Re: nutritional yeast

 I take nutritional yeast every day. I was looking for a bulk supplier when I came across this website alarming me of the dangers of nutritional yeast. It is written by a producer of a green supplement, so I am very aware of the scare sales tactic. However it does sound believable. Can you demystify this article below?

You are right the article is very misleading.

Let's start with the fact that glutamate is essential for the body. It plays various roles including helping us to learn and remember things and for the elimination of nitrogen wastes. Glutamate is also the precursor for glutamine, which among other things is an important brain fuel, and for GABA. 

Glutamate is an excitatory amino acid, so they got his part right. But they left out several important points. First of all glutamate DOES NOT readily cross the blood-brain barrier. It has to be transported across. The body does not transport excess levels of glutamate in to the bran.  When we do see problems with glutamate in the brain it is from brain injuries causing the glutamate to pool outside brain cells where is causes a calcium influx in to brain cells killing them. By the way the studies showing the excitatory effects of glutamate involved the injection of glutamate in to the brain. Again this caused an excess of glutamate outside the brain cells. This is not even close to the same as ingestion of glutamates, which again is not readily transported across the blood-brain barrier.

In addition as I pointed out the glutamate is a precursor for the amino acid GABA, which is a neurotransmitter inhibitor. In other words it helps to prevent the over excitation of nerves. So it is a balance to the glutamate.

What I found most interesting is that with all the sales hype they put together they apparently did not do their homework when writing it.  Do you know what glutamate was originally isolated from? Seaweed. And what is one of the ingredients of of their greens? Dulse, which is a seaweed and a glutamate source. In fact glutamate is naturally found in many foods including animal products such as meats and milk, fruits and vegetables.  For example spirulina and spinach, which are also found in their product.