When you’re looking for flavor without the salt, you might be tempted to want to use a flavor enhancer such as monosodium glutamate (MSG). MSG can fool our taste buds into thinking foods have greater flavor than they actually do, but at an unsuspected but increasingly serious price to our health, as this section will explain.

    MSG excites not only the taste buds, it also excites nerve cells, eventually damaging and killing them. Recent scientific evidence suggests that the long-term ingestion of so-called excitotoxins like MSG contributes to the development of diseases of both the brain and nervous system. As Russell L. Blaylock, M.D., says in his book Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills (Health Press, 1994), “The distribution of cellular damage caused by large concentrations of MSG is very similar to that seen in human cases of Alzheimer’s disease.”

    A large and growing segment of the population—more than 25 percent, according to MSG researcher George R. Schwartz, M.D.—reacts to the amounts of MSG that are commonly added to most processed foods today. Reactions range from mild to severe and include everything from headaches to asthma and nausea to depression. Among the most disturbing symptoms MSG can cause are chest tightness and pain, heart palpitations, and other heart irregularities. Because of serious effects like these, all of us, but especially those who have heart disease, should avoid this common but hazardous food additive.

    Like salt, MSG has the ability to mask inferior food quality and disguise food spoilage. This makes MSG a nightmare for health-conscious food consumers. Restaurants and food manufacturers can use the substance to disguise unappetizing, nutrient-poor processed foods that our sense of taste would normally tell us to avoid.