Listen up Jeffrey Steingarten. Twenty-four years ago you were one of a handful of food writers coming to the defense of the safety of MSG.\u00a0 It was the \u201cin\u201d thing to do.\u00a0 And your \u201cIf MSG was so bad for you, why doesn\u2019t everyone in Asia have a headache?\u201d\u00a0 was so well written and so provocative, it\u2019s still referred to today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s been 24 years since you wrote those words for Vogue Magazine. It\u2019s long been obvious to those of us who can differentiate fact (produced by honest scientists) from glutamate industry rigged research and paid-for-propaganda, that the defining component of MSG is its brain damaging excitotoxic free glutamate. To be brain-damaging, there has to be more glutamate floating free in the body than is used for normal body functions. And it wasn\u2019t until 1957 that Ajinomoto began mass-producing free glutamate in amounts needed to produce brain damage. Before 1957, there wasn\u2019t enough free glutamate to cause brain damage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To be brain damaging, large quantities of free glutamate have to be floating free in the body. Before 1957, there wasn\u2019t enough free glutamate available in processed foods and drinks to cause brain damage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s a mouthful to say, and not easy to understand, but prior to 1957, the amino acid known as glutamic acid (or glutamate) would only have been found in the healthy human body under well-defined and tightly controlled circumstance — when all glutamate was used to support normal healthy functions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s how it was. That\u2019s how it had always been. But in 1957, the major U.S. producer of MSG began mass-producing MSG in the U.S. using genetically modified bacteria that would secrete free glutamate through their cell walls. That was followed by aggressive marketing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n