Friday, February 23, 2007

CAUTION: MSG isn't just in cheap chinese food places

I was watching some news program this week when an informational venue came on and the host described a substance that is in a lot of our food, I mean from Campbell's soup to Doritos brand chips. This product is a flavor enhancer with catostrophic consequences. Its MSG or Monosodium Glutamate. This flavor additive has been found to promote swelling in brain tissue and migraines to Autism. I found an informative website, MSGTRUTH, about this if our interested, but I encourage you to go your cabinet like I did and look at some of the soups and see if you read Monosodium Glutamate on the ingredients list. The product manufacturers don't even have to spell it out they can label it as "artificial flavors."

Four good rules of thumb are:

bulletThe more salty a processed food is, the more likely it is to contain MSG or free glutamate.
bulletThe more processed a food is, the more likely it is to contain MSG or free glutamate: powdered stuff that used to be food is likely to have added MSG because the original flavor has been degraded.
bulletThe more ingredients in a packaged food, the more likely MSG is present. Read labels carefully if a food has more than five ingredients.
bulletDo not trust something simply because it is in a health food store and the label states it is natural or even organic.

FYI: These are from the website above, you can click them to be forwarded to the page I found them.

2 comments:

American Wonder said...

Thanks for showing the cool links! They are very informational and friendly to navigate. Your post has made me contemplate modern health issues relating to student life on campus. At CSUMB most students drive to their classes and eat fatty meals on a regular basis. This unfortunate fact has sparked some environmentally friendly students to lobby for healthy nutritional choices from Sodexho (the contracted food provider for the University) Associated Student leaders Tristan and Orlando also recently passed a resolution which encourages TAPS to include a bike unit so cops handing out parking tickets could set a good example! Anyway, your MSG post has made me stop eating Chicken and Stars soup so thanks for the warning!

otterblogger22 said...

That is very interesting. I had heard a long time ago about MSG being negative for the body. However, I had never heard that it could lead to such things as Autism and swelling in the brain! That is some scary stuff! Thank you for the info!