By now, most of us are aware of the fact that MSG has two purposes: to give a food that has absolutely no flavor, flavor and to increase the shelf life of a useless product that ultimately will increase the profits of the highly reputable company using it. Actually, there is a third purpose that no one really talks about, except maybe for me, which is knowingly selling a product that will present a myriad of illness symptoms in someone, causing them to constantly see a clueless doctor who prescribes a drug that serves no other purpose other than to increase profits for the pharmaceutical industry. All together now, pimps, hookers, and tricks!
The big food companies are not stupid. They know that people are becoming more and more aware of MSG and its many euphemisms so they try to “disguise” it as best they can. Let’s take a look at some of their secrets.
Ajinomoto – The name of both the Japanese manufacturer and the MSG product,
Annatto – This is a natural yellow-red plant extract used to dye foods, textiles, and body care products. Its primary use is a red food coloring in a wide assortment of foods, including cereals, preserved meats, cheeses, butter, and sweets. It is the only natural color known to cause as many adverse effects as artificial colors. Adverse reactions can include skin, gastrointestinal, respiratory, and central nervous system effects. Maybe that’s because annatto is sometimes “spiked” with MSG, without that being disclosed.
Baked goods – Before you blindly accept, take a walk on the wild side and try to get an ingredients list. Most supermarkets, besides using the typical malted flour/wheat flour, can use liquid malt to enhance color and flavor to bagels and breads. Some baked goods contain whey and dough conditioners, which may contain yeast nutrients like soy lecithin, soy protein, or citric acid, all MSG. Some flour tortillas contain L-cysteine or other excitotoxins, as do many baked goods.
Barley malt – This is sprouted barley. It is dried and ground into flour and added to wheat flour and gives a sweet flavor. It does contain some MSG, but the problem is that the enzymes released in sprouting begin to break down the protein of the wheat flour it is added to, creating more MSG. It is only added to flour when the wheat quality that season is poor; however, the flour companies do not change their labels so there is no way to know if it has been added or not. Other by-products of malted barley or barley malt are coffee-free roasted grain beverages and liquid malt syrups, used baked goods and cereals to improve color and flavor.
Beverages – Many frozen fruit juices are fine if they are 100 percent juice, though most contain preservatives and corn syrup (high fructose), which may contain MSG residues. Juice drinks in cans, bottles, or little boxes are often MSG flavor enhanced. And, if you have a sensitivity to sulfites, which are basically added to prevent spoilage and increase shelf life, avoid white grape juice and bottled fruit juice mixes, which use corn syrup containing sulfites as well. Most carbonated beverages contain MSG, aspartame (if diet), sulfites, and lots of artificial colors and flavors. Since I wet your appetite about sulfites, let me add that sulfites destroy thiamine (vitamin B1), and are thought to destroy folic acid, another B vitamin. Sulfites have been associated with the full range of food intolerance symptoms, including headaches, irritable bowel symptoms, behavioral disturbances, and skin rashes. Sulfites work their best on asthmatics. Asthmatic individuals can develop bronchial spasms after eating foods or drinking wine preserved with sulfur dioxide or other sulfur preservatives. The last two are not to be confused with the organic sulfur crystals, which heals just about everything.
Bread yeast – This type of yeast is produced by growing it on a nutritious base. Unfortunately, this base often consists of some form of hydrolyzed protein, which is MSG.
Butter – Be careful about the annatto connection. Also, some of the salts added may contain flowing agents that contain MSG. If the words “natural flavoring” is used on unsalted butter, that usually means that citric acid of flavor enhancers (both MSG) have been added.
Calcium caseinate – This is the calcium by-product of milk protein hydrolysis (MSG). It is often present in milk solids, milk powder, or dried milk products and is added to canned tuna, cold cuts, and more.
Candy – Many of the “gummy” candies are loaded with gelatin, not to mention artificial colors, artificial flavors, and corn syrup. Candy bars are full of MSG euphemisms like whey, milk solids, artificial flavoring, pectin, vegetable gums, etc. Usually, the ingredients are under a fold in the label and the print is tiny. That’s why you must read labels carefully. If you love chocolate, be sure it’s dark, of a better quality, and/or imported. My favorite dark chocolate is found at www.weiofchocolate.com.
Canned broth, Bouillon cubes – This is the resting place for MSG. Especially the ones that are cheap. The natural food stores say theirs are GMO free until it says “autolyzed yeast” or another yeast euphemism on the label. Even if the powder or broth says GMO FREE, beware. Due to long cooking and processing, MSG is abundant.
Canned or frozen vegetables and fruit products – If you experience a reaction to any of these, rest assured it contains citric acid or other preservatives. Do not be surprised to find MSG for flavor and/or color enhancer in frozen peas or sulfites and corn syrup in commercial fruit products.
