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Hidden MSG Makes You Fat
The authors of the original book The Carbohydrate Addicts Diet first alerted me to the fact that eating MSG will make you fat, when they mentioned that MSG was fed to lab animals to make them gain weight. But taht was anecdotal. Years later, an interesting study quantified JUST how fat MSG can make you. It also finds that it causes weight gain independent of how much you eat or exercise.
From the Science Daily description of the study:
Researchers at UNC and in China studied more than 750 Chinese men and women, aged between 40 and 59, in three rural villages in north and south China. The majority of study participants prepared their meals at home without commercially processed foods. About 82 percent of the participants used MSG in their food. Those users were divided into three groups, based on the amount of MSG they used. The third who used the most MSG were nearly three times more likely to be overweight than non-users.[emphasis mine]We found that prevalence of overweight was significantly higher in MSG users than in non-users ... We saw this risk even when we controlled for physical activity, total calorie intake and other possible explanations for the difference in body mass ... The positive associations between MSG intake and overweight were consistent with data from animal studies.
Read about this study here: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080813164638.htm
What the article does not say is that MSG is very common in processed foods, including "diet" foods, but the letters "MSG" rarely show up in labels.
Instead, MSG can be hidden in your food label by being listed as any of the following:
Glutamate Glutamic acid
Gelatin
Calcium caseinate
Textured protein
Monopotassium glutamate
Sodium caseinate
Yeast nutrient
Yeast extract
Yeast food
Autolyzed yeast
Hydrolyzed protein
Hydrolyzed corn gluten
Natrium glutamate
Other ways of hiding MSG are to call it "natural flavoring."
Soy sauce always includes naturally produced MSG. This is the explanation for why some people always feel hungry after eating Chinese food.
If your weight loss is stalled or you are battling relentless hunger, you might want to give some serious thought to eliminating all foods that contain MSG from your diet. This may mean eating no packaged foods including items like processed cheeses.