According to the definition of the European Union, food additives are substances that are not normally consumed as food or characteristic ingredients of food. That is, anything that is added to a foodstuff to enhance its value in some way: either to increase its shelf life or to improve its presentation. Everything that is done to present the products, and the packaging in particular, is done to lure the customer.
So beware, because some containers are worth more than their contents! The additives authorized by the European regulation are classified by categories. Among the permitted additives, some have been in the news for some time, for example aspartame. I will elaborate on the harms of aspartame in paragraph 11: Sugars or Carbohydrates. Another additive belonging to the category of flavor enhancers poses huge problems and controversies, it is the glutamate.
It is present almost everywhere. It is similar to salt and is found in salt itself, as well as in pepper, oil, canned vegetables and fish, hamburgers, Coca-Cola, soft drinks, soy sauce and Asian dishes. It is also added in industrial bakery for breads, cakes, cookies, as well as in wines, sauce funds, ready-made meals, low-fat products and defatted dairy products.
The glutamate is referred to by some as a "food poison". Previously, it was often associated with the famous "Chinese restaurant syndrome" characterized by a sudden migraine, violent nausea or intense skin rash, glare, or even weakness bordering on pseudo-paralysis. The rare patients who seek help after ingesting glutamate have a slowed heart rate, vomiting or salivation. There are no objective neurological signs. Healing is apparently done without any after-effects or consequences, except sometimes a possible nightmare the night after the meal.
However, for some time now, glutamate has been of greater concern to some scientists, following the latest studies that show correlating co-factors, notably with Alzheimer's disease and diabetes mellitus. Flavor enhancers allow the use of very small quantities of raw materials without altering the taste. If you add glutamate to make a "chocolate flavored" cookie, it will allow you to use very little chocolate and still have enough chocolate taste.
You can easily guess that this ploy allows a significant additional profit for the manufacturer. Moreover, this substance, irritating for the digestive tract, triggers a mechanical hunger which pushes to consumption! This is a new profit for the manufacturer. This food gelatin is initially an amino acid (glutamic acid) acting as a neurotransmitter.
Normally present in the brain, it acts on hormones and neurons. It is essential in the memorization and learning process. This is the argument used by manufacturers who boast that they are using a natural product, which cannot be dangerous. So far, nothing alarming. Except that this argument is false, because if we analyze the molecular structure of natural biological glutamate and that of the purified synthetic chemical molecule, we realize that the latter presents differences that make it unrecognizable for the living organism.
Studies and experiments prove that ingested in regular repetitive doses, this synthetic product is a dangerous poison. Since this additive has no taste of its own, but merges with the taste of the food with which it is mixed, the body cannot identify it when ingested, so the consumer unknowingly exceeds the tolerance threshold, which is evaluated at 5 mg on average. During the assimilation of digested food, however, the body differentiates between this harmful additive and physiological glutamic acid.
It appears that children's brains have no protection against synthetic glutamate and that their intellectual development may be endangered by the incessant nerve impulses caused in an anarchic and disordered manner by this synthetic substance. Glutamate can also cause serotonin poisoning, which destabilizes the skin's regulatory mechanisms and can lead to acne, baldness and pimples due to excess sebum. It is even more alarming to know that glutamate is frequently used in the manufacture of baby food and in cookies intended for their consumption as well as for children.
The list of symptoms, resulting from the absorption of glutamate, is long and all spheres of the body seem to be concerned: migraines and headaches, hair loss (especially in women), rapid weight gain (water retention), depression, intestinal irritation, stomach cramps, diarrhea, nausea, dry skin, bleeding gums, mouth ulcers, gingivitis, extreme fatigue, irritability, anxiety, panic attacks (in children), muscle and joint pain, and various other allergic reactions (asthma)
Despite all this, glutamate is still widely used in various forms in food, but also in more than 200 common medicines.
