Laura Schoenfeld: Glutamine, glutamic acid, and glutamate are all different forms of amino acids, I believe. I could double check on that, but I’m pretty sure that they’re all … I actually want to double check before I answer that. Now, I know what can happen is that either during the cooking process or during the body’s digestion process, these amino acids can be transformed into each other. The body is able to produce glutamine from glutamic acid and vice versa, so there’s a lot of shifting and interchange that can happen when the body takes in protein. Yeah, glutamine and glutamic acid are both amino acids, and then as far as glutamate, let me just double check. I don’t remember exactly all the different amino acids. Glutamate is also an amino acid, so, yeah, all of those three, like I said before, are individual amino acids that can be transformed into each other using various deamination processes.
As far as someone who is sensitive to MSG, MSG is … let me just double check. I think it’s monosodium glutamate. Let’s just double check, though, because I don’t want to say something that’s wrong. Yeah, it’s monosodium glutamate, and basically that’s either glutamate or glutamic acid. I’m wondering if those are actually the same amino acid. Sometimes the biochemistry stuff can get a little complicated, but as far as what you’d need someone to avoid if they are glutamate sensitive, the MSG is a very concentrated source of glutamate. It’s one of those things that really you’re not going to find that high of a level of those amino acids in natural food; however, things like bone broth and protein powders are a little bit unusual because the protein powder is a concentrated protein source where all the amino acids are either individual or maybe they’re bound up in a couple of different protein structures, but generally it’s going to be a more concentrated dose of those amino acids than something like a chicken breast.
Then with bone broth, because the cooking process can actually break down whole proteins into their individual amino acids, you may find that someone is having a reaction to bone broth if they’re sensitive to MSG.
Now, that’s not the case all the time. Like I said, MSG is a lot higher concentration of those amino acids, so just because someone is sensitive to MSG doesn’t mean they’re going to be sensitive to protein powders or bone broth, but some people are especially sensitive, and then protein powders and bone broth might not work for them.
As far as which ones should be avoided, it’s going to be kind of hard to 100 percent avoid glutamate because, like I said, your body can produce glutamate and glutamic acid and glutamine from other amino acids, so you can’t totally avoid it. But I do think if someone is super-sensitive to glutamate, you probably don’t want them to be using protein powders, in general, and that also includes things like hydrolyzed collagen or gelatin. That can potentially be something someone is sensitive to because there is a little bit of free glutamate in those products.
The same goes with bone broth. If you have a very long cooked bone broth, that’s going to have more of these free amino acids than something that was shorter cooked. If the person wants to do bone broth but they do have sensitivity to glutamate, then what you want to do is have them cook the bone broth a lot shorter, none of that overnight, 24-hour cooking of the bone broth. It should really only be, like, maybe six to eight hours if they can get that time period done on the day that they’re trying to make the bone broth. Another option is doing pressure cooking, which is a much shorter process and cooks the bone broth a lot faster and may be a little bit lower in those free amino acids than something that has been cooking overnight or for 24 hours.
Like I said, you can’t 100 percent avoid it. If the person is eating protein, they’re going to be exposed to those particular amino acids. However, protein powders and bone broth definitely are going to have a higher concentration, and if they can’t have them, then that’s fine. I would say just have them stick to gelatinous cuts of meat, so maybe things like shank or oxtail or anything that has that bit of gelatin on it if it came from a bone or a more tendony cut of meat. That’s going to have a lot less free amino acids than something like collagen powder. And if they can’t tolerate bone broth, it’s totally OK for them not to eat bone broth. Not everyone is going to do well with bone broth, and if not, then that’s not something that’s going to make or break their health.
Hopefully that answers that question. Again, sorry for the potential confusion about the different amino acids, but glutamine, glutamic acid, and glutamate are generally all interchangeable, so any of those could potentially cause a problem in someone who’s super-sensitive to MSG.