HELPFUL FOOD ALLERGY INFORMATION

Perhaps one of the hardest food allergies to understand is the MSG allergy. More common allergies include lactose, and tomato (nightshade).

I have heard so many times from others how they spent ten or twenty thousand dollars getting medical tests, imaging and other tests for stomach or lower GI pains before they learned that they need to be checked for food allergies. Food allergies are fairly common, but vary often in degree. Some people never learn they have a food sensitivity that never quite reaches the full allergic irritated reaction. Bloating, gas, pain and other symptoms in the stomach to GI are often difficult to accurately describe, but it is easy to try eliminating foods to see if symptoms go away. That is fairly straightforward to try with milk and other lactose products. But stay off it for a full week to try, not a day or two. A few days is not long enough to know the symptoms have alleviated.

Let me come out here and say MSG is a substance that does not belong in human food. There are those who claim it even as "natural", and it is even seen in organic foods. But MSG never occurs in the concentrations found in food additives in nature. MSG can cause headaches, severe GI pain and many other symptoms. Unfortunately one of the most difficult things to do is find food that MSG is not added to as it uses many hidden names such as autolyzed yeast, spices, hydrolyzed protein (many kinds), broth, stock, glutamate, vetsin and many numerous other names that are just hidden names for MSG. One can not take the term organic as helpful because food makers have learned that they can concentrate naturally occurring organically produced MSG into super concentrations and add them to nearly every food out there. One might think Chinese food is the main culprit, but most Chinese restaurants will tell you openly they do not add MSG. Many snacks, sauces, dressings, carry-out snack meats and prepared items, and even raw meat is injected with broths containing high concentrations of MSG. MSG adds a zesty taste that feels and tastes good on the tongue but can cause severe results later. You will find few physicians who can help you diagnose this common allergy. There are people who go years with migraine headaches never learning all the hidden names of MSG. MSG can also cause very severe reactions in the stomach (vomiting) to the lower GI with painful movements. Your best bet if you suspect MSG allergies is to learn all the hidden names and do most of your own cooking. Search the Internet carefully to help learn all the hidden names of MSG and bring your reading glasses to the grocery.


-Mark