The pros and cons of Glutamate.  Many manufactures will tell you it is naturally occurring and is in many natural foods including our bodies.  It is safe for consumption, they will tell you.  There are also many advocates for safe, healthy food (including this WEB site) that say glutamate is unsafe.  Well let’s clear the air.  You be the judge.

Mono sodium Glutamate a natural occurring safe ingredient.  Yes, it is naturally occurring, but that is the bond version and not the manufactured free version.  We the advocates for healthy choices agree bound glutamate is safe. The problem is not the bound, but free glutamate.  So what is the difference between bound and free glutamate?

Bound Glutamate is naturally occurring and is in almost every food including our body, but because it is bound it is released very slowly and absorbed into muscles where it is put to good use and before toxic levels can build up in the blood stream.  In the natural form it is in very, very small amounts.  Not teaspoons or eigths of a teaspoon, but microsopic levels.

Free Glutimate is not naturally occurring, but man made/manufactured.  It can be ingested in perceptibly small amounts that are far higher amounts than the body can handle.  Since it is free and not bond the rise to toxic levels is very quick.  At higher concentrations (still very small amounts) cell death in brain cells can occur, excitotoxicity.  A cascading reaction (rapid firing of impulses) triggers the death of brain cells.  Where all people can be impacted, children under 5 are at the greatest danger.  Free Glutamate is an exotoxin that over stimulates the brain.

There is also the long term potential danger of cancer related to chemicals used to create the manufactured free glutamate.

It seems the manufactures were right, naturally occurring glutamate is safe at natural levels, they just failed to realize that was not the topic.  The topic was the free glutamates they use in their products.  An easy mistake that anyone could make while trying to cover up the bad side of what they are doing.

Before you assume free glutamate in small quantities may not be bad for you, ask yourself how much are you ingesting.  If numerous food manufactures, candy makers and fast food restaurants use it, just what is your daily consumption?  What are you consuming at any meal or snack?

Did you know free glutamate is purported to cause increased acid reflux?  Too much acid reflux and the flap that closes off to protect the pancreas from intestinal acid can inadvertently not close off fast enough.  Small amounts of intestinal acid will destroy the pancreas in short order (24 to 48 hours).  Once your pancreas has failed your cells can no longer absorb sucrose from the blood stream and will start a to cannibalize adjacent cells.   This is muscles, organs and brain cells.  Within 24 to 48 hour you will be pain free and just a little dead.  Once the process starts there are no options, no saving you, just a lot of pain.  I have witnessed pancreatic failure first hand, the patient had abnormal acid reflux which lead to the fatal situation.

Manufactures spend large sums of money covering up the truth, look at this Wiki posting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monosodium_glutamate where you cannot post contrary opinions to delinate the difference between bound and free glutamate.  It appears to be funded by the food producers trying to sway the public opinion through word manipulation.  The article has colorful diagrams and pictures and reads well until you realize what is missing a discussion of the real culpurit Free Glutamate. 

Manufactures that use Free Glutamate do so because it saves them money.  They can produce more for a cheaper price and since it is not a flavor, but a brain stimulus to eat more it is perfect.  It does not matter than you gain weight since you will eat more.  A long time ago there was a Twilight Zone show entitled To Serve Mankind where aligns feed and cared for mankind only to feed their own hunger.  Is this so different, are these manufactors not feeding off of us for profits while endangering our lives.

Looking for more information, consider these two sources.

Dr. Russell Blaylock has (MD) had written a good book on excitotoxins The Taste That Kills.

Dr George R. Schwartz  has written a good book on the reactions to MSG In Bad Taste