MSG, MSG, Everywhere

There's an idyllic image of pastoral America, a rainbow of vegetables growing just beneath the dirt. These vegetables are the last bits of healthful food in a world overtaken by prepackaged madness, microwavable everything, irradiated beef, and food so highly preserved that our insides are as pickled as the pepperoncinis floating around in a jar of sulfites on the grocer's shelves. Yep, at least we have vegetables.



What's that? What about the vegetables?



Oh yeah, there's fertilizers and pesticides. And now with the advent of a not-so-lovely fertilizer called Auxigrow, there's MSG in the vegetables. There's no washing that off, guys. Ever had a headache just after one of those nasty Gyros from the Greek joint in the mall? How about after Chinese food?



That's because most of us have MSG sensitivities. And for the unlucky few of us, it is a seriously bad sensitivity that causes vomiting, intense headaches, dizziness, and heart palpitations. But since it's not an "allergy" it's not something that has to be labelled appropriately, and the use of it as a fertilizer is mostly unknown.

Auxigrow has been approved for use on almost everything, sending a lot of folks sensitive to MSG into a personal hell of symptoms that they may not even understand. After all, they are innocently consuming the last of the the "safe" foodstuffs, or so they thought.

Farming has morphed into this unrecognizable industry in the last few decades, beyond what anyone has predicted back when Muley sat in remorse on the changing landscape in the Grapes of Wrath. Mechinization, for better or worse, surely transformed the way our produce is brought to the table, but did anyone expect that after that, a virtual chemical warfare would be waged upon the food we eat? It's insane that there is now barely a single edible item in the grocery store that isn't a potential health risk.

Skeptic or not, the further from 100% natural, the more risk we take putting something into our bodies. Hoping that the chemical compounds we ingest won't kill us a little later down the road isn't a bet we should have to make. Why is it so hard to ask for crops grown without more science than dirt, manure, water, sun?

Does anyone else think there is something to the fact that the very same company that makes fertilizer and pesticides also made Agent Orange, which obliterated so much of a nation that it continues to infest the groundwater supply and crops with poison four decades later?

Those chemical compounds really have no business near our bodies. Venturing just a guess, they probably do more harm than good. As for MSG, it's not nearly as devastating as some of the other nasty chemicals, but this skeptic has been bedridden one too many times because of monosodium glutamate.

Vegetables are better when they're just vegetables, damnit.


Skeptically Yours.