Thank you for sharing with us. You stated the most important thing a person can do when they decide to eliminate excitotoxins from their diet....go through their kitchen cupboards, refrigerator and freezer and discard anything with excitotoxins in them. We have had many people tell us they would use up their larder and start to buy smarter. That is like starting a diet "tomorrow". Tomorrow never comes. You didn't mention if you had any symptoms from ingesting excitotoxins. It doesn't matter, they kill brain cells whether you are sensitive to them or not, but a person that gets headaches is more resolute to eliminate excitotoxins from their diet than one who doesn't symptomize. Fortunately for me, I do not symptomize, but, unfortunately, my wife and creator of this forum, Sassafras, does. Because of her suffering, my own diet is better than if I had not been aware of excitotoxins. We started collecting information about msg and other excitotoxins in the late 1990's and eventually amassed a bundle. We decided to share the information on the internet. If you haven't seen our website
www.saynotomsg.com please do yourself a favor and go there and read all the offerings, including the sections on The Basics, The Culture, and The Business of MSG. It will open your eyes to the job we have to do to try to eliminate or reduce the use of these flavor enhancers, fake sugars and emulsifiers/binders that the food industry uses.
Some of the easy things a person can eliminate:
Flavored snack foods
Non-Dairy products
Stocks and gravies in a can
Anything "diet" because of fake sugars
"Special" spices with ingredients not complete, for instance using the words spices or natural flavors
Anything with Carrageenan, disodium inosinate or disodium guanylate
Canned soups, stews, etc.
Most frozen entrees or frozen breaded items, or most ice cream (anything frozen does not have to put in their ingredient label sodium caseinate or calcium caseinate, according to FDA rules. These are hydrolyzed proteins, yech). If you look up how to make ice cream you will find three ingredients, milk, sugar, flavor. Basically that's it, but since they now use "non-dairy items, they need to bind them with items like carrageenan, guar gum or other gums.
We offer a free laminated pocket card to members of the forum if you email us your snail mail address. You can email saynotomsg@yahoo.com with your address and we'll pop the pocket card in the mail pronto.
Thank you again for joining and sharing,
Keep up the good fight
Mick