Part 2b - Is MSG Making You Fat and Unhealthy?
April 10, 2008
This is the second part of yesterday’s transcript and video, originally produced by Christian Broadcast Network and made public by You Tube. All efforts were made to be accurate.
Gailon Totheroh: That’s what happens with infant mice. After being fed MSG they show no signs of mental damage until they’re older and begin to fail at complex tasks. Bluntly put, they become stupid.
And humans are five times more sensitive to MSG than mice, infants even more so. Blaylock believes the entire education system suffers as a result, even the ability of students to get along with each other.
But what about MSG’s impact on brain afflictions in older adults? Blaylock says MSG may only be a contributing factor in starting brain diseases but it can definitely make major neurological afflictions worse.
Alzheimer’s disease; ALS, sometimes called Lou Gehrig’s disease; multiple sclerosis; strokes; Parkinson’s disease. They all involve excitotoxins doing harm.
Blaylock has written the only book on excitotoxins for the general public. He’s updated that information in a book on health and nutrition secrets. He says the key is staying away from MSG but that’s not as easy as it sounds.
Dr. David Buchholz, MD: It’s in all sorts of commercially processed food products that wouldn’t taste like much if they didn’t have this flavor enhancer added to them. And it’s not always labeled as MSG or monosodium glutamate. It’s labeled as hydrolyzed protein or natural flavors and you’d never suspect it.
Gailon Totheroh: But Strouss does suspect it. He and his wife have learned the names that hide MSG.
Terry Strouss: Learning how to do the grocery shopping, reading labels, knowing what types of food to choose, what types of food not to choose.
Gailon Totheroh: Of course, any ingredient with the word glutamate, plus aspartame, autolyzed yeast, broth, caseinate, hydrolyzed protein such as hydrolyzed soy. And for the public, Blaylock says there’s a simple truth: avoiding MSG could be the best thing you’ll ever do for your brain. And, he adds, don’t be surprised when medical organizations and government agencies defend MSG as safe. He says they simply don’t understand the complex vulnerability of the brain.
Gailon Totheroh, CBN News.
Pat Robertson: Ladies and gentlemen, we’re not here to scare you but we sure are here to warn you and Gailon is here with us. Gailon, this is an absolute horrible, frightening report.
Gailon Totheroh: It is and it’s much worse than we originally thought. Years ago we discussed these topics but the research is showing more and more problems, more and more areas of the body and so everyone is vulnerable in a sense.
Pat Robertson: Does MSG trigger an appetite response, where people want to eat more food if it’s flavored with MSG?
Gailon Totheroh: Yeah, it does. It’s basically a drug affect on the tongue. Not a true flavor, in a sense, so they do want to eat more and that’s partly due to the direct taste affect and also partly what it does to the brain.
Pat Robertson: Does the MSG make people fat directly or is it because it triggers more of a desire to eat food?
Gailon Totheroh: Well, it’s really a secondary affect. It’s partly the food and partly the hormones are messed up in the body, including leptin, and there’s been a lot of discussion about that.
Pat Robertson: Gailon, if a nursing mother, not the nursing mother but a pregnant woman, like, you think, Campbell’s – Campbell’s Chicken and Herbs. I mean, how safe and how wonderful could it be if you’re pregnant, to eat something like this?
Gailon Totheroh: It sounds just delightful on the surface but that baby, who’s very tiny, is getting a larger dose than the mother is getting.
Pat Robertson: And what the research – what Dr. Blaylock was saying, it starts out that you don’t notice it but a child gets to 8, 9, 10 years old, his brain isn’t functioning. He’s stupid?
Gailon Totheroh: That’s right. You don’t notice these things because the child isn’t faced with complex tasks. When they start speaking, when they start going to school – sometimes it’s that late before you notice. They can’t do these complex tasks as well or sometimes at all.
Pat Robertson: But the ADD, which is so prevalent today, they hit the kids with Ritalin and that’s supposed to be the answer. But is ADD caused by this, you think?
Gailon Totheroh: It’s part of the cause because it can cause miswiring of the brain from early on, from the womb in early age -
Pat Robertson: It’s awful.
Gailon Totheroh: - and beyond.
Pat Robertson: I held this up and we had a hard time with the Japanese. Agi-no-moto and monosodium glutamate and – what does that mean? Agi-no-moto?
Gailon Totheroh: The essence of taste. That’s the Japanese name for MSG and that’s the name of the company but this is made right here in the United States.
Pat Robertson: So they put this in everything, essentially.
Gailon Totheroh: Well, different forms of it. See, that’s the tricky part of it. Sometimes it’s added directly as this and then it’s labeled. You see monosodium glutamate. But it’s portions of autolyzed yeast extract and hydrolyzed protein and broth. It all sounds OK.
Pat Robertson: Broth?
Gailon Totheroh: It can but not always. See – that’s the – because the government hasn’t required the proper labeling so we don’t even know. So you’re going to taste that may harm you? Or you might say I’m going to avoid that product. Probably you’re going to say –
Pat Robertson: I mean, you have got to be a food detective to – well hydrolyzed protein sounds pretty benign.
Gailon Totheroh: It does. Well, we’re all supposed to get protein, right? We’re supposed to, maybe, lower our carbs and increase protein but unfortunately a lot of the proteins in all kinds of things – energy bars, etc – are all broken down proteins releasing this glutamate and related substances.
Pat Robertson: Well, ladies and gentlemen, we’ve been talking about Nutrasweet and what a devastating affect it has on memory and brain function. That’s another excitotoxin. But this thing is serious. I know that it’s a pain in the neck to look at the fine print on a box of Knorr’s Tomato and Basil soup that you add water to and you think “Isn’t this going to be wonderful?” and –
Gailon Totheroh: Well, people shouldn’t be discouraged because the fact is when I learned about this stuff we went through the grocery and sometimes there was two products, same thing next to each other, one did and one didn’t. So you just kind of develop your system. Once you have a system you can go through your grocery pretty safely.
Pat Robertson: I got all these things out of my own kitchen cabinet that my own sweet wife brought home and I think these are all destined for the garbage can. But, ladies and gentlemen, if enough consumers begin to object to this then the manufacturers will find some other way of making their food taste good.
We’ve got two more of these pieces coming up, Gailon.
Gailon Totheroh: Yes, we sure do. We’re going to talk about heart disease, sudden death heart attack included, and cancer. This stuff acts like fertilizer for cancer. And our final story then is how do you navigate all this.
Pat Robertson: Well, and things that go bump in the night. Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve got more information on MSG. You can get it by going to our website CBN.com
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