Growing up in an environment of homemade stews, soups, dinners and desserts let me believe, that this is the way everyone eats at home.
Once I moved to America as a newlywed, I realized that this is actually more an exception than the norm.
My first visit to one of the big American Groceries store was breathtaking. I have never seen so many premade frozen Dinners in a store. I was so excited, ready to embrace the new life of CONVENIENCE, no more chopping onions so your eyes tear. Here is the future I thought to myself, and I was happy to be part of it.
At that time I did not work fulltime, so I was responsible for Dinners. Every day I walked to one of the grocery stores and picked a fantastic frozen Dinner with mushroom sauce, egg noodles. After I heated up the Dinner, I even had time to decorate the dining table, put some nice music on, and open a wine bottle, and all this in under 20min.
After a few months of eating like this, I started to feel irritated, moody, tired, fat and exhausted. I immediately thought that this is probably because I just moved to America and I might suffer from culture shock and home sickness.
Then my digestive problems started. After every Dinner I got really bloated, pinching in the stomach and tired. I could not figure out what was wrong with me, so I decided to research some of the ingredients from my Dinners. It did not take a lot of research until I found out that 90% of frozen, preserved and processed foods are high in MSG.
MSG, monosodium glutamate, is a flavor enhancer that’s known widely as an addition to Chinese food, but is actually added to thousands of food products that everyone in America eats regularly. You can find MSG in canned soups, crackers, meat, salad dressing, FROZEN DINNERS, breads and even in infant formula.
MSG is more than just a seasoning like salt and pepper, it actually enhances the flavor of foods, making processed meats, and frozen dinners taste fresher and smell better, salad dressings more tasty, and canned food less tinny.
MSG has very little taste at all, yet when you eat MSG, you think the food you are eating tastes fantastic! IT DOES THIS BY TRICKING YOUR TONGUE, by getting your taste buds “excited” to stimulate your appetite. MSG is literally called an EXCITOTOXIN. The food industry has discovered its own “ANTI-APPETITE SUPPRESSANT”.
Here are just a few side effects of eating MSG:
Insomnia, Migraines, Alzheimer’s disease, dizziness, diarrhea, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, asthma attacks, allergies, nausea, chest pain, shortness of breath, mood swings, memory loss and cancer.
This is just the tip of the iceberg, as of right now scientists don’t really fully know what MSG can do to our bodies.
Once I discovered just the side effects of MSG, I decided to go back to my old way of cooking which means cutting, chopping and cooking my own food.
In case you are interested in reducing your intake on MSG, you need to start reading food labels.
The food industry has noticed that more and more consumers are trying to avoid MSG, so they gave MSG some new names for example YEAST EXTRACT, AUTOLYZED YEAST, HYDROLYZED VEGETABLE OR ANIMAL PROTEIN, PROTEIN-FORTIFIED, ULTRA-PASTEURIZED, FERMENTED, ENZYME MODIFIED, CASEINATE, SODIUM CASEINATE, CALCIUM CASEINATE and even under natural-sounding names such as BOUILLON, BROTH STOCK or MALT EXTRACT.
Besides yeast extract, a common name for MSG is “natural flavors”.
My grandmother from Austria, who is 94 years old, told me “TO KNOW MY FOOD”. To know where it came from, who planted it, picked it, and cooked it.
Michael Pollen author of several nutritional books says:
Don’t eat anything your great grandmother would not recognize as food
Don’t eat anything with more than five ingredients or ingredients you can’t pronounce
Don’t eat anything that won’t eventually rot.
Don’t buy food where you buy your gasoline
And the best advice for last “EAT FOOD, NOT TOO MUCH, MOSTLY PLANTS!”
Birgit your Wellness Coach
(in case you like to know more about the danger of MSG please listen to the video talk from MERCOLA http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2007/08/28/dangers-of-msg.aspx)
Once I moved to America as a newlywed, I realized that this is actually more an exception than the norm.
My first visit to one of the big American Groceries store was breathtaking. I have never seen so many premade frozen Dinners in a store. I was so excited, ready to embrace the new life of CONVENIENCE, no more chopping onions so your eyes tear. Here is the future I thought to myself, and I was happy to be part of it.
At that time I did not work fulltime, so I was responsible for Dinners. Every day I walked to one of the grocery stores and picked a fantastic frozen Dinner with mushroom sauce, egg noodles. After I heated up the Dinner, I even had time to decorate the dining table, put some nice music on, and open a wine bottle, and all this in under 20min.
After a few months of eating like this, I started to feel irritated, moody, tired, fat and exhausted. I immediately thought that this is probably because I just moved to America and I might suffer from culture shock and home sickness.
Then my digestive problems started. After every Dinner I got really bloated, pinching in the stomach and tired. I could not figure out what was wrong with me, so I decided to research some of the ingredients from my Dinners. It did not take a lot of research until I found out that 90% of frozen, preserved and processed foods are high in MSG.
MSG, monosodium glutamate, is a flavor enhancer that’s known widely as an addition to Chinese food, but is actually added to thousands of food products that everyone in America eats regularly. You can find MSG in canned soups, crackers, meat, salad dressing, FROZEN DINNERS, breads and even in infant formula.
MSG is more than just a seasoning like salt and pepper, it actually enhances the flavor of foods, making processed meats, and frozen dinners taste fresher and smell better, salad dressings more tasty, and canned food less tinny.
MSG has very little taste at all, yet when you eat MSG, you think the food you are eating tastes fantastic! IT DOES THIS BY TRICKING YOUR TONGUE, by getting your taste buds “excited” to stimulate your appetite. MSG is literally called an EXCITOTOXIN. The food industry has discovered its own “ANTI-APPETITE SUPPRESSANT”.
Here are just a few side effects of eating MSG:
Insomnia, Migraines, Alzheimer’s disease, dizziness, diarrhea, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, asthma attacks, allergies, nausea, chest pain, shortness of breath, mood swings, memory loss and cancer.
This is just the tip of the iceberg, as of right now scientists don’t really fully know what MSG can do to our bodies.
Once I discovered just the side effects of MSG, I decided to go back to my old way of cooking which means cutting, chopping and cooking my own food.
In case you are interested in reducing your intake on MSG, you need to start reading food labels.
The food industry has noticed that more and more consumers are trying to avoid MSG, so they gave MSG some new names for example YEAST EXTRACT, AUTOLYZED YEAST, HYDROLYZED VEGETABLE OR ANIMAL PROTEIN, PROTEIN-FORTIFIED, ULTRA-PASTEURIZED, FERMENTED, ENZYME MODIFIED, CASEINATE, SODIUM CASEINATE, CALCIUM CASEINATE and even under natural-sounding names such as BOUILLON, BROTH STOCK or MALT EXTRACT.
Besides yeast extract, a common name for MSG is “natural flavors”.
My grandmother from Austria, who is 94 years old, told me “TO KNOW MY FOOD”. To know where it came from, who planted it, picked it, and cooked it.
Michael Pollen author of several nutritional books says:
Don’t eat anything your great grandmother would not recognize as food
Don’t eat anything with more than five ingredients or ingredients you can’t pronounce
Don’t eat anything that won’t eventually rot.
Don’t buy food where you buy your gasoline
And the best advice for last “EAT FOOD, NOT TOO MUCH, MOSTLY PLANTS!”
Birgit your Wellness Coach
(in case you like to know more about the danger of MSG please listen to the video talk from MERCOLA http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2007/08/28/dangers-of-msg.aspx)
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