Uncovering Hidden MSG in Our Food and Products

[Cyrus]

It just seems that what you describe would be classified as an allergic reaction. Some people say MSG is not good for you, (allergic reactions aside). I don't know if that's true or not, but I tend not to drink the water when I get Pho because (1) I don't want a belly full of water and (2) I don't want a belly full of MSG water.

 

[turbo]

It just seems that what you describe would be classified as an allergic reaction. Some people say MSG is not good for you, (allergic reactions aside). I don't know if that's true or not, but I tend not to drink the water when I get Pho because (1) I don't want a belly full of water and (2) I don't want a belly full of MSG water.

You are an idiot.

If you would like to contact the ER of the Lincoln, Maine hospital and ask why they withheld epinephrine when I presented with signs of anaphylaxis, or ask to interview the ER nurses on duty then, you would find out the truth very quickly. When I awoke, the ER doctor who attended me was there beside me in tears, asking me to forgive her, and she semed convinced that I was going to sue her and ruin her career. I only wanted to go home to my wife.

 

[Cyrus]

Huh?

All I said was that it appears you had what would be an allergic reaction to something in the MSG. Cant an allergic reaction cause the same problems? I think you misread what I wrote!

What I said was that MSG in and of itself is not harmful to people (putting alergic reactions aside). I.e. you can drink the stuff day and night and you won't get cancer or whatever harmful side effects people think the stuff has. (I don't know what the claim is specifically).

I have food with MSG in it and I am not going to any hospitals.

Nowhere did I say these spreads are poisonous, dangerous, etc, but to a subset of people they will cause reactions, and to a smaller subset, they can cause life-threatening reactions.

I never said otherwise.

 

[Moonbear]

Anaphylactic shock IS an allergic reaction...a very severe allergic reaction. So, yes, what turbo is describing is an allergy to MSG. Most people with a sensitivity to MSG react more with symptoms like flushing and headache, not full-out anaphylactic shock, but sensitivity to MSG is not all that uncommon. He mentions Chinese food, because it at least used to be commonly used in Chinese foods in the US (Americanized Chinese food).

I don't know what the ER doc was up to though. It shouldn't have even mattered if it was the MSG or some other ingredient in the food as of yet unidentified...if you're presenting with severe allergic symptoms, you treat those symptoms and worry about figuring out what they are for later. She was right to worry about a possible lawsuit for holding back on giving epinephrine.

 

[hypatia]

Ripe cheese is full of glutamate, so are tomatoes. It occurs naturally in many foods, including mothers milk and yeast*. In many asian countries, its derived from seaweed. Its most commonly found in asian soups{ramen}, which is a daily dish.
The difference may have something to do with manufactured MSG, which comes from certain strands of bacteria, verses naturally occurring glutamate.

* its the yeast in Marmite that is the source of glutamate.

 

[Garth]

Allergic reactions aside, Marmite is one thing we Brits miss most when abroad...

Our mothers gave it to us when we were little kiddies, to "make us strong".

Australian Vegemite is similar but stronger and sweeter.

You have to have it spread veerry thinly on buttered water biscuits, or bread, as its taste is so strong.

Garth

 

[Moonbear]

Ripe cheese is full of glutamate, so are tomatoes. It occurs naturally in many foods, including mothers milk and yeast*.

Glutamate is actually a normally occurring amino acid that our bodies require for normal function, so it doesn't make sense to be sensitive to glutamate itself.

The difference may have something to do with manufactured MSG, which comes from certain strands of bacteria, verses naturally occurring glutamate.

I don't know if it's that the concentration of glutamate in those foods exceeds some upper limit that leads to the problem in some people, so not that glutamate in general is a problem, but that too much glutamate is. Likewise, glutamate isn't usually available as a free salt in foods, but contained within the amino acids, so the form it's in could lead to a different reaction than in the bound form. Or, it's possible there's something else in trace amounts from the manufacturing process that's really the allergen in MSG other than the MSG itself.

Marmite is really nasty anyway, so I'm certainly not going to force anyone to eat it who doesn't want to. It's one of the few foods I've tried in my life that I couldn't even politely finish the bite I took and just refuse seconds. The other ones were dulce (I think that's how it's spelled...dried seaweed popular in the Maritimes apparently), and liver (can't even stand being in the same house as it's being cooked in).

 

[turbo]

I don't know if it's that the concentration of glutamate in those foods exceeds some upper limit that leads to the problem in some people, so not that glutamate in general is a problem, but that too much glutamate is. Likewise, glutamate isn't usually available as a free salt in foods, but contained within the amino acids, so the form it's in could lead to a different reaction than in the bound form.

I think that is probably the case that the free salt form allows rapid absorption. I can eat ripe cheeses, tomatoes, mushrooms, beets, etc all day long and never have a problem. In fact one of my favorite sandwiches is a CLT made with very sharp Vermont cheddar, fresh lettuce, garden tomatoes, and mayo on rye bread. When our garden tomatoes start ripening off, I eat them every day. Let me eat any processed foods, though, and I'll be in trouble very quickly.

For those who might want to know, if you Google on MSG, you can find long lists of the many dozens of aliases under which MSG is added to processed foods. The USDA only requires the food industry to call an additive MSG if it is 97% purity or higher, and let's them call it by the method through which the MSG was produced, like "natural flavorings", "autolyzed yeast", "modified vegetable protein", "modified food starch" etc, etc. You can easily find prepared foods that contain unlabeled MSG from several sources, giving you a very high dose without your knowledge. I've written my senators and my congressmen (one of which was on the agriculture committee at the time), asking for truth in glutamate labeling, and have gotten either no response or a vague form letter that says nothing. Somehow, I doubt that the lobbyists for Archer-Daniels-Midland and Con Agra would get the brush-off.

