Monosodium Glutamate Dangers: What's the facts?

[tvenuto]

You are allergic to proteins. These proteins are judged by you immune system to be an invading organism. So, I don’t believe those things can be allergens if they aren’t proteins.

As bryan123 has stated, while it’s good to be rigorous in terminology, just because you aren’t allergic to something doesn’t mean it’s not causing you an issue. If you don’t think you should be eating MSG, or dairy, or whatever else, it’s a good idea to avoid it.

[SpyderEdgeForever]

tvenuto: Some related nutrition questions for you:

1 How can allergic reactions to food and other materials be reversed/cured?

2 How much salt is too much or too little?

3 What are the real benefits of vitamin c? If a person eats thousands of miligrams of vitamin c every day is that a guarantee that they will not get colds or the colds will go away fast?

4 How can someone call a food "Junk food" if the food has redeeming nutritional value in it such as vitamins and minerals and iron? If you look at the nutrition labels on such things as mass produced snack cakes even they use enriched flour and have niacin and iron and other things that are good for you.

5 What is the best and fastest and cheapest and easiest and safest way for a person to lose weight fast and keep it off?

[tvenuto]

Disclaimer: I'm no doctor and none of this is advice, for entertainment purposes only.

tvenuto: Some related nutrition questions for you:

1 How can allergic reactions to food and other materials be reversed/cured?

Allergies are interesting. Sometimes, overexposure can result in an allergy, such as a nurse getting a latex allergy. Sometimes, gradual exposure can reduce the allergy. Other times, people just "grow out" of a particular allergy. I don't think we have a perfect understanding of how or why allergies develop or persist. Just take a look at recommendations surrounding introducing children to peanuts, they've waffled back and forth on when you should do it. If we could reliably cure or reverse an allergy, we wouldn't see the number of allergic reaction related deaths that we still see.

2 How much salt is too much or too little?

Not enough info. Sodium is a required electrolyte in the body, but too much sodium is lethal (acute poisoning). Also, a chronically elevated sodium intake will result in increased blood volume and higher blood pressure, which can stress the heart and has shown to be an issue. I would say: don't worry about it. Eat natural foods in quantities that your appetite dictates. If you salt food, too much salt will make it taste too salty. If you are lacking in sodium, I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that you'll crave salty foods.

The greatest modern health tragedy is our obsessive and futile effort to out-think our body's own regulatory mechanisms. We are wrong at every turn (example: misjudged saturated fats are replaced by the actually harmful trans-fat).

3 What are the real benefits of vitamin c? If a person eats thousands of miligrams of vitamin c every day is that a guarantee that they will not get colds or the colds will go away fast?

How does continued existence sound? Vitamin C is termed an essential nutrient, which means:
1. Your body can't produce (synthesize) it from other materials
2. You'll die without it

Vitamin C is one of those, and is exceedingly easy to acquire, being in many fresh fruits and veggies. I think you know that there is no guarantee that someone won't get sick, and I think that vitamin C's role in the immune system has been overblown (similar to spinach being considered some "superfood", a term I hate with a passion). I actually think there's been some emerging research that suggests consuming a huge amount of antioxidants can actually inhibit your body's own antioxidant mechanisms, which, SURPRISE!!!, are more effective than consuming antioxidants. I believe there is solid research for zinc supplementation reducing the length of a cold, like the active ingredient in Cold-EEZ.

4 How can someone call a food "Junk food" if the food has redeeming nutritional value in it such as vitamins and minerals and iron? If you look at the nutrition labels on such things as mass produced snack cakes even they use enriched flour and have niacin and iron and other things that are good for you.

I am against placing value judgments on individual foods, since judging foods individually is useless. BLUEBERRIES ARE A SUPERFOOD!!! Oh yea? Eat 100% blueberries and see where you end up. In a grave, that's where. Not so super, are they?

