Recently Phil Voice and I exchanged some emails and blog comments. While not really heirloom plant related, if you have an affinity for landscaping this is a great blog to check out. Think of it as landscaping from the political left.
Sunil Khemaney recenly left a comment here, leading me to find his blog. He recently made some great posts about the dangers of various food additives, in particular aspartame and MSG. I’ve posted several times about aspartame, in particular in connection with the recent efforts in Hawaii to ban the substance. Aspartame and MSG are made with genetic engineering techniques. While this is certainly not the only thing that makes them dangerous, it should be of great concern to everyone who avoids GMOs in their food. These are both dangerous products made in a dangerous way, and in a lot of processed foods.
Some of those articles seem a bit on the scare-mongering side rather than the informative side. One article on there repeats what i’ve read in the past, which is that some small percentage of people have a bad reaction to large doses of MSG…large doses of table salt are also bad for you, but i wouldn’t really call table salt “dangerous”.
IIRC, msg is one of the big reasons that tomatoes add so much substance to many sauces. it’s a naturally occurring substance in many of our foods, and we have a specific spot on our tongue to taste it.
At the moment, i don’t have time to go read all the medical studies that the blog claims are out there, but i’m a little skeptical still. Exactly how much MSG did they inject into those rats?
I dare say it’s obvious that feeding kids tomatoes and seaweed doesn’t doom them to a life of obesity. And we all have plenty of reasons to avoid all the pre-packaged crap in the grocery stores. Cook whole foods, and try to grow them yourself from unpatented heirloom seeds, and don’t eat anything from a plastic package. I think that’s the easiest way to avoid most of our food-based problems, regardless of what happens when you inject intense concentrations of various compounds into doomed labrats.
remember, a few grams of caffeine or cocaine can kill you, but tea leaves and coca leaves have many benefits in their natural whole form.
Hi Doviende,
I don’t think were in too much disagreement here. Of course where MSG or other things occur naturally in normal and unprocessed food that people commonly eat, there’s probably little reason to fear it.
On the other hand, scientific studies are always biased. There is always someone paying for it, with the expectation of a particular result. Some things are also very hard to prove, for example it wasn’t until the 1990s that tobacco was proved to be both addicting and a carcinogen, and until that time tobacco companies were able to deny it.
It’s also never possible to prove a negative, for example you can never prove MSG has no dangers for people who eat it. You always have to test for specific dangers. When a study is made, a person or group of people will made a decision on what to test for. In the case of consumer safety, what’s tested for is commonly those things were something is least likely to be found. In the end, even if something is found, it becomes a political process as to accept the results or not.
We live in a world where what’s available for us to eat is not necessarily what’s healthiest, but rather what someone can make money selling us. Safety studies are paid for by the same people that sell us the food. Government regulatory agencies exist to serve the same people who sell the food and do the safety tests. No one is paying for independent and non-biased information on food any more.
If some lone person with a blog or website has some food safety information that can’t get out any other way, sometimes a little scare-mongering is the only option.
I have not written about MSG very much because I don’t have a lot of personal experience with it. Aspartame on the other hand is really an evil product. I have known a couple of people made very sick from it, including my mother. More than 50 doctors have come forward and said they believe it causes very serious medical problems. It’s really not a case that just some people have a reaction to it, rather most people who use it have at least a few symptoms, but don’t realize it. There’s a mini documentary here if you’re interested in watching:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-566922170441334340
One of my favorite blogs:
Botany Photo of the Day In science, beauty. “In beauty, science. Daily.”
http://www.ubcbotanicalgarden.org/potd/
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