Canned tuna – If it’s cheap, give-er-a-miss mate as it will contain calcium caseinate and broth. You might get lucky with the low sodium versions, but read the label carefully. If you should be lucky enough to avoid GMO, what about the mercury?
Caramel coloring – Usually this is a by-product of malted barley or hydrolyzed corn.
Carrageenan – This is a seaweed derivative used to thicken products like ice cream, processed cheeses, toothpaste, cottage cheese, cream, eggnog, half and half, buttermilk, yogurt, etc. It’s used like a gum, and is 100 percent animal product free. That’s why it is used in vegetarian products. The problem – most seaweed and algae are high in “bound” glutamates. As such, carrageenan is often mixed with MSG and/or hydrolyzed milk protein, with the label only stating, “carrageenan.”
Chicken and turkey – Most people will look for a label that says “No additives or preservatives.” Yet, no one cares about how much doo doo is on the poultry that they eat. Very often, poultry is dipped in a broth solution containing MSG. So, saying “naturally processed” or “all natural” ingredients is a fabrication. As far as the USDA is concerned, MSG is a natural product. Turkey, for example is usually injected with it. As far as the doo doo point is concerned, why do you think you are advised to sterilize any surface, object, or utensil that the poultry has come in contact with? Oh yeah, the USDA says if you can’t see the doo doo through the clear wrap it’s ok to eat.
Chocolate – Some milk chocolate contains whole milk solids, or whey, which are both MSG. Soy lecithin, if not labeled “organic” or “NonGMO”, is just that – GMO. If the chocolate is a hydrolyzed product, it is an MSG product. Like I said earlier, a good dark chocolate is best.
Citric acid – Most citric acid today is made from hydrolyzed corn and the manufacturers could care less about removing any MSG residues. That would require spending more time and cutting down on profits.
Corn products – While organic or nonGMO corn on the cob is okay, most MSG is produced by fermenting corn. So, corn syrup, dextrose, dextrin, maltodextrin, and all other products made by hydrolyzing or fermenting corn is bad, bad, bad. That goes for alcohol, caramel color or flavor, and citric acid as well. Oh yeah, baking powder, confectioner’s sugar, bleached flour, excipients, which are the binders and fillers in vitamins and meds, are made form hydrolyzed or fermented corn as well.
Croutons – These are nothing more than crunchy MSG. Yummmmmmmy!
Disodium guanylate/ Disodium inosinate – These are flavor enhancers that work synergistically with MSG. If you see it on a label and have trouble pronouncing it, just say MSG and you’re good.
Dough conditioners – These are used to improve the texture of breads and pastries and usually contain MSG or L-cysteine.
Evaporated milk – Milk solids that are heated, processed or concentrated contain MSG.
Fat substitutes – Head’s up guys. New ones are being developed on a daily basis. Beware of guar gum, hydrolyzed proteins (soy, wheat, oat, gluten), modified food starch made from soy, potatoes, whey, corn, etc., xanthum gum, maltodextrin, or olestra.
Fresh milk – If it isn’t raw and organic, don’t waste your time. You might like the taste, but your body won’t like the growth hormones, antibiotics, and the fact that any semblance of nutrition has been cooked out of it. Nothing like consuming liquid fat, huh?
Smoke flavors – Contains hydrolyzed protein or pure MSG for flavor. It ain’t real.
Soymilk – Lots of controversy over this. But it’s soy and soy is high in free glutamates.
Sugar – White is better than brown because of the molasses, which is high in sulfites and glutamates.
Stuffing mixes – Most are seasoned with MSG.
Table salt – Flowing agents and iodine carriers contain MSG through cornstarch and dextrose. The best is Real Salt, Himalayan Salt, or Hawaiian Salt.
Textured protein – MSG big time.
Tomato products – Citric acid, most often a by-product of hydrolyzed corn, is MSGH. It is used in canned tomato products to raise the acidity to ensure canning safety. If tomatoes have been sitting too long, waiting to be processed, which you will never know, a natural fermentation process will occur, resulting in MSG. To add insult to injury, sometimes to prevent fermentation, sulfite solutions are sprayed over them. To coin the Subway commercial BS , “Eat fresh”.
Vinegar – Most wine and balsamic vinegars contain sulfites. The best – organics or apple cider vinegar.
Whey – When cheese is produced, milk is treated with enzymes and heated to separate the curds from the whey, which is a liquid high in protein. MSG can be freed up by the heat and enzyme activity, but when whey is further processed and then dried to a powder, it will contain more concentrations of MSG. Then it’s bagged and sold as a “food” product to be used in the manufacture of many products like ice cream, crackers, boxed macaroni and cheese, and candy. The more whey is processed, such as in whey protein or whey protein isolate, the more MSG it will likely contain. Sometimes hydrolyzed milk solids are added it more MSG loaded. When a label says “whey”, it’s anybody’s guess as to what that means.