As early as 1969, John Olney, a neurophysiologist at the University of Washington, found that, contrary to previous belief, glutamate could pass into the bloodstream. It then causes disturbing damage to the hypothalamus and the control of the neuro-hormonal system.
When glutamate from the blood supply of the brain reaches the nerve cells, there are huge disturbances in the membrane permeability. The neurons suddenly let in a massive amount of glutamate, calcium, sodium and water, well beyond their physiological possibilities. This abrupt depolarization of neurons could lead to their death. The neurons, when dying, release massively the glutamate they contain. This one will immediately excite other neurons, which die in their turn, and so on, by cascade phenomenon. From this observation, John Olney coined the concept of "excitotoxicity". It is a property of certain amino acids (including glutamate) to trigger this electrical response of nerve cells, which leads to their suicide.
Fully convinced of the danger of glutamate as a food additive, Olney dared to defy the all-powerful Food and Drug Administration (FDA) by stating, "The doses of glutamate found in baby food jars or ready-made soups are enough...to destroy brain neurons..." A French magazine, Le Panorama Médical, recently reported: "The doses of glutamate ingested by children are sometimes so high that, when administered orally to a young animal, they result in the pure and simple destruction of the central nervous system. A 10-kilogram child ingests between 1,000 and 1,300 mg of glutamate in a packet of instant soup, far more than is naturally found in the brain, and the same amount that kills the brain nuclei of guinea pigs. ".
Fortunately, not all individuals are sensitive to glutamate. Luckily for the all-powerful manufacturers, who produce 20,000 tons of glutamate in the U.S. every year. This would be more than enough to wipe out the brains of 225 million American consumers if they were all susceptible.
Dr. Dennis Choil, of Stanford University, California, considers glutamate and other excitotoxic substances in food to be molecular time bombs, expressing themselves morbidly in some individuals years after ingestion. These late sequelae could explain the onset of all degenerative brain diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or even certain hereditary brain diseases such as Huntington's Chorea, which is characterized by mental disorders, character disorders, intellectual deficits and involuntary muscle movements. In hereditary diseases, researchers have found significant anatomical damage to the cerebral nuclei (control of movement and balance) and progressive atrophy of the cerebral cortex or "gray matter". They found abnormal amounts of quinolinic acid, an excitotoxin that acts on glutamate-sensitive receptors.
Their conclusions are that the genetic program controlling normal glutamate metabolism in the brain may be altered, or that the neurons of some individuals may be genetically sensitive to glutamate.
Whatever the hypothesis, other data, such as that of Joseph Coyl of Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore), corroborate that receptor activation by glutamate or aspartame does indeed kill neurons.
Other findings are troubling, such as evidence that cerebrospinal fluid from patients with Alzheimer's-type dementia, analyzed by the Institute for Psychiatric Research in Orangeburg, New York, was found to be more concentrated in the excitatory glutamate in the early stages of the disease and less concentrated in the brain-inhibiting taurine, another amino acid derived from cysteine.
It is important to know the different codes and chemical names under which glutamate can be noted on the packaging:
E620 L-Glutamic acid
E621 MonoSodium glutamate/Sodium hydrogen L-glutamate/MSG
E622 monoPotassium glutamate/Potassium hydrogen L-glutamate
E623 Calcium glutamate/Calcium dihydrogen di-L-glutamate
E624 Monoammonium L-glutamate
E625 Magnesium di-L-glutamate
E627 Sodium guayule/Guanosine 5′- (disodium phosphate)
E631 Inopine 5"- (disodium phosphate)/Sodium inosinate
E635 Sodium 5 " ribonucleotide
E636 Maltol
E637 Ethyl maltol
Generally, you will find monosodium glutamate (MSG) in children's cookies, baby food, snack crackers, bouillon cubes, raw meats in supermarkets and prepared sauces.
So everyone read your labels!
The conclusion is that in order to reduce the risk of ingesting all of these harmful substances, we must obviously once again turn to products that mention formalized organic quality.