Is MSG Making You Fat?

If you think MSG is only in Chinese food, think again. There is some form of it in almost every kind of packaged food. It's in food seasonings, soups, salad dressings, sauces and frozen prepared foods just to name a few. You may not always recognize it because it has a few new names these days: hydrolyzed protein, hydrolyzed vegetable protein, modified food starch, autolyzed yeast, yeast extract, calcium caseinate, sodium caseinate, glutamic acid and carrageenan. Even when the restaurant says they don't add MSG, it is still in the sauces they use.

MSG is used to make food taste better. It also makes you feel hungrier. That's a bad combination. MSG excites the taste buds so they are more sensitive to the food, and keeps you from feeling satiated. It's almost a cliche' to say that you feel hungry an hour after eating Chinese food. That alone is enough to cause most people to overeat.

MSG has also been shown to increase insulin production in animals. Of course, fat burning is stopped when insulin is high, so we have both the chemical itself as well as overeating sending our insulin to new highs.

Since one of the primary ingredients of MSG is sodium, it also causes water retention. We have all experienced this when the day after we feel puffy and our joints are swollen. Water retention from an imbalance of sodium to potassium in our bodies is responsible for much of the weight some people carry around all the time. The best example of this is a potbelly that is tight or firm under the skin instead of rolls of fat. Drinking water is not enough to regain this balance. You have to reduce sodium and/or increase potassium.

To truly avoid MSG, you will have to start reading the labels and looking for the various aliases. You'll be surprised how much of your food has it listed in the ingredients, even as good ol' monosodium glutamate. You may find you will have to go to the healthy section of your grocery store, or even a health foods store, to find the foods you want without it.