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From: [email protected] (Rich Young)
Subject: Re: Is MSG sensitivity superstition?
>>In article <[email protected]> [email protected] (Steve Pope) writes:
>>The mass of anectdotal evidence, combined with the lack of
>>a properly constructed scientific experiment disproving
>>the hypothesis, makes the MSG reaction hypothesis the
>>most likely explanation for events.
The following is from a critique of a "60 Minutes" presentation on MSG
which was aired on November 3rd, 1991. The critique comes from THE TUFTS
DIET AND NUTRITION LETTER, February 1992. [...edited for brevity...]
"Chances are good that if you watched '60 Minutes' last November
3rd [1991], you came away feeling MSG is bad for you. [...] In
the segment entitled 'No MSG,' for instance, show host Ed Bradley
makes alarming statements without adequately substantiating them
('millions are suffering a host of symptoms, and some get violently
sick'); peppers his report with sensational but clinically unproven
personal testimony...; and speaks of studies on MSG that make the
substance seem harmful without explaining just how inconclusive
those studies are.
Consider his making reference at the beginning of the program to
a study conducted at the Eastern Virginia Medical School in order
to back up his comment that there is 'a lot of evidence' that MSG,
a flavor enhancer in Chinese and other Asian cuisines as well as
in many supermarket items, causes headaches. What he does NOT
make reference to is the fact that the study was performed not on
humans but on rabbits.
One of the researchers who conducted the study, pharmacologist
Patricia Williams, Ph.D., says it certainly is conceivable that
a small minority of people are sensitive enough to MSG to get
headaches from it. 'But,' she explains, 'the show probably
overemphasized the extent of the problem.'
A second lapse comes with mention of Dr. John Olney, a professor
at the Washington University School of Medicine who, Mr. Bradley
remarks, 'says that his 20 years of research with laboratory
animals shows MSG is a hazard for developing youngsters' because
it poses a threat of irreversible brain damage. Dr. Olney's
research with lab animals does not 'show' anything about human
youngsters.
In fact, only under extreme circumsrtances did Dr. Olney's
experiments ever bring about any brain damage: when he injected
extremely high doses of MSG into rodents, completely bypassing
their digestive tracts and entering their bloodstreams more directly,
and when he used tubes to force-feed huge amounts of the substance
to very young animals on an empty stomach. Of course, neither
of those procedures occurs with humans; they simply take in MSG
with food. And most of what they take in is broken down by
enzymes in the wall of the small intestine, so that very little
reaches the bloodstream -- much to little, in fact, for human
blood levels of MSG to come anywhere near the high concentrations
found in Dr. Olney's lab animals.....
The World Health Organization appears to be very much aware of
that fact. And so does the European Communities' Scientific
Committee for Food....Both, after examining numerous studies,
have concluded that MSG is safe.
Their determination makes sense, considering that MSG has never
been proven to cause all the symptoms that have been attributed
to it -- headaches, swelling, a tightness in the chest, and a
burning sensation, among others. In fact, the most fail-safe
of clinical studies, the double-blind study..., has consistently
exonerated the much-maligned substance.
That's quite fortunate since the alleged hazardous component of
monosodium glutamate, glutamate, enters our systems whenever
we eat any food that contains protein. The reason is that one
of the amino acids that make up protein, glutamic acid, is broken
down into glutamate during digestion.
It's a breakdown that occurs frequently. Glutamic acid is the
most abundant of the 20 or so amino acids in the diet. It makes
up about 15 percent of the protein in flesh foods, 20 percent in
milk, 25 percent in corn, and 29 percent in whole wheat.
That doesn't mean it's entirely unimaginable that a small number
of people have trouble metabolizing MSG properly and are therefore
sensitive to it...The consensus reached by large, international
professional organizations [is that MSG is safe], the same consensus
reached by the FDA and the biomedical community at large."
-Rich Young (These are not Kodak's opinions.)
