In a better place?  Well it's been over a year since I last posted.  After a lot of changes, I am, now in a better place (in so many ways).  I have changed my diet to all natural foods and do not eat processed foods.
As I research information about the food industry, I become more disillusioned that there is very little intent for healthy food  production from the major brands.  For the most part it's all about making profit by putting cheaper yet harmful additives in the food.  Many of them are even addictive.

In my last post I said knowledge is power.  I know everything we read says that food does not cause IBD or in my case Crohn's.  But I am in disagreement.  Well, maybe I would use a different phrase.  There are foods my digestive track and immune system does not like and can put me back into a "flare-up"  So maybe foods don't cause Crohn's directly  (I am still researching!) but they sure do exacerbate it!!

So we are now enjoying wholesome farm fresh eggs, home made baked goods and the basic meats and vegetable dishes like my grandmother use to make on the farm.   Did you know farm fresh eggs  taste better?  I am in a healthy state (as much as I can be) and I am pursuing my art again.  Health and wellness are so important.  I wish you well.

Tools for a MSG, glutamate free future

I am excited. Today in my research I found a website that tells me just how much glutamate is in an ingredient. Finally no more guessing ( Well almost. There are caveats)  My apologies to those who don't like this much detail, but with this disease, knowledge is power. 

The Nutrition Data website by "Self" magazine gives nutritional details on thousands of ingredients and products including their glutamic acid content. For example: when I looked up soy sauce, I found that there were different levels/amounts of glutamic acid and aspartic acid in four different types of soy sauce.
Go to http://nutritiondata.self.com/foods-Soy%20sauce000000000000000000000.html , then click on soy sauce made from soy ( tamari) and then scroll to nutrition information and then look at protein & amino acids chart and click on "more details".
This will give you a break down on the types and amount of protein found in this ingredient. Look at both glutamic acid and aspartic acid for proteins that have an "msg" affect. (Aspartic acid is related to the controversial product called aspartame found in many diet soda drinks.)

So, soy sauce with soy (tamari) has 159 mg of aspartic acid and 434 mg of glutamic acid per tablespoon.

Here is the caveat: Compare that to another soy sauce in the list such as soy sauce with hydrolyzed vegetable protein. If you are familiar with MSG name alternatives then you know that anything hydrolyzed will have glutamate content. But when you look up the break down of proteins for this ingredient there are no details. This doesn't mean that it doesn't have glutamic acid, it just means that they haven't listed this break out.

The other issue to keep in mind is that the listing glutamic acid does not differentiate from natural occurring glutamic acid and processed or "free glutamic acid" that has been manufactured through either fermentation, use of enzymes, acids, heating or drying processes that release the glutamic acid from the original protein. Whether you only react to the free glutamic acid or both free and natural glutamic acid is probably determined by your level of sensitivity.

So it's a helpful tool if you keep these limitations in mind.

Another tool that I found today that is helpful (but also has a caveat) is foodfacts.com You can look up a lot of products and find the labels with ingredients listed and allergen listings as well as what they call controversial ingredients such as MSG. This is a good site to learn about hidden glutamate ingredients. For example: look up one of the common commercial brands of peanut butter. (I love peanut butter. Favorite foods or foods you crave are a good place to start your searches. They may very well contain the stuff you are sensitive to)

The two top commercial peanut butters both have allergen listing that have different types of allergens or controversial ingredients that you can highlight by pressing on the little square button with a picture of the allergen or controversial ingredient.
When you click on the MSG button, the words "vegetable(s) oil fully hydrogenated" shows up in color. This means that this ingredient has an amount of free processed glutamic acid or MSG. (If you want to know the level of glutamic acid it contains you can look it up on the other website previously mentioned.)

The other top commercial brand has both soy protein and vegetable hydrogenated oil.

So these tools can help you get closer to identifying the foods you may be reacting to or to find MSG alternative names. Just remember that it isn't conclusive.

Knowledge is Power!