What Is It? It’s become a hot-button topic in the last 10-20 years: monosodium glutamate, more commonly referred to as MSG, making your food toxic. MSG is a chemically altered form of salt designed to be a flavor enhancer, and clever labeling strategies keep it hidden from the average Joe consumer. Moreover, it’s what gets you addicted to all those convenience food products. Yikes…

Health Risk: We aren’t going to make this flowery or dance around the subject: it’s bad. Ingesting MSG may lead to diabetes, high blood pressure, major weight gain, stroke, migraines, skin rashes, nausea – even seizures. And did you know that MSG is injected into lab animals to induce obesity so that pharmaceutical big-wigs can test out their medicines?

How To Avoid It: Carefully read product labels. See that label that says “no added MSG?” That means there’s probably MSG in there to begin with (sneaky huh?). Obviously, whenever something says it contains MSG, avoid it. At restaurants, ask if they serve dishes containing MSG, and if so which ones (although at that point, we’d avoid the restaurant completely). Ethnic restaurants used to be notorious for lacing their dishes with MSG, but fortunately there are many healthy options available, like Joss Cuisine. And the toxin runs rampant in most fast food joints, so stay away!