Have you ever wondered why you can’t eat just one potato chip? Or why Asian food, canned soups, packaged cookies, trail mix, and flavored popcorn taste so good?
In the late 1800s, as the early steps for the first industrial revolution were taking place, the quest for new inventions was slowly gaining influence and surely changing world. Many of these new inventions were also reaching kitchen tables.
In the search for flavor enhancers, glutamate was discovered. In 1908, Kikunae Ikeda, a Japanese chemist, was able to extract glutamate from seaweed. The most common form of this additive is monosodium glutamate, more commonly known as MSG. This discovery became a major homerun for the fast food industry.
As delicious as foods with this ingredient added can be, people in the early 20th century were unaware of just how harmful it is to our health and how it would turn into a leading cause of disease.
Since those early years, glutamate has become part of the basic structure of processed foods. No wonder, in spite of the many decades of warnings, trying to quit eating these foods is such a difficult task.
Today, we find glutamate in corn and potato chips, canned beans, tomato sauces, meat products, frozen meals, infant formulas, and other processed foods. It is even used in cosmetics and vaccines.
However, we must understand that glutamate, in and of itself, isn’t something bad. It’s when we have too much of it that we encounter a problem.
Glutamate is a nonessential amino acid. In nutrition, “nonessential” means it isn’t necessary to obtain it from outside sources because your own body has the capability to build this protein through a built-in biochemistry process.
Among the different purposes of glutamate in the body, the Cleveland Clinic stated:
“Glutamate is the most abundant excitatory neurotransmitter released by nerve cells in your brain.”
In other words, in the nervous system electric impulses that carry information for an unnumbered amount of actions in the body run from one neuron to another and neurotransmitters play a massive role in blocking electric impulses or allowing them to proceed. Glutamate is on the “to go” side.
“It plays a major role in learning and memory. For your brain to function properly, glutamate needs to be present in the right concentration in the right places at the right time. Too much glutamate is associated with such diseases as Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and Huntington’s disease,” the Cleveland Clinic noted.
Glutamate also aids in other bodily functions. At the intestinal level, once located in the epithelial cells, with the presence of other proteins, glutamate helps produce other amino and nucleic acids, the building blocks of DNA and RNA. Glutamate is also used to spark up the energy used by our cells, known as adenosine triphosphate, or ATP.
A large population of glutamate receptors resides in many organs of the body including the heart, kidneys, lungs, and liver. When excessive amounts of glutamate molecules migrate out of the intestines and flow into the blood stream, they scatter into the organs and a trigger is forcefully turned on and off, launching a metabolic roller coaster effect in the system.
In 2010, a brain study was conducted that revealed that the toxicity of MSG, when supplied directly into the bloodstream of newborn mice, immediately enters the brain and induces seizures, creating life-threatening episodes.
In 2021, another study was performed by Frontiers in Neuroscience. This study stated detailed information about the ability of MSG and other forms of artificial glutamate to cause certain proteins to aggregate. It also found that Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Lou Gehrig’s (ALS), and Huntington’s diseases are all associated with an overabundance of protein aggregation which induced neuron death in specific brain regions.
The best recommendation to prevent an overabundance of glutamate and MSG from poisoning the body would be to avoid eating processed foods and even dining out regularly in restaurants that have high probabilities of using those ingredients. Instead, focus on the eight laws of health and following a diet based on wholesome grains, cereals, organic fruits, and vegetables. For an exquisite food taste, remember that the natural flavor enhancers God has provided are herbs, roots, stems, leaves, flowers, and fruits.
You might have to invest some time and energy in homemade preparations, but this diet was given by God Himself to maintain the body He created in healthy and good working order.
Source: Monosodium Glutamate Clinical Report