How MSG fattens you....

Today's Post: Friday, 6-12-2009

Dr Russell Blaylock is one of the MD’s I get health information emails from. The free info varies as all his emails make an effort to sell his subscription service to access all his information.

However, on numerous occasions, he has claimed that getting MSG in food tends to make you fat.

(Others have said it may cause nerve damage. And the S in MSG is sodium, so since most people get too much sodium from salt and many are extra sensitive to blood pressure increases from too much sodium, it makes sense at the very least to not ingest MSG often.)

But as far as MSG being a fattening agent, I’d heard that nowhere else and have wondered if there was anything to it or not.

My knowledge is now upgraded. MSG DOES help make you fat. And, we even know how it does so.

I learned this in last Wednesday’s Early to Rise email.

Here’s the article:

"This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, a free newsletter dedicated to making money, improving health and secrets to success. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com ."

"MSG and Weight Gain

By James B. LaValle

Many people avoid monosodium glutamate (MSG) - the so-called "safe" flavor enhancer - because they get a headache or upset stomach after eating it. But here's another reason to avoid MSG: It might be causing you to gain weight.

MSG has been used for some time to "fatten up" lab rats for experimental purposes - but no one knew for sure if it had the same effect on people. So researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and in China set out to study just that.

The researchers compared the MSG consumption of more than 750 Chinese men and women aged 40 to 59. (In China, MSG is commonly used in home cooking, as well as in restaurants and packaged foods.
And, in fact, the study found that approximately 82 percent of the subjects used MSG when they prepared food at home.) Those who consumed the most MSG were almost three times as likely to be overweight as compared to those who did not use MSG, even when adjustments were made for physical activity, caloric intake, and other variables that could be related to weight gain.

The researchers are now trying to determine why MSG causes weight gain. One theory is based on the observation that when lab rats are given MSG, they eat more, indicating that MSG somehow influences appetite signals from the brain.

Another concern is the way MSG affects blood sugar. In a 2000 study published in the journal Physiological Research, normal rats were turned into insulin resistant rats by feeding them MSG. The MSG-treated rats also stored glucose as fat more readily than normal rats.

Whatever the reason, it appears that one way to help control your weight is to reduce your intake of MSG.

In the U.S., most people do not use MSG in home cooking, though it is an ingredient in the flavor enhancer Accent. You are more likely to get MSG in restaurant food. You can't control the way food is prepared when you eat out, but you can at least make sure you read the labels when you shop at the grocery store. Foods to watch out for include soups (especially Asian-noodle type soups) and salad dressings. Many flavor-coated foods - like ranch or barbeque flavored chips and nuts - also contain a significant amount of MSG.

[Ed. Note: It truly is possible to improve your health just by making wise choices when it comes to diet and lifestyle. James B. LaValle, RPh, ND, CCN - founder of the LaValle Metabolic Institute and a nationally recognized expert on natural therapies - can give you easy-to-understand directions for living the healthy life you've always wanted. ....]"

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So, since MSG makes foods taste a bit better even if they are not very well made let alone if they are spiced by a master cook, it does tend to make you eat more total food. That’s not a crime exactly. But when it’s done to foods that are truly bad for you like potato chips, that’s really bad. So, using it in such foods clearly helps make and keep people fat.

But Dr Blaylock is right. The data show that MSG makes people who eat the same amount and exercise the same amount but ingest more MSG get fatter than those who get less MSG.

So, since people who use MSG often tend to eat more and have what they eat make them fatter, MSG is doubly effective as a fattening agent. This is particularly so if you ingest it often.

But MSG is even worse than that. It apparently helps cause insulin resistance and makes insulin and blood sugar more fattening. That in turn, if you keep ingesting MSG, increases the amount of excess insulin and blood sugar in your blood! So MSG becomes even more fattening the longer you consume it often.

Given the cost of treating diseases such as type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, high blood pressure, and higher levels of obesity and the heart disease they tend to cause or make worse, MSG begins to look as bad for you as smoking or trans fats.

Since it does make foods taste good -- and it is at least possible to use it but not use it often, I suspect it will always be a legal food additive.

But the health damaging effects of heavy use of MSG are so clear now, there is absolutely NO excuse for ever having it in foods or spices where that is not clearly and completely disclosed.

That means it should be a hefty fine if any menu item or sauce in a restaurant contains MSG that is not disclosed on the menu.

And, it means that every food sold that can have a label MUST disclose if it has MSG in it, call it MSG, and say how much is in the food per serving and per package.

Since using less MSG is clearly called for, it should also be assessed an increasing health penalty tax by both the federal government and by the individual states.

Today, MSG can be called autolized yeast and a whole list of other terms that hide that the real ingredient is MSG.

Also, most spices today that contain mixes of spices list the main spices and a term such as spices, other spices, or natural spices without disclosing what the term actually stands for. Since the company may have a proprietary set of spices they prefer not to disclose, using such a term is understandable.

But, today, to be sure that term doesn’t include MSG, you have to contact the company and ask them. Then you have to hope the person at the company you contacted knows if it does or not and will tell you the truth. Or you have to find an appropriate lab and pay out of pocket to have it tested.

That’s NOT OK for an ingredient that makes people fat when that has become such an expensive and growing problem.

The only good news is that surely some of the makers of spices and sauces and some restaurants will recognize that providing their stuff MSG free and advertising that will gain them health oriented and upscale customers. Some Chinese restaurants do that now.

And, as the fattening qualities of MSG become better and better known, these ways of helping you escape using it often will increase.

In the mean time, avoid ingesting MSG as much as you can. And hope that avoiding MSG will get easier soon.