Why Reading Labels Is Important

Ideally, you are buying more single ingredient, whole-food (and no, I don’t mean the grocery store) products, and fewer pre-made, processed foods. While not the explicit purpose of Kaufmann 1, which is to limit exposure to mycotoxin-contaminated foods and foods that feed pathogenic fungi and yeasts, following the Kaufmann 1 diet should hopefully rid your diet of many (if not most) of the odd chemical ingredients added to nearly everything you’d buy in a conventional grocery store.

Many of these substances don’t have anything to do with mold, fungus, or mycotoxins per se, but that doesn’t make them any less dangerous or worth avoiding. Chemical preservatives and additives, when consumed on a regular basis, definitely play a role in ill health. Take a certain additive known as Mono Sodium Glutamate, or MSG. MSG is commonly known, even amongst people not particularly interested in health, to be an extremely unhealthy, toxic food additive. But MSG is still added into countless food products. I picked up a bag of a popular snack food the other day in a certain fast food chain, and there it was written on the label in the ingredients section, in plain sight for anyone to read – Mono Sodium Glutamate.

MSG is an excitotoxin. The reason it is so effective as a flavor enhancer is the reason it is so toxic; MSG excites nerve cells so much that they die. It is similar to a drug that gives you such a euphoric high that you can only experience it once, because it will kill you. This is what MSG is for certain kinds of cells; this is well known and well documented, among other side effects. Yet there is no ban, no governmental restriction on this particular compound. You might ask why, and I would be hard-pressed to give you a good answer. Bu as with most things pertaining to health, wellness and the industries involved therein, one my gain quite a few answers by following the money trail.

MSG is one example of a food additive that, while not exactly related to fungus (our favorite subject here at Know the Cause), is still detrimental to health. Are there additives you should avoid that do pertain to fungus? Absolutely. When on Kaufmann 1, you should avoid anything with added corn products, i.e., corn starch, corn syrup, or just corn as an ingredient. Anything with wheat, wheat protein or any kind of grain should be avoided. Anything with added sugar, agave, honey or sugar in disguise, such as evaporated cane juice. Anything with added yeast or yeast extracts should also be avoided.

There are a countless number of things added to food that would shock and disgust you if you took the time to learn about them. The list of ingredients is too long to list here, but there are a number of resources available for you online that can help to educate you on the ingredients manufacturers add to products that you should perhaps be careful about consuming. Regardless, if you have any questions about the ingredients on a food product, it is likely a product you should be replacing with whole foods to begin with.