Processed Food, Artificial Flavouring and MSG in Our Diet

Posted on 01. Jan, 2010 by Oksana Irwin in Food & Health, Good Food, Good Home Living

When the homemade stocks were pushed out by the cheap substitutes, an important source of minerals disappeared from the American diet. To enhance the taste and flavour of soups, food processing industry substitutes the real broth that is too expensive to make with cheep artificial meat-like flavours.

In the 1950s, food companies discovered how to induce Maillard reactions and produce meat-like flavours in the laboratory. In a General Foods Company report issued in 1947, chemists predicted that almost all natural flavours would soon be chemically synthesized. Following the Second World War food companies discovered monosodium glutamate (MSG), a food ingredient the Japanese had invented in 1908 to enhance food flavours, including meat-like flavours. Humans actually have receptors on the tongue for glutamate—it is the protein in food that the human body recognizes as meat.

Unfortunately, the free glutamic acid in MSG has a very different effect in the body than the natural glutamic acid in food, one that is harmful, especially to the nervous system. Any protein can be hydrolyzed to produce a base containing MSG, but the usual source is soy. When the industry learned how to make the flavour of meat in the laboratory using inexpensive proteins from grains and legumes, the door was opened to a flood of new products including bullion cubes, dehydrated soup mixes, sauce mixes, TV dinners, and condiments with a meat-flavoured base.

The fast food industry could not exist without MSG and other artificial meat flavours to make secret sauces and spice mixes that beguile the consumer into eating bland and tasteless food. The sauces in processed foods are basically MSG, water, thickeners and emulsifiers and some caramel coloring. Your tongue is tricked into thinking that it is getting something nutritious when it is getting nothing at all except some very toxic substances. Even the dressings, the Worcestershire sauce, rice mixes, dehydrated soups, all of these and anything that has a meat-like taste has MSG in it. Almost all canned soups and stews contain MSG, and the “hydrolyzed protein” bases often contain MSG in very large amounts.

So-called “homemade soup” in most restaurants is usually made by adding water to a powdered soup-base or soup cubes and then adding chopped vegetables, etc. Even things like lobster bisque and sauces in the seafood restaurants are full of these artificial flavours. It’s all profit based. The industry even finds it too costly to just use a little onion and garlic for flavouring, so they are using the artificial flavours instead.

Most of the vegetarian foods are loaded with these flavourings. The list of ingredients in vegetarian hamburgers, hot dogs, bacon, baloney, etc. may include hydrolyzed protein and other “natural” flavourings. Soy foods contain large amounts of MSG as it is formed during processing. MSG is also formed during the spray drying of milk, so it is in reduced-fat milk because spray dried milk is added to these products.

How to Recognize MSG in Labelling

The most toxic additives in our food supply are MSG, hydrolyzed protein, and aspartame, and the first two are in all of these secret sauces with “natural flavours.” Anything that you buy that says “spices” or “natural flavours” contains MSG! The industry avoids putting MSG on the label by putting MSG in spice mixes, and if the mix is less than 50% MSG, manufacturers don’t have to put it on the label. You may have noticed that that phrase “No MSG” has actually disappeared. That’s because MSG is in all the spice mixes. Even Bragg’s “Liquid Aminos” had to take “No MSG” off their label.

Health Problems Caused by MSG

The industry has known about the health problems caused by MSG for a long time. In 1957 scientists found that mice became blind and obese when MSG was administered by feeding tube. In 1969, MSG-induced lesions were found in the hypothalamus region of the brain. Subsequent studies all pointed in the same direction. MSG is a neurotoxin substance that causes a wide range of reactions, from temporary headaches to permanent brain damage. We have a huge increase in Alzheimer’s, brain cancer, seizures, multiple sclerosis, and diseases of the nervous system, and one of the chief reasons is these flavourings in our food. MSG is also associated with violent behaviour.

Most surprisingly, MSG causes obesity! In laboratory experiments on obese rats, scientists induce obesity by feeding the animals MSG.

Ninety-five percent of processed foods contain MSG, and as you may know, in the late 1950s it was added to baby food. After some congressional hearings on this subject, the industry told us they had taken it out of the baby food, but they didn’t really remove it. They just called it by another name–hydrolyzed protein. I recommend that everyone read the book Excitotoxins, by Dr. Russell Blaylock. He describes how the nerve cells either disintegrate or shrivel up in the presence of free glutamic acid, that is, MSG, if it gets past the blood-brain barrier.

By Sally Fallon