If you start getting headaches, numbness in the extremities, etc after eating something, look at the labels or ask the person who prepared the food what ingredients they used. Some of the very worst offenders are bullion cubes, vegetable broths, dried soup mixes (Lipton's onion soup mix is loaded with MSG) and prepackaged seasoning mixes for making dressings and sauces. Meals made with these ingredients are proudly (and legally, in the US) promoted as being MSG-free in restaurants all over the country, when in fact they may contain far more MSG in total than products that honestly disclose the MSG in their labeling. At one time, I enjoyed eating out in restaurants - after becoming sensitized to MSG, I cannot take the chance.

 

[marmite_junkie]

Hi,

Im shocked to find out after all these years of eating marmite that its basically a glutamate source. In fact seems to be about the highest levels of free glutamate in it of any food source as far as I've seen so far, approximately double that of soy sauce(see chart below, sourced, and better presented, in wikipedia)

http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/printarticle.php?id=7405

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monosodium_glutamate

Approximate Quantities in Food
The following table illustrates the glutamate content of some selected common foods, in milligrams of glutamate per hundred grams of food. Free glutamate is metabolized differently from glutamate bound in protein, so they are listed separately. [5]

Food Free glutamate (mg/100g) Bound glutamate (mg/100g)
Chinese soy sauce 1090
Japanese soy sauce 782
parmesan cheese 1200 9847
tomatoes 140 238
peas 200 5583
corn 130 1765
cow milk 2 819
human milk 22 229
eggs 23 1583
chicken 44 3309
duck 69 3636
beef 33 2846
pork 23 2325
salmon 20 2216
vegemite 1431 0
marmite 1960 0

Worth reading those links.

Personally I will now markedly reduce my consumption of marmite, and use it sparingly.

Previously, I could eat it thickly on toast and lick it off a teaspoon...

I think Ill be a little more cautious in future...

 

[marmite_junkie]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeast_extract

Yeast extract is the common name for various forms of processed yeast products that are used as food additives or flavourings. They are often used in the same way that monosodium glutamate (MSG) is used, and, like MSG, often contain free glutamic acids

Autolyzed yeast
Autolyzed yeast or autolyzed yeast extract consists of concentrations of yeast cells that are allowed to die and break up, so that the yeasts' digestive enzymes break their proteins down into simpler compounds.

Yeast autolysates are used in Vegemite (Australia), Marmite, Promite, Oxo (South Africa, United Kingdom, and Republic of Ireland), and Cenovis (Switzerland). Bovril (The United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland) switched from beef extract to yeast extract for 2005 and most of 2006, but later switched back. Autolyzed yeast extract is also the primary source of monosodium glutamate for the food industry.


Hydrolyzed yeast
Hydrolyzed yeast or hydrolyzed yeast extract is another widely used food additive, used for flavouring purposes.


Manufacture
The general method for making yeast extract for food products such as Vegemite and Marmite on a commercial scale is to add salt to a suspension of yeast making the solution hypertonic, which leads to the cells shrivelling up; this triggers autolysis, in which the yeast self-destructs. The dying yeast cells are then heated to complete their breakdown, after which the husks (yeast with thick cell walls which wouldn't do the texture much good) are separated.

 

[marmite_junkie]

ingredient list of marmite:

Yeast Extract
Salt
Vegetable Extract
Niacin
Thiamin
Spice Extracts
Riboflavin
Folic Acid
Celery Extract
Vitamin B12

 

[marmite_junkie]

from marmite web site:

"We recommend a 2g serving of Marmite for children. This is 13% of the suggested daily salt intake for a child aged 1-6 years

Age Daily Dietary salt target for the population

1 - 6 years 2g "

therefore, is 2g marmite provides 13% of 2g of salt, salt is 0.26g in 2g marmite, ie therefore marmite (to me shockingly) seems to be 13% salt, and presumably as yeast extract is the highest ingredient, I would suggest that yeast extract represents somewhere between 70 and 80% of the product.

 

[marmite_junkie]

another good article:

http://www.truthinlabeling.org/II.WhereIsMSG.html

Where is MSG hidden?

MSG can be used (and hidden) in processed food, dietary supplements, cosmetics, personal care products, and drugs. It can be used in waxes applied to fresh fruits and vegetables. It can be used as ingredients in pesticides, fungicides, fertilizers, and plant growth enhancers -- remaining in the edible portion of the plant or on the edible portion of the plant when its leaves, fruits, nuts, grains, and other edible parts are brought to market.

..."There are over 40 food ingredients besides "monosodium glutamate" that contain processed free glutamic acid (MSG). Each, according to the FDA, must be called by its own, unique, "common or usual name." "Autolyzed yeast," "maltodextrin," "sodium caseinate," and "soy sauce" are the common or usual names of some ingredients that contain MSG. Unlike the ingredient called "monosodium glutamate," they give the consumer no clue that there is MSG in the ingredient. "...

..."In 1997, MSG was introduced in a plant "growth enhancer" (AuxiGro) to be applied to the soil or sprayed on growing crops. Today, we know of no crop that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has failed to approve for treatment with AuxiGro. People first reported MSG reactions following ingestion of lettuce, strawberries, and giant russet potatoes in 1997 -- people who didn't know at the time that those crops might have been sprayed with a product that contained MSG. "...

an interesting article, worth reading in its entirety