Msg

[Guest barbara3675]

In another thread it was said that MSG does not have gluten. I thought that MSG was to be avoided because it does have gluten. I need to know. You would think that it does because of the name......glutamate.

Barbara

[tarnalberry]

nope, the names are mostly coincidence. well, sort of - the inheritance goes the other way. glutamate, like glutamine, is an amino acid. gliandin and the othe gluten proteins are made up of amino acids, but it is the particular sequencing of amino acids that makes gliandin toxic to us. (ironically, it appears to be the frequency of proline, not glutamate or glutamine, that makes it toxic.) that's not to say msg is good for you, just that it's not going to cause damage to a celiac's intestines.

[KaitiUSA]

MSG is fine from a gluten perspective..however, it is bad for everyone from a health perspective.

[dogear]

MSG can be made from soy (and usually is in the US) but is often made from wheat gluten.

And by the way, to avoid all MSG-like substances:the excitoxins in the United States is almost as hard as avoiding gluten.

I know because I started on an excitotoxin free (EF) diet about two or three months before going gluten free. And believe, the adjustment came with the excitotoxin part. After that the adding the gluten-free part on to it was fairly simple, except for the baking skills part (which at least had the virtue of being fun, to me anyhow).

Here's a list of all the possible sources of excitotoxin, even if the term the author is using is "MSG":

Open Original Shared Link

And yes you are reading this list right if you see "modified food starch" and yes for an EF diet you have to avoid all "modified starch" no matter whether the source is corn, wheat, tapioca, or rice. The gum part fortunately doesn't usually apply to xanthum or guar, but can to unspecified gums that might be carageenan.

And believe me citric acid and carageenan can be a real pill to avoid all the time. It's a worse thing than avoiding all modified food starch.