Let's turn to our health.
I am pleased to welcome to the fifty five Cars Morning Show doctor Catherine aka Katie Reid. She's the founder of Unblind My Mind, inco, nonprofit dedicated to improving health through informed food choices. It's got a background of biotech, cancer, pharmaceuticals and brings a wealth of scientific knowledge to her work on chronic inflammatory disease. Joining the fifty five Cars Morning Show to talk about a book she co wrote along with Barbara Peice, PhD. It is Fat, Stressed and
Sick MSG. Processed Food in America's Health Crisis. Doctor Reid, is a real pleasure to have you on the program this morning.
Oh thank you for having me, And I don't know how.
You feel about I honestly very excited about RFK Junior and hopefully his ability through raising our awareness so kind of the things you're talking about in your book so we can make informed choices about our diets, because I think a lot of people are really uninformed about processed foods and are what's in them, including as you illustrate and number one out of the gate in the title
of your book MSG. I remember all the rage was getting Chinese restaurants to drop MSG from there, from from from the foods, and we're going back a couple of decades at least on that one, and a lot of them advertised no MSG added.
Good. Well, apparently it's all over the place.
It is. It's all over the place. And yeah, you know, I'm excited about RFK Junior making some changes about you know, being aware and having a you know, back to real whole foods. Not such the process, but the Yeah, it's the processed foods. The MSG is hidden in the ingredient with and so even foods that will say no MSG added, what it's implying it's not pure MSG, not including MG that's created from the processing of proteins. Okay, it's a bit of a yeah.
Yeah, So it's not on the label as contains MSG. But MSG is in the foods that we buy, the process as foods we buy because of how it's how the food is made, how it's processed.
And if you think about ingredient labels, they're not required to put the manufacturing process on there and then the end product resulting from that processing. So if you take a protein and you process it with a bunch of you know, pasteurization, acid hydrolysis, fermentation, it'll degrade the protein into its component parts, the amino acids, and glutamate is an amino acid. And they know that. I mean, that's how MSG used to be processed, is using wheat gluten
and doing an acid hydrolysis on the wheat gluten. But now there's cheaper processes to making MSG, so they're very well aware that processing these proteins makes MSG. It's a very addicting component, so we keep going for more. It hijacks our taste receptors and our brain thinks it's wonderful, and so like rigged against us trying to find a healthier, more quality of life.
Well, isn't that the point of MSG being an additive or as a byproduct of processing to make the food taste better, like salt makes food taste better.
Exactly, it's it is the underlying mechanism of all addictions. But yeah, so they're putting it in there too for you know, increasing profits, increasing you know, consumption.
Okay, Now, I think most people know that as a just a giant a dietary recommendation, we all hear it, stay away from processed foods. How do you define processed foods is like, if I go out to the Indian restaurant, I get carry out, I don't think of that as
processed food. They're using spinach, they're using a specific kind of cheese, or they're using whole chunks of meat, And if I did that at home, it wouldn't be defined as process So how does that, you know, homemade preparation type thing differ from a processed food as we know it.
Yeah, and there's different categories on the degree of processing. So it's the ultra processed foods that they discussed in the book you know, Fat, Stressed, and Sick MSG processed foods in America's Health Crisis. You know that can be purchased on Amazon. That it really is the ultra processed foods that contains the largest amount of the MSG because of the processing of the proteins. So you just mentioned cheese, and a lot of people won't consider that process, but
that is process you're taking. Yeah, you're taking milk, you're fermenting it, you're you know, having it. You know, cultures that are added to it to degrade the proteins and caseine, the major protein in milk or dairy products. Is then degraded, and so you get glutamate as a byproduct of the fermentation of that milk. The more age the cheese, the
more the higher the MSG. And so you know, even the breads the way they're making them, they're fortifying it with gluten, they're fermenting it, they're adding you know, a bunch of different ingredients that will degrade that protein. So if you think about cheese and bread, well, wow, you know, that's like a big staple in American But then like you know, the the Americans craze on protein, you know, the protein powders collagen seems to be a big fad lately.
But they're using hydrolyzed collagen. They're using an acid hydrolysis process on that collagen that will degrade that protein and break it up into its subunits of amino acids. Glutamate, you know, being a significant part of that degradation. Weigh protein is a it's actually a cheese byproduct, waste product from you know, making cheese. And so they wanted to use whey because they didn't want to have a bunch
of waste from the cheese manufacturing. So now it's all over our you know, different protein enriched products, but like weigh protein isolate or protein isolate, these are code words
of it went through an extreme amount of processing. So what is not processed would be eating you know, like you said, your vegetables, your whole grains like you know, brown rice or quene waw starchy vegetables could be used as a carbohydrate source, like potatoes or sweet potatoes, root of bega, having you know, good whole quality uncured or unprocessed meat like pasture raised chicken, grass fed beef, wild
caught seafood, and then fruits, organic, raw nuts, seeds. You know, again the glycis shape or the round up that they're putting in some of these products also kind of contribute to inflammation and some of that glutamate signaling even in the body. So those are some of the things that
would be considered unprocessed. You know, you're literally just you know, so when you talk about Indian food, you know they're obviously putting a lot of you know, cheese in there or dairy or a lot of these creaming things and sauces. And even though it's got spinach.
You're going after my pilock panier.
