READ THE LABELS carefully when you buy bouillon, bouillon cubes, broths, canned soups, or dry soup mixes. If you’re using commercial stock, check those salt levels on the label. Most contain a superabundance of salt, which is a great argument for making your own. I look for “no salt added” stocks when I’m buying commercial stock.
And, unless they are organic, these handy bases could contain substances dubbed “excitotoxins.” (see below). These substances, added to many processed foods, especially to savory flavor enhancers such as bouillon, may cause damage to nerve cells, which would be of particular concern to parents of growing children. Apart from their potential danger to nerve tissue, there a number of other problems linked with many additives to soup mixes. Yeast extract, for example, which is the base for most dry soup mixes, bouillons, and other conventional products, may be made with genetically manipulated starters. Other additives common to these mixes include monosodium glutamate (MSG) and aspartame (NutraSweet).
Some additives can have natural-enough-sounding names, although their makeup is far from natural. If hydrolyzed vegetable protein sounds like it might be allowed in organic products, one only has to look at its manufacturing process to see why it’s not. According to Dr. Russell Blaylock, a professor of medicine at the University of Mississippi, this substance is made from junk vegetables that have been deemed unfit for sale. The protein is extracted by hydrolysis, which involves boiling the vegetables in acid; the acid is then neutralized by treating the vegetables with a caustic basic soda. The resulting product, a brown sludge that collects on the top, is scraped off and allowed to dry into a brown powder high in three known excitotoxins: glutamate, aspartame, and cystoic acid. The powder appears in many types of bouillon, as well as food products ranging from canned tuna to baby food.
Will eating excitotoxins hurt you? At the very least, it pays to be educated about what we are eating and feeding our children, to read food labels carefully, and to understand what we are reading. Buying organic products avoids these problems altogether, because they can contain no genetically modified ingredients or chemical additives. Anyone interested in learning more about excitotoxins should read Blaylock’s book Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills.
The list below includes a set of highly vague ingredient terms that make frequent appearances on processed food labels. These may be perfectly natural and safe; or they may have been created through questionable processes and contain excitotoxins. There is no way of knowing just from reading the label:
Autolyzed yeast
Calcium caseinate
Enzymes
Glutamate
Hydrolyzed oat flour
Hydrolyzed plant protein
Hydrolyzed protein
Hydrolyzed vegetable protein
Malt extract
Malt flavoring
Monosodium glutamate
Natural beef or chicken flavoring
Natural flavoring
Seasoning
Sodium caseinate
Soy protein concentrate
Soy protein isolate
Spices
Textured protein
Whey protein concentrate
Yeast extract
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