Part 4 - Is MSG Making You Fat and Unhealthy?
April 12, 2008
This is a transcript of the above video. The original video was produced as a 4-part series by Christian Broadcast Network as was made available to the public via You Tube. All efforts have been made to accurately transcribe the videotape.
Pat Robertson: I know you’ve been shocked by our exclusive report on an excitotoxin called monosodium glutamate or MSG. It’s an additive that makes food taste better but you may not realize what it’s doing to your body. It can lead to obesity, heart and brain damage, cancer, and damage, of course, to unborn children, the fetuses.
MSG is everywhere, so how can you avoid it at your grocery store or restaurant? Here’s medical reporter Gailon Totheroh with the final part of this very important series.
Gailon Totheroh: Keeping monosodium glutamate off the table is no easy task. Your waiter or chef rarely knows anything about hidden MSG or what ingredients have it. In the grocery, there are dozens of hidden names for MSG.
Dr. Russell Blaylock, MD: The consumer needs to tell these manufacturers, “We’re not going to buy your product until that’s taken out and don’t disguise names because we will find out what they are.”
Gailon Totheroh: And Dr. Russell Blaylock says science is finding many more problems that may be caused by MSG, even infertility.
Dr. Russell Blaylock, MD: Because the male sperm cannot get to the egg and it decreases the number of sperm. In the female, we know the ovary is filled with glutamate receptors.
Gailon Totheroh: MSG stimulates those receptors so that a woman’s eggs become damaged. And with basic life issues like that, is the Food and Drug Administration sounding any alarms?
Jack Samuels: The FDA has never walked into a flavoring house or into a food producer and stated, “Give me that flavoring. I want to test it for free glutamic acid,” so it’s never been tested.
Gailon Totheroh: Jack Samuels learned that MSG caused his heart spasms years ago.
Jack Samuels: On two occasions they thought I had died because they could not get a pulse.
Gailon Totheroh: And for his own safety, he only shops at a natural food store called Jimbo’s with a specific strategy. Here are some of his secrets: pick organic vegetables without cosmetic wax.
Jack Samuels: They wax them to look better and to fill in the crannies that are normal to growth –
Gailon Totheroh: And that could be a glutamate type –
Jack Samuels: They sometimes put a hydrolyzed protein into that mixture.
Gailon Totheroh: Buy milk that is pasteurized but not homogenized. But not this one that is ultra pasteurized (Horizon Organic).
Jack Samuels: It brings the milk to a higher level of heat and in so doing breaks down some of the protein and so an individual like myself will get sick.
Gailon Totheroh: Terry Strouss blames MSG for the migraines he suffered for almost 15 years. He looks for those secret names at a local grocery.
Terry Strouss: We stay away from bologna and hot dogs and all of the cheaper processed meats.
This is all really safe for our family (pointing to fresh meat aisle).
The ranch (dressing) it might be fat free but it has MSG right in the ingredient list.
There’s a long list of ingredients and certainly some things that could mask MSG but in a small enough content that it doesn’t trigger any kind of reaction in our family.
Gailon Totheroh: So there are definite ways to keep healthy while grocery shopping. And our careful consumers shouldn’t worry about losing business. Strouss says his family actually spends a little more but yet eats much healthier, so everybody wins.
But what about those restaurants? Some chains, like Pizza Hut, list their ingredients online. Pizza Hut actually has five food items they warn as having MSG, such as their wings and salad dressings.
Pizza Hut is not alone. All of the major chains we investigated all had items with disguised MSG. When deciding what to order, be aware that salad dressings, sauces, breaded meats and meat toppings are common offenders.
Classier restaurants are generally safer because they often cook from scratch and add real spices instead of manufactured flavor enhancers. But to be sure, you may have to talk to the chef to find out what he or she uses.
So what should you do in general? Blaylock says go for the fruits and vegetables. He has a DVD on nutrition (Nutrition & Behavior) so families will know the good things that counteract MSG’s effects. He also warns about aspartame, the diet sweetener which is a related compound.
Blaylock especially recommends dark green vegetables because they are high in antioxidants which can defuse MSG. They’re also high in magnesium which can actually block MSG from those glutamate receptors.
Dr. Russell Blaylock, MD: Name something that it doesn’t affect. These receptors in the spleen, they’re in the liver, in the heart, in the GI tract, in the immune system, in the brain, in the peripheral nerve, in the vagas nerves, in all the arteries.
Gailon Totheroh: For centuries the Japanese have used a little seaweed as a flavor enhancer. It had a little glutamate but it didn’t seem to cause any problems. Then about 100 years ago they started manufacturing it, laying the foundation for today’s problems. Massive use of MSG, improper labeling, and a federal agency that refuses to have it labeled so consumers can make intelligent decisions.
Reporting from San Diego, I’m Gailon Totheroh Totheroh, CBN News.
Pat Robertson: Thanks Gailon. If you missed any of our stories on MSG, you can see them by going to our website, CBN.com. You can also download that; you can send some of it to your friends. It’s shocking, Terry –
Anchorwoman: It’s everywhere.
Pat Robertson: It’s everywhere.
Anchorwoman: It’s really astonishing.
Pat Robertson: But the damage it’s doing. It’s – just to think if you’re a pregnant woman and you’re eating a diet high in MSG, like you’re eating Chinese and so forth, your baby is going to be tending toward being fat but it will also not be able to do complex thinking when it gets to be 8, 9, 10 years old.
Anchorwoman: Well, the really frustrating part for the consumer, I think, is that it’s couched in other terms. If it just said MSG you be able to easily know whether it’s in there or not.
Pat Robertson: Well, you know, I mean, Campbell’s Soup, that’s like mother and apple pie. How American can it get, you know? Campbell’s Chunky.
Anchorwoman: It was good without the MSG.
Pat Robertson: Every one of them now has got MSG. You read the labels and it’s just shocking. And Hidden Valley Ranch, it sounds so, like, Roy Rogers but big MSG in it. They’re poisoning you with those sweet names.
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