Welcome to our Educational Resource (E-Source), an informative newsletter that keeps you up-to-date on current nutritional supplement information and gives you advice about use and effectiveness from a physician.

In financial planning, there are two ways to increase wealth: increase income or decrease spending. Similarly, there are two ways to dramatically influence health through nutrition: 1) Add something that is missing, and 2) Remove something that is harmful. Today I want to focus on the latter aspect. The American Food Industry is adding substances to our food that I believe are both ubiquitous and harmful.

It is obvious to even the most casual observer that the girth of Americans is dramatically increasing in recent years. It is especially noticeable in young children. Childhood obesity, if not addressed, will be the health tsunami that will produce diabetes, hypertension and heart disease that, as adults, will swamp the medical system in this country in decades to come.

We all read articles trying to explain the reasons for our obesity epidemic; overuse of television and video games, decrease of required PE classes in schools, and many other causes that you could imagine. I believe while all of these may be important, in my opinion they are not the root cause of the problem. Let me give you an analogy.
If I were a zoo owner who left for ten years and returned to find all of my animals were grossly overweight, there would be only one person that I would go to for an explanation—the dietician. I would ask only one question: What have you done to the food? We need to be asking that same question of the American Food Industry. Glutamate is an amino acid, one component of proteins that are necessary for life. When MSG was first introduced into the US after WWII, no thought was given to the idea of an amino acid being a problem, after all, are not amino acids present in all proteins that we eat as food? How could a normal food component be bad for us? It is because glutamate functions as the brain’s chief excitatory neurotransmitter. The assumption that an increase in free glutamates is harmless is not true. In fact, they are quite harmful.

When glutamate is added to the food of newborns of almost any species, they all become obese. It seems they lose their ability to judge when they are full. These animals are also found to have smaller glands than normal animals, resulting in a loss of fertility that extends even to the males. Normal females mated to obese males will have smaller litters. We will momentarily describe what is happening.

In 1957, two ophthalmology residents did a study where they added glutamates to the food of newborn mice. What they found was astonishing, the glutamates killed every nerve cell in the retinas of all the mice. Obviously, glutamate is not quite so harmless as previously thought. While this paper should have sounded the alarm bells, it was generally ignored. Subsequent studies showed that injecting glutamate into the vitreous body of the eye will do the same thing.

A neuropathologist, Dr. Olney, in trying to use this information to trace neural pathways in the brain, discovered that glutamates also killed certain brain cells. What we did not know at the time glutamate was discovered was that glutamate makes things taste better by stimulating taste buds. We also have learned that glutamate is the brain’s primary excitatory neurotransmitter. As such, the brain handles glutamate very carefully so that it doesn’t overstimulate nerve cells. When glutamates rise to toxic levels, susceptible neural cells are overstimulated and killed. How can this be if glutamate is a normal component of protein that we need?

Russell Blaylock, M.D., in his book Excitotoxins, the Taste that Kills, makes the statement that as humans, we are made to break down proteins into amino acids slowly as our digestion takes place. When we take in free amino acids, created by a process called hydrolysis, the levels can become elevated very quickly, even reaching toxic levels. Due to this fact, glutamate levels are carefully regulated in the brain by our glial cells. When glutamate levels ever rise to dangerous levels, the neurons become over stimulated and can die.

Blood brain
barrier (BBB)

Both the retina of the eye and the brain are protected by a mechanism called the blood brain barrier (BBB) (and blood retina barrier in the retina). This barrier will only allow certain chemicals to enter the brain. This system is designed to protect the brain and retina from injurious substances.

Even though glutamate is needed by the brain and retina, its entry is carefully regulated, so as not to cause this toxicity. There are several problems however: 1) The BBB in young infants is not fully formed and therefore not fully protective. 2) The BBB can be breached in many clinical situations that are not that rare, such as post stroke, MS, diabetes, post heat stroke, post encephalitis, and many others. 3)  Additionally there are areas of the brain that are naturally unprotected by the BBB, such as the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland. This is because these areas need to respond to chemical messengers and hormones produced by other glands in the body in order to communicate properly. Damage to the hypothalamus results in death or severe disability. The pituitary is our master gland that controls all other glandular functions.

MSG and
Arcuate Nucleus

The arcuate nucleus is located in an area of the brain unprotected by our BBB. This nucleus is responsible for satiety, meaning it sends out signals to tell us when to stop eating. As we have seen, when glutamates are fed to newborn animals of any species, the litters invariably become massively obese as a result of this damage. While different animals may vary in sensitivity to glutamate toxicity, all animals respond in this way. Humans, it turns out, are one of the more sensitive species. Knowing this information, it would seem imperative that human babies not be exposed to glutamates in any form. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

Glutamates in
baby food

Baby food companies have been adding glutamates to their baby food since WWII. In the late 50’s, when it was becoming known that glutamates were not completely harmless, they voluntarily said they were taking MSG out of their products. However, many food product companies started using aliases for glutamate in order to hide the fact that glutamate is in their products. Therefore a number of synonyms have sprung up in an attempt to obfuscate (don’t you love that word?) and confuse. I always tell patients to read labels, and to avoid products with long lists of ingredients, especially those you don’t understand. They are collectively known in the food industry as flavor enhancers, and consist of free amino acids created by hydrolyzing proteins, be it from whey, vegetable or soy, or yeast.

Synonyms

These are the synonyms to avoid: Hydrolyzed yeast, modified vegetable protein, modified food starch, malt extract, malted barley, maltodextrin, soy or whey protein, milk powder, protein fortified anything, and enzyme modified anything, carrageenan.

Many restaurants will tell you that they do not use MSG in their food. Most will not know that many of their commercially available products contain glutamates.
Many commercially made salad dressings, especially the low-fat variety, contain glutamates. As fat is removed, “flavor enhancers” or glutamates are typically added to compensate for the lack of taste of low fat products. Flavored chips are notorious. Some restaurants will tell you which dishes have it and which do not.

For those of you who wish to become more knowledgeable about this, I strongly recommend Dr. Blaylock’s book, Excitotoxins, the Taste That Kills. He is a well-respected neurosurgeon of many years, who interestingly has had a strong interest in nutrition. You will find his well-researched book hard to refute. I also recommend a web site called msgtruth.org. There you will find a list of common foods and fast foods that contain high amounts of free glutamates.