
- Magnesium glutamate
- Natrium glutamate
- Gelatin
- Textured protein
- TVP
- Soy protein
- Soy protein concentrate
- Soy Protein Isolate
- Whey protein
- Whey protein concentrate
- Whey protein isolate
- Protein fortified
- Vetsin
- Ajinomoto
- Hydrolyzed Oat Flour
The following can just be called “flavoring”, but they are MSG
- Disodium 5’-guanylate
- Disodium 5’-inosinate
- Disodium 5′-ribonucleotides
There are also a number of items that can be called “Natural Flavors” that are mostly free glutamate.
The following items often contain processed free glutamic acid:
- Malt Extract
- Malt Flavoring
- Maltodextrin
- Barley Malt
- Bouillon
- Broth
- Stock
- Flavoring
- Natural Flavors
- Natural Beef Or Chicken Flavoring
- Seasoning
- Spices
- Carrageenan
- Enzymes
- ____ enzyme modified or enzyme modified _______
- Citric Acid
- Citrate
- Pectin
- Protease
- fermented ______
For people ultra sensitive to MSG, things like corn oil, corn starch, corn syrup, rice syrup, dextrose, and pretty much any reduced fat milk product will give them a reaction.
Further Reading: Wikipedia article on Excitotoxicity
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Previous posts in this series:
- Pollution in China (prequel to the series, sort of)
- High Fructose Corn Syrup – why it is bad
- Avoiding Toxins – Non Stick Pans
- Avoiding Toxins – Petroleum Products in lotions and make-up
- Avoiding Toxins – Flame Resistant Pajamas
- Avoiding Toxins – Fingernail Polish
- Avoiding Toxins – Sunscreen
- Avoiding Toxins – Bisphenol-A (BPA) in canned goods and other products
- Avoiding Toxins – Examining a Make-Up Label
- Avoiding Toxins –MSG and it’s evil twins
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February 15th, 2012 at 10:42 am
Holy crap. What is left to eat? This is making me want to die a little bit. So skim milk is out? What if it is organic milk? Going to slit my wrists slowly….ughhhhhhhhhhhhh……
Seriously considering buying ranch land in Wyoming and raising my own animals and not bathing or anything else. Our world stinks that this is what has happened to our food. :(
February 15th, 2012 at 12:45 pm
I’m confused about TVP. . . I thought it was simply vegetable protein. We’re vegetarian and I use Bob’s Red Mill TVP in our “fake chicken soup” sometimes if I’m not using tofu or Garbonzos. I use that, homemade veggie broth, some carrots, celery and pasta and it’s a family favorite. I’m in a panic thinking I’ve been feeding MSG to my family. . . can anybody clarify a bit for me. Thanks
February 15th, 2012 at 1:51 pm
RQ – Thank you so much for doing this series –it’s been eye opening to say the least and my head is spinning.
Question – I recently heard that there is a “loop hole” in the system for organic grown foods. For example the plant can start in an organic base but at a certain stage the plant can be transplanted to “regular” field but still be sold as organic Have you heard of such a loop hole?
February 15th, 2012 at 2:18 pm
Yep. MSG is my big enemy too, along with aspartame. I have a severe sensitivity/allergy to it. As soon as I eat something with it, my tongue goes numb. I did not have as complete of a listing as you have given in this post, but I did know that manufacturers do slip it in under the guise of other names. It is infuriating to me. Also, some Chinese restaurants will assure me they don’t use MSG, but then I still get sick. Some say they use chicken seasoning instead. It’s interesting to know that that is still of form of it. I wonder how many people actually have a sensitivity to it and have no idea. Probably some of the health issues people have could be cured by cutting out these substances.
