While I was pregnant with my second son, Evan, I started feeling bad... a lot. Often enough that I wanted to know why. My face would get tight, and feel flushed, I would get a headache, I had heart palpations, and would feel nauseous. So after doing some research I realized I was reacting to free glutamates (like MSG). I had experienced a few MSG related reactions years prior when eating Chinese food, but had not thought of it in ages. After gathering enough information to confuse me more, I decided to try to eliminate free glutamates from my diet and see if it helped. I immediately started feeling better, and was relieved to pin point the problem. However, I was still left with tons of questions, and surprisingly very little information. Everyone knows what MSG is, why is there no real facts on the subject? What could I eat, what couldn't I eat? I had to go by trail and error (and still do) to try to figure out what was off limits. I did find a couple of very informative websites on the subject that helped me tremendously. I'll list them below.
So what do I know about free glutamates? Monosodium Glutamate is the most well known type of free glutamate, but there are tons more. Another frequently used glutamate is yeast extract, as well as anything hydrolyzed, autolyzed, or "protein"...soy protein, wheat protein, vegetable protein. Free glutamates are a excitotoxins that are produced from the over processing and denaturing of foods and are often used as a "flavor enhancer" (any one heard of umami?).
A lot of arguments defending glutamates start with the fact that they are naturally occurring and exist in a large quantity in the human body. This is true but something happens when glutamates break down from over processing. They become "free" glutamates and don't bind to each other any more. This is where the problem comes in, our bodies are not able to process them once "free", much like free radicals.
Some foods can naturally produce free glutamates like over ripe tomatoes and mushrooms. Even foods like these can cause highly sensitive people to have reactions react. Usually its the addition of free glutamates, or the over processing of foods that cause people to have a reaction. The FDA has labeled MSG and free glutamates as GRAS (generally recognized as safe), however it is believed to be linked to Alzheimer's, cancer, Parkinson's, MS, strokes, ALS, even Autism and ADHD. It can also cause migraines, diarrhea, insomnia, and many other symptoms. The FDA has acknowledged that a minor percentage of the population is sensitive to MSG, but it affects nearly EVERYONE. Whether you have symptoms or not it causes negative effects on your brain and endocrine system. Lots of people have reactions without connecting them to free glutamates. Like eating fast food makes me feel bad, or these chips give me a migraine. Some people don't even notice because so many foods cause a reaction, people accept it as normal.
Food manufactures purposely hide MSG in labels by adding other free glutamates that cause they same negative effects as MSG. Some companies avoid the label all together by adding the free glutamates to say their frying oil instead of the chips or fries themselves, and other various sneaky moves.
Some foods I had in my house that have free glutamates are:
Goldfish (even the organic ones), condensed soups, chicken stock & bouillon, flavored potato chips & crackers, store bought salad dressings & croutons, deli meat, and soy sauce.
So for all recipes I include for Clarity please know I have done my best to insure that they are free of free glutamates (with the exception of tomatoes/mushroom/&like foods-I can't explain those and fortunately I am still able to consume them.
Some websites that do a much better job of explaining MSG are:
http://www.truthinlabeling.org/
http://www.msgtruth.org/avoid.htm
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