While visiting Santa Monica, Jon and I bought a DVD that we found at a Whole Foods store.  It was called “Here We Grow” by Craig King.  Although it starts off with a silly and mind draining cartoon, that I assume is mostly for children, it delves into some very interesting issues; some common sense, some political and some scientific.  This latter part brought up the use of chemical taste enhancers.

Most of us know something about this topic, but for me, I was never really clear on how chemical taste enhancers worked and the gist of what I got from “Here We Grow” was that scientists use certain chemicals to trick our brains into making us think that we are satisfying our sensory receptors, especially the sensory receptor of having something savory.  These chemicals eventually end up destroying the cells in our brains that tell us we are satisfied with a certain taste sensation, therefor causing us to crave that sensation over and over again.  The film goes on to say that when eating these foods, our bodies try to figure out how to get the nutrients that we need from these chemically based foods and are unable.  This “bad fuel” we eat eventually leads to depression, gut problems and anxiety issues among many other things.

After watching the film, I decided to look up chemical taste enhancers on the internet and found a site that is pro the use of chemical taste enhancers.  It mentions our 4 taste senses, salty, sweet, bitter and sour and actually mentioned a 5th taste sense called umami, which is our savory sense; exactly what the film was talking about.  This taste receptor has been around for quite some time but was only confirmed by scientists 6 years ago.  Usually scientists chemically enhanced foods to satisfy the umami, by using a mixture of MSG’s to give that savory taste, loading our foods with sodium.  Now, scientists are working on umami enhancers which are said to reduce the MSG’s and keep that savory taste.  Although to scientists this may seem like a breakthrough, to me, it seems like an addition to continuous problems physically and mentally.

Since the film noted how much use of chemical enhancers are in foods and how these lead to cravings, I wondered as a vegan, why I don’t have cravings....and it dawned on me, in a second or two (it takes a minute sometimes), that I’m a vegan and I don’t eat chemically enhanced foods!  
The “How We Grow” film helped me understand many things about our food industry but I’m obviously still learning.  I would love to hear some feedback or information on this topic that you feel would be useful to Monkey Bar Gym Facebook friends, so please email us with your comments!