Finally, it occured to me to do a simple search in the medical sources library, instead of reading experiments and declerations and dissecting information trying to determine truth from fiction.

The bottomline: MSG | Monsodium Glutamate is a chemical compound that does not occur naturally in vegetables and meat (99%) but does occur in processed foods. It is a natural substance, nothing wrong there, it is not poisonous, nothing wrong there either. What it does is, most basically... think of it in these terms: food with MSG tasted better, even though there is less food content in the food itself.

Explain: A soup, like Campbells, has some vegetables some "main" ingredients, the rest is fillings. Flour, preservatives, water, some beans and whatnot. The "food" content, let's say is the delicious vegetables and little chunks of meat. Let's call this 40% of the contents of the soup. The rest is food too, at least it is hydrating, water and minerals and such. But no amino acids, no proteins, no vitamins there... right? OK. Here is a soup, with 40% food content. As a competitor, I bring in the soup with 10% food content. Less meat, less veggies, less everything. More water, more fillings, and my secret weapon, MSG. Believe it or not, the second soup, my soup, the one with less food content will sell more. It will taste better. I don't have to add anything extra, I actually remove stuff, add MSG, and voila. It amplifies the taste you get. So this is the basic picture, still, no big time crime, no real issues so far.

The problems start with fillers and weird chemicals that your body, your liver has to deal with all the time. Oh, by the way, MSG increases the secreation of insulin. The more MSG you consume (ah and it has addictive properties, sorry, missed that part. You will prefer foods with MSG once you get the taste of them. Instinctively) the more insulin you will have in your blood stream. And it will make you hungrier. You will burn through the food faster (there was not much of it to begin with anyway) and will get hungry in no time. And consume more food. Nice.

So far, it caused more insulin, it made you hungrier so you had to eat more. Not a big deal. Right? This is actually where I left off a couple of years ago. Before NY state banned trans-fats I banned them for myself and for my loved ones, along with MSG. It just did not sound right and it was unnatural. Along with aspartame (which I blamed for no reason withouht adequate research, sorry dude) these were on my "no buy" list. If it has any ingredient with the words hydrogenated (even partially) then it's a no buy. Anything that resembles "glutamate", it's a no buy. Easy.

Now the scary part. First, here is the source web site: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Yeap, it's a government web site. So we may assume that they are not set out to shoot themselves on the foot. And, this is no conspiracy theory, please don't get me wrong. I don't think the government is turning its population into eating machines, walking ever sick, constantly problematic, bio-junkyards, full of anti-anxiety, anti-imflammatory, anti-depression, anti-ache, anti-sex, pro-sex,

Now do a search for "msg obese rats". Yes, funny sounding search phrase. You will get zillion results, for the medically and scientifically able they are hair rising, mind boggling and WTF!!!. Oh sorry, forgot to tell you: MSG is used as an agent to turn rats into obese rats so that we can study them and develop anti obesity medicines. Because rats have no obese strains, naturally they don't go obese no matter how much they eat; MSG is the key to turn them into obese. This much was enough for me to go "holy crap!". But for the sake of readability and accountability, here is one research article, with as little medical Latin as possible for Joe SixPack, Joe the Plumber and mostly obese:

Sensory and autonomic nerve changes in the monosodium glutamate-treated rat: a model of type II diabetes.
Morrison JF, Shehab S, Sheen R, Dhanasekaran S, Shaffiullah M, Mensah-Brown E.

Department of Physiology, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, United Arab Emirates University, PO Box 17666, Al Ain, United Arab Emirates. john.morrison@uaeu.ac.ae

Rats that had been injected with monosodium glutamate (MSG) neonatally were studied for up to 70 weeks and compared with age-matched control rats to study changes in glucose tolerance and in sympathetic and sensory nerves. At 61 and 65 weeks of age, there were significant differences in glucose tolerance between the MSG and control groups, and the MSG group had raised fasting blood glucose. These changes were not associated with changes in the number of beta-cells in the islets of Langerhans. In addition, the diabetic MSG-treated rats had central obesity and cataracts. Hypoalgesia to thermal stimuli was present in MSG-treated rats as early as 6 weeks and persisted at 70 weeks. However, no differences were observed in the distribution of substance P, the neurokinin-1 receptor or calcitonin gene-related peptide in the dorsal horn of L3-L5 at this age (70 weeks). Diabetic MSG-treated animals at 65 and 70 weeks of age had significantly reduced noradrenaline concentrations in the heart, tail artery and ileum, while concentrations in the adrenal gland and corpus cavernosum were significantly increased. There was also a significant increase in adrenal adrenaline, dopamine and serotonin, largely attributable to changes in weight of the adrenal gland in the MSG-treated animals. The results indicate that MSG-treated animals develop a form of type II diabetes by about 60 weeks of age, and that there are significant changes in amine levels in various tissues associated with these developments.

Here's the link to the research paper.

And here is the lesson from all this crap: DO NOT EAT MSG. STAY AWAY FROM IT. READ ALL THE FOOD LABELS. STAY AWAY FROM CHAIN RESTAURANTS. MONO SODIUM GLUTAMATE IS THE REASON OF OBESITY. There.

Good night and good luck.

Oh, they label MSG with various names, so do a google and learn its other synonyms and... happy shopping.