That being said, if you aren't lacking in those nutrients, then the sugar load from eating the snack cake is far more deleterious than the vitamins you might be receiving. On the flip side, if you were about to die of anemia, then eat the fortified snack cake! See how the surrounding circumstances affect our decision making? So this is why I say: foods aren't healthy or unhealthy, only decisions are healthy or unhealthy.

If you live in a first world country, and are carrying a few extra pounds: probably a good decision to avoid the snack cake. Get that iron from spinach!

5 What is the best and fastest and cheapest and easiest and safest way for a person to lose weight fast and keep it off?

Unfortunately, the answers to all of these are different.
Best (also safest): Eat meat and veggies, some nuts and seeds, some fruit, very little starches and little to no sugar. Drink mostly water, and nothing sweet. Eat slowly, and chew your food thoroughly, and try to eat in a calm environment. Exercise with resistance, either weights or bodyweight, and do moderately challenging aerobic activity. The "weight" will stay off, but by that I mean you'll reduce your bodyfat. You might not actually get that much lighter due to the muscle gain.

Fastest: Spend 3-5 days drinking as much water a humanly possible, with lemon. Spend a day or two eating some fruits, but after that drop all carbs. Only dark green veggies, and meat, some added fats (olive oil, butter, avocado). After the 5th day of water, stop drinking all but the tiniest amount of water (you'll get some water from your veggies). On the 7th day, you should have dried out pretty thoroughly, and may have dropped up to 15lbs in water, depending on your weight. The weight will come right back when you resume a sustainable diet, but if you need to make a weight class for a sport, or win an office "lose weight" competition, this is a good strategy.

Cheapest: Stop eating. Make sure you resume before death sets in, in which case the weight will come back. On the plus side, if death sets in the weight will stay off.

[SpyderEdgeForever]

Thank you for the helpful advice!

[bryan123]

The American College of Allergy and Immunology wrote an official position statement that says that MSG is not an allergen. Not capable of causing IgE mediated reactions like anaphylaxis.

[awa54]

The American College of Allergy and Immunology wrote an official position statement that says that MSG is not an allergen. Not capable of causing IgE mediated reactions like anaphylaxis.

The term allergy gets used very generically by the general public these days, many people's "allergies" are really sensitivities... some perfumes and air fresheners make me tear up and/or sneeze, but I'm not technically allergic to them :D

[JD Spydo]

What Brother "Tvenuto" said about food and other allergies has me really interested. Because in my life I've experienced some friends with some of the weirdest allergies you could imagine. One day way back in the 1970's a very good friend of mine came to my new home at the time and 3 of us cooked up some fresh shrimp that another buddy got fresh from the Gulf Coast and flew them to us here in the KC area. It was about 12 pounds of it and it was fresh and delicious. I boiled about half of it and deep fried the other half and we ate like ravenous pigs :D

About two hours later my friend started saying that he felt like something was wrong. I immediately started suspecting that the Shrimp may have had something wrong with them. But after about 6 people came and went and I asked all of them if they were OK and no one but my friend Bobby was sick. It got worse and he had a look of literal death on his face. We immediately took him to a very good Emergency Room here in the KC Area (Shawnee Mission Medical Center) that had a sterling reputation for saving people's lives.

Well they worked on him for an entire evening. About 3:00am one of the doctors came out and told us that he was in the first stages of anaphylactic shock due to a food allergy>> yes he was literally allergic to shrimp of all things. The doctor at the time told us that allergies to shell fish was not very common but it was even life threatening to people who were allergic to them. They also said that if he ate shrimp again it could be fatal for him.

My brother had a good friend of his that they took to the hospital after they had eaten some fresh pecans that came from North Missouri. They were told by the doctors if he ever ate another pecan again it would probably kill him. Everyone at the time was in total disbelief about this guy's pecan allergy. What I've noticed in the past if I eat any Chinese food ( which I love by the way) and if they have loaded the meal with MSG it will make me red and flush all over as if I took some niacin tablets which historically did about the same thing. Since then I won't eat any food where they have flavored it with MSG.