March 1, 2010

MSG: One More Reason to Ban Processed Foods From Your Life! (As If You Needed Another One.)

If you want to lose weight, an easy rule-of-thumb is to avoid processed foods. Burgers and fries do not a champion make. But hidden in the processed-food shadow of fat and sugar, MSG (monosodium glutamate) has now been discovered to be a contributor to North America’s chronic weight gain.

Not that MSG has had a stellar reputation. Hyperactivity, vision loss, learning disabilities, diarrhoea, asthma, reproductive problems, and weight gain have been correlated between lab rat studies and MSG. Even though MSG has been used and studied for decades, only this summer has a study definitively found a link between MSG and human obesity.

MSG is commonly seen as a flavouring agent – it’s the sodium salt of the amino acid glutamic – and has a strong association with Chinese food, which is why the latest study of MSG and obesity was conducted in China.

A team from the University of Carolina studied over 700 middle-aged Chinese men and women. Even though most of the subjects ate home-cooked meals, over 80 percent of them used MSG – which is not even a spice – just like we would use salt or pepper. And since they were adding the MSG, it was easy to measure how much each family used. The researchers found that those who used the most MSG were the fattest. Even when the researchers looked at the physical activity and the daily caloric intake of the participants, those that ate the most MSG had nearly three times the incidence of obesity!

I guess lab rat waistlines don’t lie.

At the moment, this study doesn’t mean much. Everyone knows MSG is not benchmark of fine cuisine, so these studies are not as shocking as if they discovered Brussels sprouts were causing weight gain. But there may be future implications. For years, regulatory agencies such as the American FDA, have given MSG a passing grade. And despite everyone knowing that too much food is killing too many people, governments have not yet begun to crack down on the companies that manufacture unhealthy food or institutions that feed unhealthy food to kids. And who knows what else is hiding in that long, barely pronounceable ingredient list that accompanies most processed food.

Back to MSG.

It’s a flavour-enhancing agent, holds zero calories, so why is it causing weight gain? Because making food taste better and making you want to eat more is exactly why it is used. It works in your head, exciting your taste centers, so that the food you are eating seems to taste better than it really does. Why fret over cookbooks? Throw in some MSG and your brain thinks it’s dining in Paris.

Summed up, MSG makes you eat more. When you eat more you get fat. It is really that simple.

. . . Allison Aulph