MSG is it bad for you?

But never mind all this MSG talk, did you know the food industry has been subjecting us ALL to a monoester with cobinamide cyanide hydroxide for a long LONG time?! Yes, cyanide! And the FDA is completely OK with this and actually recommends we all consume it!

 

It is very hard to know every chemical/ingredient in a dish if it came out of a restaurant's kitchen....if you cooked it yourself it's impossible to know what chemicals your ingredients came into contact with unless you grew/raised all the ingredients yourself. Any reactions most likely comes from something else in the food because MSG quickly dissociates (breaks down) into sodium and glutamate in our bodies. One of which you do need in your diet.

Sodium is an essential nutrient, I believe most people know if they need to regulate that in their diet or not. Glutamate is a non-essential amino acid, but it is the most abundant and important free amino acid in the brain. Since our brain produces it's own glutamate, and because it is so important (and too much of it in the brain is very very bad for you), our brains regulate very closely how much glutamate passes through the blood brain barrier. So it doesn't matter how much you eat (of course everything has a toxicity level), if you brain doesn't need glutamate it simply isn't going to use it. If have a problem (read: a disease) with too much or too little glutamate passing the BBB you are going to have much bigger concerns than making sure a bit of Magic Sarap doesn't get into your food.

Considering the topic here I think it ironic that an enzime used to control sodium intake (Na+/K+ pump) indirectly regulates how glutamate passes the BBB.

Yes, I was referring to vitamin B12. Which would fall under the "chemical of various kinds" category you speak of. I not sure why the word "chemical" are being used in a derogatory/negative manner though. We consume, breath and touch thousands of different chemicals everyday, we are chemicals.

chemical: any substance that is formed when two or more other substances act upon one another or that is used to produce a change in another substance.
Things that are chemicals:

• Gases
• Liquids
• Solids
• Plasma

So pretty much all of this:


Things that are not chemicals:

• heat
• kinetic energy
• gravity
• potential energy
• light

I was actually speaking of vitamin B12. Apples do naturally contain cyanide.....as well as sodium.....and glutamate. This is what gets me about these "all natural" health websites, that are the ones usually pushing the MSG bs. Just because something is "natural" does not mean you should put it in your body nor does it mean that it is good for you. Clostridium botulinum is naturally occurring but I wouldn't recommend putting much of that in your body (fatal dose is 1.3 to 2.1 nanograms per kilogram). Toxicity is about dosage, almost anything can be safely consumed at the right levels.

I would suggest to anyone, especially those that don't plan on cooking for themselves at home every day, that believe they suffer from some kind of "allergy" to sodium or glutamate to go see a food allergist before you make a move to the Philippines (or anywhere else in Asia) to find out what your real-non-placebo-effect food allergies or pseudoallergies are. I'd suggest this because monosodium (salt) glutamate (found in all kinds of foods), aka MSG, is used by lazy and untalented cooks and "chefs" all over this country and Asia (note: soy sauce is loaded with the stuff.....and nothing is more "Asian" than soy sauce). I also suggest you brush up on your cooking skills before coming even if you don't have a problem with sodium or glutamate.....because the flavor "savory" that is a result from cooking with MSG gets really old, really fast.

Note: I sarcastically quoted "allergy" because MSG has never been shown to create a idiosyncratic reaction or pseudoallergy in humans.....and that's probably because if anyone were to be allergic to sodium or glutamate they would have been dead shortly after they were conceived.

 

No..... your right & good thing you reminded me as I was about to ship 100 pound sack to the in laws. Perhaps some powdered caffeine instead!