Can you eat just one?

No you can't because there is something in that potato chip that tells your brain, "Eat more." What is it? MSG!

Carol, a friend of mine has been having several medical problems. She'll see a doctor, they'll put her on a pill but her symptoms continue. Is it all in her head? The other night she typed in her symptoms on google and she was shocked to find MSG may be the culprit. Try it yourself. Type MSG into google and what will come up will floor you.

What's MSG? Isn't that the stuff they put in Chinese food? Yes and more. MSG was discovered in 1906 by a Japanese chemist. It is called an excitotoxin because it excites you taste buds. The food becomes tastier and you want more. Hmmm!

You may think, "I don't eat Chinese food much and when I do I make sure there's no MSG." But wait, MSG can and does go by many names. Look in your cupboards and your cans of soup, crackers, diet sodas, ice cream. Some of the names used for MSG are: Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein, Yeast Extract, Malt flavoring or extract, Caramel flavoring, flavors, other spices. See, MSG is natural, it's derived from a plant so technical it can be called other flavorings or spices.

Well, what are the effects of MSG, other than migraines (just a few, look at www.msgmyth.com for more): arthritic-like pain, flu-like symptoms, stomach cramps, gas, extreme thirst, chest pain, post-nasal drip,dark circles under eyes, ADHD, ADD, infertility, thyroid problems. That's just a few of them.

I asked myself, why haven't I heard about this? Okay, I'm not a conspiracy theorist but this reeks of it. You know, follow the money. If food companies want you to buy more of their products, become loyal, they'll make their foods tasty. That's what MSG does - enhance the flavor. Post WWII MSG has been added to our food. And at a growing rate. Now think about the obesity epidemic in the US. If our food is tastier, we want to eat more of it, hmmm? Now why would Sara Lee or Swanson's or Doritos remove something that encourages to buy more. That doesn't make sense. Of course they want you to keep buying and overeating.

Here's an interesting excerpt from an interview with Dr. Blaylock, a neurosurgeon who is leading the call, exposing MSG for the poison it is:

Mike: I see. Here's an off-the-wall question: If MSG and all its different versions, as well as aspartame, were outlawed tomorrow, what changes would we see in the next five years in terms of public health?

Dr. Blaylock: I think you'd see a significant drop in obesity and metabolic syndrome. You'd see a tremendous drop in certain cancers. You would certainly see a tremendous drop in the neurodegenerative diseases, and all of these diseases that are increasing expeditiously.

The neurodegenerative diseases are just exploding. Things that used to be rare, we're seeing all the time now. It's just frightening. And when you look through the neurosciences literature, they have no explanation. They don't know why it's increasing so rapidly, but it's because we have such a large combination of toxins. For instance, we know that cellular neurodegenerative diseases are connected to mercury, aluminum, pesticides and herbicides, and the way they produce brain damage is through an excitotoxic mechanism.

So, we are all exposed to those toxins, and then when you add MSG and excitotoxins to the food, you tremendously accelerate this toxicity. That's why we're seeing this explosion in neurodegenerative diseases; Alzheimer's and autism and ADD and Parkinson's -- all these things are increasing so enormously because we are exposed to carcinogenic toxicity from all these different things and this huge exposure to excitotoxins, which is the central mechanism.

This is what no one's been able to claim. You look at one person's report and they'll say, "Alzheimer's is related to mercury exposure," and then another one says, "No, it's related to pesticides," and yet another one says it something else, but they're all operating through the same mechanism. All of these things operate by increasing brain immune activity, and that activates excitotoxicity. So that's why all of them seem to be related, because they're all doing the same thing to the brain.

Here's some websites I found that might prove interesting to you:
www.msgmyth.com
www.truthinlabeling.org
www.truthinlabeling.org/MSGonTV-2-07.html

I know I jump on a lot of bandwagons. I have Atkins, South Beach, Eating for Your Bloodtype. But when Carol explained MSG to me a light bulb went off in my head. Yeah, there's a lot of lightbulbs going off in my noggin.

She's going to detox herself and her family. She's read it takes about 3 weeks. It's going to be difficult. So much of our food has MSG. I too, am going to go this route. I have been struggling with my weight for 15 years now. I am not expecting this to be a magic pill, it will be work. But it's worth 3 weeks of trying.

Now I'm curious if other's have read/experienced anything similar. The more I learn about what's in our food (don't even get me started on Splenda and how widely it's accepted by the mainstream dietary community!), the more I yearn for 100 years ago. Even though we live with and take advantage of so many conveniences, 100 years ago families weren't bombarded with hazards that you learn are hazardous 10-20 years after using them. Or I'm I romanticizing (that's another blog and this one has gone on long enough!).