ROASTED PEANUTS OF DEATH

So....... I was shopping the other day and had roasted peanuts on my grocery list.

I like to make thai food at home and roasted peanuts are a yummy, easy, and protein filled addition to thai dishes....So, out of habit, I'm checking out the ingredients on the bottles of peanuts. I'm thinking...."ah helloooo.....why is there a whole list of ingredients for something as simple as peanuts? Don't they just put a bunch of peanuts in an oven and roast them and viola! roasted peanuts?"

But alas, no.

Not only were there a whole list of ingredients on these innocent looking (and healthy seeming!) nuts, but mixed in with those ingredients were powdered corn syrup (huh?) and monsodium glutamate. Yup, MSG. Now, I could understand a need for a list of several ingredients if this was some sort of mixed snack food with like tidbits of crackers or whatever in it but in a seeming single ingredient item, why is there all this other junk in there???

Now you may at this point be rolling your eyes at me and thinking that I am totally overreacting over a little MSG. In my case, I avoid it like the plague because it gives me migraines for DAYS. NOT FUN.

BUT wait, there's more.

Lately I've been hearing more and more about how bad MSG and similar complex sodiums are for you. In the last couple of weeks, I've heard them referred to as neuro-toxins more than once. And today, I heard an even more disturbing update. Apparently, many of your organs have glutamate receptors. In other words, they 'read' this glutamate as an instruction to DO something. When you consume glutamate, it sits in your blood stream for quite a while and as you consume more and more, it doesn't flush thru your system like normal food items. No, it sits and ACCUMULATES in your bloodstream, building up higher and higher. Then it goes bouncing around from organ to organ wrecking havoc!

Now for some people, their heart glutamate receptors are activated and their heart goes into spasms and starts beating irregularly (the news article noted that most heart attacks 'coincidentally' occur after a meal....hmmm...). For some people, the receptors elsewhere trigger diarreah. For others, the receptors in their lungs are activated and they have an asthma attack. Are you getting the picture here? Your body is reacting to the glutamate and thinking that the brain is instructing it to do stuff.....and then the organ goes haywire! Don't even get me started on the glutamate receptors in the brain! Yikes!

So if you read labels avoid the stuff, you probably figure you are safe, right?

Ha HA! The food manufactureres would like you to THINK so.

But no......have you ever noticed that in the list of five kajillion ingredients are the words, "flavoring" and/or "artificial flavorings" ??? Like the tricky chemicals that are put into perfumes and purfumed products (like say, dishsoap or toilet paper...sheesh...) and listed under a vague "perfumes", the manufactueres can just put in the vague word 'flavorings and they are covered. No regulations against being vague apparently.

Am I the only one frustrated by this??? ARRGGHHHHHH