
   The following is from a critique of a "60 Minutes" presentation on MSG
   which was aired on November 3rd, 1991.  The critique comes from THE TUFTS
   DIET AND NUTRITION LETTER, February 1992.  [...edited for brevity...]

	"Chances are good that if you watched '60 Minutes' last November
	3rd [1991], you came away feeling MSG is bad for you. [...] In
	the segment entitled 'No MSG,' for instance, show host Ed Bradley
	makes alarming statements without adequately substantiating them
	('millions are suffering a host of symptoms, and some get violently
	sick'); peppers his report with sensational but clinically unproven
	personal testimony...; and speaks of studies on MSG that make the
	substance seem harmful without explaining just how inconclusive 
	those studies are.

	Consider his making reference at the beginning of the program to
	a study conducted at the Eastern Virginia Medical School in order
	to back up his comment that there is 'a lot of evidence' that MSG,
	a flavor enhancer in Chinese and other Asian cuisines as well as
	in many supermarket items, causes headaches.  What he does NOT
	make reference to is the fact that the study was performed not on
	humans but on rabbits.

	One of the researchers who conducted the study, pharmacologist
	Patricia Williams, Ph.D., says it certainly is conceivable that
	a small minority of people are sensitive enough to MSG to get 
	headaches from it.  'But,' she explains, 'the show probably 
	overemphasized the extent of the problem.'

	A second lapse comes with mention of Dr. John Olney, a professor
	at the Washington University School of Medicine who, Mr. Bradley
	remarks, 'says that his 20 years of research with laboratory
	animals shows MSG is a hazard for developing youngsters' because
	it poses a threat of irreversible brain damage.  Dr. Olney's
	research with lab animals does not 'show' anything about human
	youngsters.

	In fact, only under extreme circumsrtances did Dr. Olney's 
	experiments ever bring about any brain damage: when he injected
	extremely high doses of MSG into rodents, completely bypassing 
	their digestive tracts and entering their bloodstreams more directly,
	and when he used tubes to force-feed huge amounts of the substance
	to very young animals on an empty stomach.  Of course, neither
	of those procedures occurs with humans; they simply take in MSG 
	with food.  And most of what they take in is broken down by
	enzymes in the wall of the small intestine, so that very little
	reaches the bloodstream -- much to little, in fact, for human
	blood levels of MSG to come anywhere near the high concentrations
	found in Dr. Olney's lab animals.....

	The World Health Organization appears to be very much aware of
	that fact.  And so does the European Communities' Scientific
	Committee for Food....Both, after examining numerous studies,
	have concluded that MSG is safe.

	Their determination makes sense, considering that MSG has never
	been proven to cause all the symptoms that have been attributed
	to it -- headaches, swelling, a tightness in the chest, and a
	burning sensation, among others.  In fact, the most fail-safe
	of clinical studies, the double-blind study..., has consistently
	exonerated the much-maligned substance.

	That's quite fortunate since the alleged hazardous component of
	monosodium glutamate, glutamate, enters our systems whenever
	we eat any food that contains protein.  The reason is that one
	of the amino acids that make up protein, glutamic acid, is broken
	down into glutamate during digestion.

	It's a breakdown that occurs frequently.  Glutamic acid is the
	most abundant of the 20 or so amino acids in the diet.  It makes
	up about 15 percent of the protein in flesh foods, 20 percent in
	milk, 25 percent in corn, and 29 percent in whole wheat.

	That doesn't mean it's entirely unimaginable that a small number
	of people have trouble metabolizing MSG properly and are therefore
	sensitive to it...The consensus reached by large, international
	professional organizations [is that MSG is safe], the same consensus
	reached by the FDA and the biomedical community at large."
