Infinite Unknown

Test by high school student working with researchers reveals food additive’s direct effect on neuronal ability

CALGARY - A Calgary researcher is getting ready to publish a groundbreaking study that links a popular food additive to reduced growth in the brain cells of snails — work that could have major implications for children’s health.

Not bad for a teenager.

Michelle Ah-Seng is a 17-year-old high school student from Cochrane, just west of Calgary. She’s also the lead researcher on a University of Calgary study that offers the first solid proof that high concentrations of MSG, an additive used to boost flavour in everything from fast food to canned soups, can stunt the growth of brain cells.

“It has been shown that (in a pregnant woman), MSG will cross through the placenta and can affect the fetus,” said Ah-Seng.

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“Fetuses are still developing, and their brain cells are starting to grow and starting to reach out to each other. If MSG has been inhibiting or stunting the growth, then the cells basically won’t reach out to one another.”

Ah-Seng is one of 22 Grade 11 students spending six weeks of their summer vacation in labs and clinics at the University of Calgary as part of the 2008 Heritage Youth Researcher Summer Program, funded by the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research.

Her project involved directly dosing brain cells culled from snails with a concentration of monosodium glutamate equal to what might commonly be found in human blood or cerebral spinal fluid after eating a meal containing the additive, such as a bag of chips. Not only did the MSG inhibit growth of the snail’s brain cells, it also limited communication between them. The implications for human health aren’t hard to infer.

“There’s no difference between a snail brain cell and a rat or a human brain cell, only that there are fewer of them and (they’re) larger,” said Naweed Syed, Ah-Seng’s supervisor and a neuroscientist with the Hotchkiss Brain Institute at the University of Calgary’s faculty of medicine. Continue reading »

Tags: ALS, Alzheimer, Brain, cells, children, Disease, Food, Food Additives, Health, Medicine, MSG, Multiple Sclerosis, Neurons, neurotoxic, neurotoxicity, Science

Artificial food colours are set to be removed from hundreds of products after a team of university researchers warned they were doing as much damage to children’s brains as lead in petrol.

Academics at Southampton University, who carried out an official study into seven additives for the Food Standards Agency (FSA), said children’s intelligence was being significantly damaged by E-numbers. After receiving the advice last month, officials at the FSA have advised their directors to call for the food industry to remove six additives named in the study by the end of next year.

Continue reading »

Tags: children, Coca Cola, damaging, Diet Coke, E-numbers, Efsa, European Food Safety Agency, Food Additives, FSA, IQ, lead, petrol

Excerpts from the article:

…”The mixtures of the additives had a much more potent effect on nerve cells than each additive on its own. The effect on cells was up to four times greater when Brilliant Blue and MSG were combined, and up to seven times greater when Quinoline Yellow and Aspartame were combined.”….

…”The study shows that when the nerve cells were exposed to MSG and Brilliant Blue or Aspartame and Quinoline Yellow the additives stopped the nerve cells from normal growth and interfered with proper signalling systems.”

( In other words, additives like Aspartame and MSG are exitotoxins and they destroy the brain and they were intentionally designed to do exactly that. And PS: Fighter jet pilots are not allowed to drink soft drinks at all. Hello.) Continue reading »

Tags: Aspartame, Brilliant Blue, Chemical Additives, DNA, exitotoxins, Food Additives, MSG, neurotoxic, neurotoxicity, Quinoline Yellow