Loosen MSG's Hazardous Hold By Eating Local

Photo by gardngrl

MSG. Most of us are already aware that the stuff isn't good for us. Few of us are probably fully aware of just how health-damaging it really is, though. MSG is a popular food additive, used to enhance or improve the flavor of a food. But glutamate is also a neurotransmitter. MSG is classified as an "excitotoxin" because it excites the glutamate neurotransmitters in the brain into electrical and cellular activity, much of which is destructive (see http://www.smart-drugs.net/ias-excitotoxins.htm for a much more detailed explanation). It is believed that glutamate (mono-sodium and others) and aspartate (found in some artificial sweeteners) are behind numerous chronic neurodegenerative diseases.

Unfortunately, mammals don't just have glutamate receptors in our brains. We have them in every major system of our bodies, including the cardiac, endocrine, and digestive systems. Excitotoxicity from glutamate has been linked to infertility, cancer, diabetes (especially in children), obesity, fatal and near fatal heart arrhythmia, migraines, and a host of other serious illnesses that plague modern societies. Our bodies are wired to respond to MSG, and we suffer for it.

Most of us would like to avoid consuming MSG, but how many of us know where to look for it? Each of us can begin by looking at our supermarkets. The shelves are literally stacked with MSG-filled foods. It permeates the processed food supply. The next time you're doing your grocery shopping scan the labels on your favorite foods and see if you read any of the following ingredients: hydrolyzed vegetable protein, gelatin, yeast extract or autolyzed yeast extract, malted barley, rice syrup, or brown rice syrup. All of these ingredients contain MSG. Many labels come right out and list MSG as an ingredient, which is helpful. For those that do not, the odds are good that most processed foods will contain one of the aforementioned ingredients.

Once you've taken a closer look at your pantry or at the grocery store shelves, try not to panic. MSG, as well as a number of other commodities-based food additives are ubiquitous by design (more on that in an upcoming post) and they go hand-in-hand with processed food. And it makes sense. Food that has been highly processed seldom retains the same flavors, colors or textures as its unrefined counterparts. It's meant to last, often for a very long time. It's meant to be shipped around the globe. So the food industry tries to fortify the food with vitamins, minerals and agents intended to make this less-perishable food more palatable. And is it ever! We love MSG. On a molecular level, the excitotoxins in MSG create pleasure while exacting their physiological toll. If these foods didn't taste at least pretty good we would have stopped buying them a long time ago. Instead, we fill our carts with processed foods at unprecedented levels. And we're paying the price in preventable chronic illness and premature death.

In order to free ourselves from the grip of MSG we are going to have to reacquaint ourselves with fresh foods. Most likely a lot of the fresh foods we'll need to begin eating will be best procured locally. Why? Fruits, vegetables and meats procured from sources thousands of miles away aren't going to taste very good by the time they reach us. They also aren't going to have retained a lot of their beneficial nutrients. The fact is, locally-raised, minimally processed foods are extremely unlikely to contain MSG in any of its forms. And if you're not sure about everything that goes into the making of the product, with local foods you're likely to have the opportunity to ask someone about the food who actually knows the answer. Highly processed foods, on the other hand, often pass through so many different hands before they reach you that it's nearly impossible to trace the ingredients' origins. Ask yourself the following questions. Which food supply is more secure? Which is least likely to undermine my health? With local foods we have the opportunity to improve our health by steering clear of MSG and other harmful additives.

"Ultimately, Our Problem is Consumption..."

"Sustainability." The term used to mean what it implies: balanced stewardship of resources whereby materials are procured in ways that enable their availability in perpetuity. Truly sustainably managed resources are never taken at a rate greater than replacement. This is what ensures long-term viability. Sustainability. Yet this term has been co-opted by marketing and all manner of industry because corporations know that people, when given the choice, very often want to do the right thing. And they're willing to pay for it. So the great corporate-sponsored greenwash is unleashed, and a lot of people, to0 busy with their own hectic lives, fail to notice the lack of substance, and the very unsustainable practices behind the hype. Shame on them. And shame on us.