Yeah, yeah, well we don't do it all the time, but are we doing our souls?
In the Thomas household.
My wife makes sour dough bread every week and uses it from sour dough starter. There's no additives, there's none of the multi gazillion labels that you're you know, the components that are in a store bought loaf of bread which will lasts like three or four weeks, if not months, on your shelf. Is that a healthful thing to do? By contrast? Or are we sort of spin in our wheels thinking it's better for us?
Well, I mean it is better for you than like the like you said, like the wonderbread that are, like you able to be in your house for weeks and weeks without molding.
Half life of patrol plutonium.
Yeah exactly, But you know it's using cultures, as you suggest that the sour fermentation is using lacto bacteria to ferment the wheat, and that's how they used to make MSG. Is fermenting ge wheat.
Well, your bursts and all kinds of bubbles this morning, doctor, I.
Know, I know, you know, but it is a happy Monday, like you said, and you know it's it's awareness and so even if people start moving the needle like, Okay, I'm going to have you know, less cheese in my diet or I'm going to have more newer, you know cheese as opposed to like older age cheese like mozzarella
or cottage cheese. And you're kind of just making more mindful choices to improve the health, especially if you're afflicted with a chronic inflammatory condition, which most of us are, Like, I mean, I think there's like seventy percent of the population that has at least one chronic inflammatory condition. Most have two. So we're dealing with a you know, a health crisis. And so this is all about getting the word out there and making more informed health choices.
Well and looping back to MSG that apparently is everywhere. Is that the problem with MSG is is this inflammatory issues that most of us.
Are dealing with.
Yeah, and so you know, it is very highly inflammatory, but it's a neurotransmitter, so it's activating our nervous system, but it can trigger the inflammatory response where we're almost neurologically wired to the inflammatory you know condition, and so we make all the glutamate we need where we need it, when we need it for the neurological activation or a variety of other functions. It serves in the body metabolics, you know, energy production, insulin release. I mean, it's signaling
a variety of different functions. So when it's at high levels, it's signaling stress.
It is the.
Stress response in our body at high levels. So if you think about like anxiety for example, or people who are experiencing like panic attacks, it is typically excessive glutamate signaling that is triggering. Yes, and so if you are constantly in that you know, fight, flight, fear, fawn response, it is an excess of glue to make signaling going on in your nervous system.
How about that?
So yeah, and so it is. It's fascinating how this is absolutely wired to our survival response. And some people are wired to thinking that cheetah is around the corner constantly even though there's no cheetah.
Yeah, I get so it is.
Yeah, well okay, Now other than that, you know, anxiety feeling, you know so many people have it. I was just ready to ask you, you know, if if so many people are dealing with this, this inflammatory disease, will call it, how do they know the signs and symptoms of it? Because you know, I think of inflammation. I think of inflammation. You know, it's like you know your your your fingers roll and or you got arthritis or something like that. But you know that the telltale signs of it, so
anxiety being one of them. Are there any other signs that someone might be suffering from this perhaps MSG connected problem.
Yeah, and that's where I kind of have a whole chop in the book, you know, fat, stress, and sick MSG, processed foods in America's health crisis, I have a whole chapter dedicated to all the various conditions or you know what we call these states that are associated with high levels of glutamate. So obesity we wouldn't think as an inflammatory condition, but it is. It's an energy and balance glue tomate signaling is absolutely at the basis of that.
There's an entire category of depression labeled glutamate based depression. So there's depression anxiety. My whole journey started with my youngest being on the spectrum with autism. And for those parents or anybody who's afflicted with autism, you can understand that many are it trapped in a fight like fear fawn response, or they're very vulnerable to a stress response.
It doesn't take much from their environment to be like, okay, they want to shut down, right, And that she was very sensitive to glutamate, had no idea that this was really going to help you know her condition and have a much better quality of life by really being aware where the glutamate is in the food supply. So cancer and I go through a lot of that with cancer is if you think about cancer, cells is a metabolic
cellular abnormality. Gluet Tomate signaling will cause a lot of that abnormality because it's a stress response, and cancer can sometimes be what the body thinks is a cure to that stress response. I understand, Yeah, And so it's it is. It's you know, we're getting like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's. You know, even migraine headaches are typically attributed to the successive glutamate signaling. So, like you said, the swelling could be, you know, one of these signs of you know, but pain response is
a glutamate signaling response often. I mean, there's a lot of other signals going on to but glutamate is often at the base of some of these pain responses.
I understand.
We're talking like the mother load here, yeah, well.
I undert and sugar is not good for you either. So I just by cutting sugar out of my diet, I've been able to lose like seventeen pounds over the past six months. I just stay the hell away from all added sugar. So maybe by doing that, I'm also getting a lot of the MSG out of my diet. Because everything's got added sugar in it, and it's a product with added sugar, I'm not going to eat it exactly.
Now, It's true. It's like, so once you start getting rid of refined sugars, you are eliminating a lot of process foods, and that is where you know, you start to get rid of a lot of the MSG sources.
Now I've learned a lot today, Doctor read This has been a fascinating conversation. Your book, Fat, Stressed and Sick MSG Processed Food at America's Health Crisis is on my blog page fifty five cars dot com and the link so everybody can get it. And I appreciate what you're doing raising America's awareness to where the problems come from. And I hope you keep up the great work, and I hope a lot more people start paying attention