Monosodium glutamate, safe or not?

I heard that M.S.G. is GOOD for health apart from being safe. I tried to know what exactly M.S.G is, and I’ve come to a conclusion that I’ll try to avoid it as much as possible.

Monosodium glutamate, sodium glutamate, flavor enhancer 621 [M.S.G] is a sodium salt of glutamic acid. It is marketed as flavor enhancer. The Japanese company Ajinomoto turned it into crystalline powder form, MSG, and patented it in 1909, hence the name Ajinomoto [essence of taste].

The controversy over MSG started in 1968, when a Chinese-American physician wrote a rather lighthearted letter to The New England Journal of Medicine. He had experienced numbness, palpitations and weakness after eating in Chinese restaurants in the United States, and wondered whether the monosodium glutamate used by cooks here (and then rarely used by cooks in China) might be to blame. This was experienced by many people consuming such food and hence it was also known as CHINESE RESTAURANT SYNDROME.

It interferes with the neurochemical process. It is an exciter neurotransmitter i.e. it excites the taste buds into thinking the food is GREAT, even if the taste is not that good. It also messes with your satiety index (how full you think you are after eating) so that you end up wanting to eat more food, it also leads to behavioral addiction to that food. And overeating is linked to obesity, so let’s just try our best to stay away from it.

Higher doses of MSG lead to cell death, by over excitation of nerve cells. It is due to the absence of the blood brain barrier in hypothalamus of humans. Between 1980 and 1994, the Adverse Reaction Monitoring System in FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition received 622 reports of complaints about MSG. Headache was the most frequently reported symptom. No severe reactions were documented, but some reports indicated that people with asthma got worse after they consumed MSG. In some of those cases, the asthma didn't get worse until many hours later.

The glutamic acid we eat isn’t always natural. In our body L-type is found, whereas glutamic acid we consume is D-glutamic acid. Which is not handled by our body well, and it is prepared by fermentation since it is found in bacterial cell walls.

Some say that they do not consume M.S.G., but its forms are other than just monosodium glutamate, they are Glutamate, Monosodium glutamate, Monopotassium glutamate, Glutamic acid, Calcium caseinate, Gelatin, Textured protein, Hydrolyzed protein (any protein that is hydrolyzed), Yeast extract, Yeast food, Autolyzed yeast, Yeast nutrient. Reading the contents on the packet is necessary.

We cannot completely stop the intake but can surely avoid, and while eating food having MSG we should keep in mind that it’s just the flavor enhancer which is why it tastes so great, and we need to control the amount we eat, doing just this will actually bring a change in our health problems. The change may be small, but significant!!!!!!