MSG causes damage to you..

Well damage to the brain? This could explain my grades this year....:dry:

 

Well, I'm going to show a little of what I've learned at college.

MSG (monosodium glutamate) is the sodium salt of glutamic acid, formed by the sodium cation (Na+) and the glutamate anion (for simplicity Glu). Monosodium glutamate is solvated by water (for example in saliva, blood, gastric juices etc) liberating the ions mentioned above.

Glu is one of the twenty amino acids which form proteins both in humans and other forms of life (therefore it's very likely to be present in significant amounts in anything containing proteins). Na+ is present in almost every food, notoriously table salt (sodium chloride, NaCl)

Free Glu is absorbed more rapidly than Glu from proteins (as free Glu doesn't have to undergo proteolysis) but considering that the amount of it used in food is relatively small, it's unlikely to cause major problems.

Studies have been conducted with seem to show that rats fed with Glu develop retinal damage as well as other substances. However, these studies were done by feeding the rats amounts of Glu over an order of magnitude above the average intake from combined free Glu from flavoring and Glu from protein-rich foods. Following that line of thought, one could say that Na+ causes cerebral and circulatory damage - if I fed a person 10x the normal Na+ intake, he/she would experience extremely high blood pressure which would lead to a vascular attack, very likely at brain level.

Some people may suffer from hypersensibility to Glu, but the same is true for other amino acids such as phenylalanine (Phe) which is also present in many foods, notoriously milk, as well as in some diet foods as part of aspartame.

The 1987 Joint Expert Committee on Food Additives of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organization placed monosodium glutamate in the safest category of food ingredients.

A 1991 report by the European Community's (EC) Scientific Committee for Foods reaffirmed monosodium glutamate's safety and classified its "acceptable daily intake" as "not specified", the most favourable designation for a food ingredient. In addition, the EC Committee said, "Infants, including prematures, have been shown to metabolize glutamate as efficiently as adults and therefore do not display any special susceptibility to elevated oral intakes of glutamate."

A 1992 report from the Council on Scientific Affairs of the American Medical Association stated that glutamate in any form has not been shown to be a "significant health hazard".

Therefore, I conclude that there are no real reasons to think that monosodium glutamate is harmful for human health.