Yogurt – Try to find plain or vanilla whole milk yogurt and add your own fruit. Most yogurts contain carrageenan, gelatin, gums, so-called “natural” flavors, milk solids, and, you guessed it, whey.
Hey, why not make your own:
Heat 4 cups of whole, unpasteurized milk just to a boil, using the same bowl for the rest of the process.
Cool to warm temperature.
Add 2 tablespoons on plain or vanilla yogurt and mix it well. Do not use a gelatin yogurt.
Cover the bowl or pot with plastic wrap and then wrap the whole thing in a large bath towel.
Place it in the warmest place in your house for 24 hours without touching or looking at it.
Refrigerate it and save some for the next batch.
When you are ready to eat it, knock yourself out with your favorite fruits, honey. Etc.
Finally. Most doctors, dieticians, and the public know very little about the toxic effects of MSG. The multi-billion dollar processed food industry and MSG producers pay lobbyists to make all of us believe MSG is safe. MSG destroys the nerve cells of the brain and 50 percent or more of the population is experiencing the harmful effects of what the medical community has called the “MSG Symptom Complex.” Yet, many of us are unaware of that.
MSG is not just used in oriental restaurants, but in restaurants and most bagged, bottled, frozen, boxed, canned, or commercially prepared foods. Additives such as hydrolyzed protein, textured vegetable protein, yeast extract, autolyzed yeast, torula yeast, and anything modified, can contain as much as 50 percent MSG and need not be labeled as such.
Attention Deficit Disorder, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, some weight problems, migraine headaches, sleeping disorders, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, glaucoma, asthma, diabetes, and neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s, ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease), Parkinson’s, and fibromyalgia may have more in common than you think. The good news: organic sulfur crystals will get rid of most of these.
Now that you know the secrets that have been kept from you, read labels, act responsibly, respect your body, and get healthy.
Aloha!
To learn more about Hesh, listen to and read hundreds of health related radio shows and articles, and learn about how to stay healthy and reverse degenerative diseases through the use of organic sulfur crystals and other amazing superfoods, please visit www.healthtalkhawaii.com, or email me at [email protected] or call me at (808) 258-1177. Since going on the radio in 1981 these are the only products I began to sell because they work.
Just to put things in perspective, after I graduated from Weequahic High School and before going to Seton Hall University, I had a part-time job working for a butcher. I was the delivery guy and occasionally had to go to the slaughterhouse to pick up products for the store. Needless to say, I had no consciousness nor awareness, as change never came then despite the horrors I witnessed on an almost daily basis.
After graduating with a degree in accounting from Seton Hall, I eventually got married and moved to a town called Livingston. Livingston was basically a yuppie community where everyone was judged by the neighborhood they lived in and their income. To say it was a "plastic" community would be an understatement.
Livingston and the shallowness finally got to me. I told my wife I was fed up and wanted to move. She made it clear she had to be near her friends and New York City. I finally got my act together and split for Colorado.
I was living with a lady in Aspen at the end of 1974, when one day she said, " let's become vegetarians". I have no idea what possessed me to say it, but I said, "okay"! At that point I went to the freezer and took out about $100 worth of frozen, dead body parts and gave them to a welfare mother who lived behind us. Well, everything was great for about a week or so, and then the chick split with another guy.
So here I was, a vegetarian for a couple weeks, not really knowing what to do, how to cook, or basically how to prepare anything. For about a month, I was getting by on carrot sticks, celery sticks, and yogurt. Fortunately, when I went vegan in 1990, it was a simple and natural progression. Anyway, as I walked around Aspen town, I noticed a little vegetarian restaurant called, "The Little Kitchen".
Let me back up just a little bit. It was April of 1975, the snow was melting and the runoff of Ajax Mountain filled the streets full of knee-deep mud. Now, Aspen was great to ski in, but was a bummer to walk in when the snow was melting.
I was ready to call it quits and I needed a warmer place. I'll elaborate on that in a minute.
But right now, back to "The Little Kitchen". Knowing that I was going to leave Aspen and basically a new vegetarian, I needed help. So, I cruised into the restaurant and told them my plight and asked them if they would teach me how to cook. I told them in return I would wash dishes and empty their trash. They then asked me what I did for a living and I told them I was an accountant.
The owner said to me, "Let's make a deal. You do our tax return and we'll feed you as well". So for the next couple of weeks I was doing their tax return, washing their dishes, emptying the trash, and learning as much as I could.
