Below is a letter written by Anna Root. She’s sent it to The New Yorker…hopefully they’ll print it.
While there are doubtless many societal factors that contribute to obesity, consider this: When researchers want obese lab rats, they don’t use psychology–they use MSG. MSG is not a harmless salt substitute but a powerful nerve stimulant, an “excitotoxin” that affects every major organ, stimulating nerve cells, sometimes to exhaustion. More and more of it is being loaded into our food supply by manufacturers looking at the bottom line: MSG makes food seem to taste better, and it makes people hungry for more.
Doubtful? Check PubMed.gov, a database of medical journal articles, for “MSG obesity.” You’ll find references to “MSG-obese rats,” as well as an article from 2005, “Obesity, voracity and short stature: the impact of glutamate on the regulation of appetite” that supports these claims. (Search “MSG” alone and you will find many toxic effects, including nerve damage, well documented.)
We are being supersized, and not just by our own bad feelings or lack of will power. What was the ingredient that had Morgan Spurlock hooked on McDonalds in a few days and ruined his health in less than a month? His doctors were amazed that fat could do such a thing, but it wasn’t just the fat. Not only obesity, but diabetes, asthma, behavior disorders, hypertension, even violence, are linked to MSG toxicity and have increased with the ever-increasing amount of MSG in our food supply. Is it a coincidence that diabetes, asthma and obesity are epidemic in the same inner-city neighborhoods where there are few grocery stores, and children are more likely to consume processed foods, even in school lunch programs?
Here are some links to check:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi? cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=16132059&query_hl=1&itool =pubmed_docsum (“Obesity, voracity and short stature: the impact of glutamate on the regulation of appetite,” from the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Aug 31, 2005)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi? cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=9582101&query_hl=4&itool= pubmed_docsum (“Obesity induced by neonatal monosodium glutamate treatment in spontaneously hypertensive rats: an animal model of multiple risk factors” “Hypertens Res.” Mar 21, 1998. Notice that obesity is only one of the effects of MSG exposure, and also that much of this information has been known for some time.)
http://www.nomsg.com (an overview of what MSG is, what it does, where it is hidden, and what diseases it is linked to.)
http://www.msgtruth.org/ (a more thorough examination of MSG and disease by a food scientist and former R&D specialist for some major food companies)
West Coast Grrlie Blather 