While I don't intend to discuss sustainable consumer goods in this post, I do think it's important to pause and think about the meaning of sustainability. Why? Because even a locally-produced, sustainably-managed product won't make the world a better place if we--and by "we" I'm referring to citizens of industrialized countries--don't bring our consumption in line with total available resources. As Eamon O'Hara recently wrote in a BBC News post, "The modern Western lifestyle...has an inbuilt dependency on the cheap resources and low carbon footprint of developing countries, which has compounded global injustice...The world simply does not have the resources, renewable or otherwise, to sustain Western lifestyles across the globe." In the aggregate, our consumption is creating misery, injustice and global instability, as well as environmental devastation. This is a huge problem, and we, the ones using up more than our share, have to be the ones to begin solving it.

One way for industrialized societies to begin to address their global footprint (carbon, political, human suffering, etc.) is to begin relocalizing their economies and learning to live with what's available around them. Now, obviously, this would not be a simple undertaking, even if you do happen to live in a beautiful place with many wonderful natural resources close at hand. Not only do many people live in places that are just completely unable to support the population (Arizona comes to mind), but the poorest of the world's poor, the people's whose resources we're exploiting, have also become dependent on a system we've imposed upon them. Simply removing that system won't necessarily help them and will likely even hurt them in the short-run. It's a daunting and massive undertaking that is bound to spawn greater suffering, whether perceived (Westerners learning to live much more simply) or real (poor countries losing foreign investment dollars). But what other ethical choice is there? In the short-run we're destroying the future potential of the world's poor. The long-run? Well, the long-run looks a lot like our poor behavior catching up with us. Fast. Shall we be proactive or reactive? Shall we do the right thing now or wait for our collective debts to come due?

There are organizations around the world doing the work of re-introducing displaced peoples to lands and practices that used to comprise their ways of life, before empire and corporate multinationalism moved in. Heifer International (www.heifer.org) is one organization addressing ways to relocalize food security on nearly every corner of the globe. We, too, are displaced, in many senses. The multitudinous skills of our ancestors have been replaced by service and expert economies in which most of us really only hone one skill and have to pay someone else to perform the other services we need to live. Trying to re-learn all of these skills may not be possible, but we can re-learn how to produce food, building materials and clothing, for a start. Food, shelter and clothing. That's more than a lot of the world's people have. And, collectively, I'm confident that a community can re-learn a whole lot more than just the basics. We'll just have to get comfortable with sharing what we know.

Prodigal Blogger

Photo by Kate Downing

I have something to confess. This summer I'm struggling to find my way. This is true professionally, personally, and it's certainly true of my relationship to this blog. The reasons I started this blog are legion, but I do believe I was guided by my own passionate belief in the transformational power of relocalization. I am an earnest person with solid convictions and I believe--almost above all else--that most of us are going to need to fix our gazes and focus our efforts on our immediate surroundings if we're going to thrive. It was my intention to create a mostly upbeat space to promote relocalization by fostering discussion and providing real life examples, as well as counter-examples, of what a local focus has to offer. I also hoped to educate others, as well as myself, about the complexities of our current situation.

But I now think that I have to admit to something else. I started this blog because I feel profoundly disconnected from most of the people around me, and I believe it's difficult to begin discussions of relocalization with others. I'm an introvert. I may be able to hold my own in one-on-one conversations, but I still feel awkward. Group discussions are even more challenging. So, for someone like me to begin asking other people to think about how much their quality of life might improve if Wal-Mart folded, if we looked to ourselves and our neighbors for a lot of the products and services we currently buy, and if we ate only what was in season and locally or regionally available, is, well, a really tough assignment. In this country, people like their choices to be nearly infinite. We expect it. But as good as it feels (temporarily) to get what we want when we want it, the psychological as well as cultural and environmental consequences of such entitlement are real and damaging. I guess I have the hope that through this blog I can connect with a few kindred spirits out there, but also contribute in some small way to cultural healing.

This is a tall order. Perhaps it would be easier and feel better for me to carry out this work if other aspects of my life were in better order. I recently had the privilege and delight of marrying the person with whom I want to spend the rest of my days. My relationship provides a supportive foundation where much else is shaky. It is a gift for which I am most grateful. But like everyone else, I have a lot of struggles with which to contend: health, family, and the depression that comes with work that is an un-fulfilling necessity. Most days I would trade a kidney for a stable, affordable living situation. Like most people, I am struggling so much with getting by when I'd much rather be going about the business of living. Modestly and happily. Building community and creating thriving local economies. But I can't do it alone. And right now, a few months into this blog experiment, that's how I feel. Alone.

I want to continue to build this blog and to fill it with ideas. I want to share it with you and I hope you'll share something of yourselves and your ideas in return. The Prodigal Blogger is limping along, but she's back.