But, like I said, the mud was getting to me. So I picked up a travel book written by a guy named Foder. The name of the book was, "Hawaii". Looking through the book I noticed that in Lahaina, on Maui, there was a little vegetarian restaurant called," Mr. Natural's". I decided right then and there that I would go to Lahaina and work at "Mr. Natural's." To make a long story short, that's exactly what happened.
So, I'm working at "Mr. Natural's" and learning everything I can about my new dietary lifestyle - it was great. Every afternoon we would close for lunch at about 1 PM and go to the Sheraton Hotel in Ka'anapali and play volleyball, while somebody stayed behind to prepare dinner.
Since I was the new guy, and didn't really know how to cook, I never thought that I would be asked to stay behind to cook dinner. Well, one afternoon, that's exactly what happened; it was my turn. That posed a problem for me because I was at the point where I finally knew how to boil water.
I was desperate, clueless and basically up the creek without a paddle. Fortunately, there was a friend of mine sitting in the gazebo at the restaurant and I asked him if he knew how to cook. He said the only thing he knew how to cook was enchiladas. He said that his enchiladas were bean-less and dairy-less. I told him that I had no idea what an enchilada was or what he was talking about, but I needed him to show me because it was my turn to do the evening meal.
Well, the guys came back from playing volleyball and I'm asked what was for dinner. I told them enchiladas; the owner wasn't thrilled. I told him that mine were bean-less and dairy-less. When he tried the enchilada he said it was incredible. Being the humble guy that I was, I smiled and said, "You expected anything less"? It apparently was so good that it was the only item on the menu that we served twice a week. In fact, after about a week, we were selling five dozen every night we had them on the menu and people would walk around Lahaina broadcasting, 'enchilada's at "Natural's" tonight'. I never had to cook anything else.
A year later the restaurant closed, and somehow I gravitated to a little health food store in Wailuku. I never told anyone I was an accountant and basically relegated myself to being the truck driver. The guys who were running the health food store had friends in similar businesses and farms on many of the islands. I told them that if they could organize and form one company they could probably lock in the State. That's when they found out I was an accountant and "Down to Earth" was born. "Down to Earth" became the largest natural food store chain in the islands, and I was their Chief Financial Officer and co-manager of their biggest store for 13 years.
In 1981, I started to do a weekly radio show to try and expose people to a vegetarian diet and get them away from killing innocent creatures. I still do that show today. I pay for my own airtime and have no sponsors to not compromise my honesty. One bit of a hassle was the fact that I was forced to get a Masters Degree in Nutrition to shut up all the MD's that would call in asking for my credentials.
My doing this radio show enabled me, through endless research, to see the corruption that existed within the big food industries, the big pharmaceutical companies, the biotech industries and the government agencies. This information, unconscionable as it is, enabled me to realize how broken our health system is. This will be covered more in depth in the Introduction and throughout the book and when you finish the book you will see this clearly and it will hopefully inspire you to make changes.
I left Down to Earth in 1989, got nationally certified as a sports injury massage therapist and started traveling the world with a bunch of guys that were making a martial arts movie. After doing that for about four years I finally made it back to Honolulu and got a job as a massage therapist at the Honolulu Club, one of Hawaii's premier fitness clubs. It was there I met the love of my life who I have been with since 1998. She made me an offer I couldn't refuse. She said," If you want to be with me you've got to stop working on naked women". So, I went back into accounting and was the Chief Financial Officer of a large construction company for many years.
Going back to my Newark days when I was an infant, I had no idea what a "chicken" or "egg" or "fish" or "pig" or "cow" was. My dietary blueprint was thrust upon me by my parents as theirs was thrust upon them by their parents. It was by the grace of God that I was able to put things in their proper perspective and improve my health and elevate my consciousness.
The road that I started walking down in 1975 has finally led me to the point of writing my book, “A Sane Diet For An Insane World”. Hopefully, the information contained herein will be enlightening, motivating, and inspiring to encourage you to make different choices. Doing what we do out of conditioning is not always the best course to follow. I am hoping that by the grace of the many friends and personalities I have encountered along my path, you will have a better perspective of what road is the best road for you to travel on, not only for your health but your consciousness as well.
Last but not least: after being vaccinated as a kid I developed asthma, which plagued me all of my life. In 2007 I got exposed to the organic sulfur crystals, which got rid of my asthma in 3 days and has not come back in over 10 years. That, being the tip of the iceberg, has helped people reverse stage 4 cancers, autism, joint pain, blood pressure problems, migraine headaches, erectile dysfunction, gingivitis, and more. Also, because of the detoxification effects by the release of oxygen that permeates and heals all the cells in the body, it removes parasites, radiation, fluoride, free radicals, and all the other crap that is thrust upon us in the environment by Big Business.
For more, please view www.healthtalkhawaii.com and www.asanediet.com.
Namaste!