February 15th, 2012 at 3:10 pm
Leah, I agree. This whole toxin series has me very very sad. Who is really looking out for humanity? I suppose the argument is that a species such as ours could not sustain itself beyond what nature naturally balances out without all these chemicals and additives, so do we continue to populate the world or do we see widespread famine and a decreasing but perhaps healthier population? I don’t know, but clearly the idea of trusting that one’s government is on the side of keeping it’s people healthy is false. And the fact that companies are owned and managed by fellow human beings is also not a guarantee that they want to keep the species healthy. How do these people sleep at night? So what is there to do? I don’t have time to grow my own food and frankly I can’t keep a house plant alive — I guess without all these chemicals I would not even survive natural selection.
February 15th, 2012 at 3:16 pm
I struggled badly with reactive hypoglycemia in my 20′s. After I got stabilized with the whole sugar thing, the one thing that would set me off for a good 10 years after that was MSG. The two worst reactions I ever had were actually from restaurant food. The first time it was at a fried seafood place. I called the restaurant after I recovered and asked them if there was MSG in any of the food I ate that evening. They informed me that it was in the seasoning in EVERYTHING I ate. I learned since that it is very common to have MSG in restaurant seasonings, especially at seafood restaurants that serve a lot of breaded fried food.
Then I almost passed out after I had ranch dressing in a nice restaurant while on vacation. I didn’t order it, but my husband did, and all I did was try a couple bites of his salad. The reason I tried two bites instead of one was because the dressing was SOOO good. Ranch often has it, and that’s what makes us like it. Newman’s Own didn’t list it (but I haven’t checked for the msg impostors) and their ranch tasted qualitatively different from everyone else’s. Marie’s has a Zesty Ranch that doesn’t list it (but again, I haven’t taken RQ’s list yet to the bottle), and it really doesn’t have that yummy addictive flavor. Both are quite a bit sweeter.
I spent years avoiding processed foods with MSG, but I never had a bad reaction at home, even when I ate them occasionally. I was so surprised to learn that the amount I was getting in restaurant food far exceeded the amount contained in the junk food and other processed foods we had in our pantries. It’s frustrating because we can’t just check labels in restaurants. Well-meaning servers sometimes think they are giving you accurate information, but only very well-trained ones really know that much about the food. A friend of mine was a restaurant owner and told many people that their ranch dressing didn’t have MSG. He didn’t add it himself, so he assumed it wasn’t there. Not until he talked to me did he realize that the Hidden Valley Ranch mixes he was using DID contain MSG.
So, we have additional challenges if it’s harder to gain access to the information about the foods we’re eating.
February 15th, 2012 at 5:53 pm
Roughly 10-15% of the Caucasian population will have a sensitivity to MSG (headaches, fatigue, general malaise type feelings), a smaller percentage will have more serious reactions, even a full-blown allergy (blurred vision, numbness/tingling in extremities, trouble breathing, anaphylactic shock). MSG was originally associated with Chinese food and other Asian cuisines (Korean and Japanese usually being exceptions). I have an Asian cuisine cookbook that actually has MSG listed as an ingredient to add in many recipes. Apparently, the sensitivity is very rare among Asians. As RQ has pointed out, it is also present in many processed foods. Since MSG sensitivity received a lot of press a decade or two ago, they have cut down on how much is added, and many Chinese restaurants omit it all together, or at least have no problem making to order w/o it.
I have the more severe reaction to MSG. I was told years ago that MSG is a Chinese-American restaurant thing, and that it wasn’t used in China. If anyone’s told you that, they are wrong. MSG is used in every restaurant we went to in China. I had special cards printed up that I showed to every restaurant hostess and waitress I encountered. I’ve had food pulled away from me just as I was about to eat as a waitress realized at the last minute that it had MSG. If you are truly sensitive to MSG, please take precautions when in China!
http://www.selectwisely.com/
This is where I got my allergy cards from. I’m glad I did.
February 16th, 2012 at 3:58 pm
You’re right, luvbugsmom–I completely forgot about the Chinese restaurants. They are so well known for using msg, I always knew to ask for food without it. I also got allergy cards to take to China, but by that time, my blood levels had stabilized and my hypoglycemia was pretty much under control. A little msg doesn’t set me off the way it used to.