I'm watching a video of someone called Ori Hofmekler discussing coffee on Youtube.

He claims that studies have shown that people who drink good quality coffee (ie not rancid, freshly ground, etc) do not get Parkinson's or Alzheimers.

He mentions MSG and claims that MSG destroys brain cells.

@lata, scientific studies are often flawed.

Ori Hofmekler sells books. He's making money off of his diet plan. He is not a doctor, not even a nutritionist. So his opinions should be taken with a grain of salt.

What studies does he show linking coffee and parkinsons/alzhemeimers?

Which studies does show conclude that MSG causes brain damage?

"@lata, scientific studies are often flawed."

Claims without evidence are flawed far more often.

First, well-designed studies are reliable, period. All FDA toxicity guidelines for drugs and additives are based on these studies. For the above poster and those wanting "proof" (latataille, etc), there is recent research implicating MSG in neuronal death:

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2802046/

MSG is specifically toxic to mature neuronal cells, children are less affected by MSG exposure. This might also explain why countries with high exposure to msg have increased rates of Alzheimer's disease (China being the highest) when compared to other countries that make less use of this additive.
These effects point to an increased sensitivity in the elderly population, which also have a higher permeability in their blood-brain-barriers (porous BBB), further increasing their exposure.
Medically trained individuals can easily analyse the morphology of glutamate affected cells in the pictures of the study I posted above. Glutamate "cascades" are already well known and notorious in hypoxia, ischemia and infections such as meningitis and can cause atrophy and death to whole segments of the brain, and this happens because glutamate is a free-radical excreted by the brain's defense cells (microglia) to fend off pathogens or increase permeability. However, when glutamate levels are sustained, there is also increased neuronal loss.

While not as dramatic, at least acutely; dietary glutamate (in the monossodium form) does have a cumulative effect and seems to both cause damage and to be implicated in neurodegenerative disorders. In other words, please, keep AWAY from it.

Thanks Spartans. I just get tired of the "all Scientists are evil, and science doesn't know everything" rhetoric.

It is important that people become more scientifically literate so that they don't get taken in by the Jenny McCarthy's of the world and end up getting hurt.

@Spartans: I'm not suggesting people take silly chances and I'm not questioning your data, but is msg more dangerous than alcohol? Should I keep away from alcohol? Weed? McDonald's? Sex? One can try to keep away from everything dangerous, but that everything would probably include life. You can pick the things you want to keep away from, but there are priorities, relative risks, etc. - and, of course, it's not a bad idea to know what the risks are, although they're all a matter of percentages, and even then you can't know about everything, or anyway it's rather boring to try to do so, takes a lot of time away from healthy activities like, umm, rock climbing, etc. One very serious life-threateneing danger is poverty, often overlooked. In Japan, Hong Kong and I suppose elsewhere, sushi and sashimi are discounted near the end of the day, for obvious reasons - Japan is very strict about food health, and they obviously know a lot about raw fish. I just had some, it was good.
Choose your poisons, okay, but there is no such thing as a safe life.

@spartans
In the study you cited they applied glutamate directly to the brain, however it does not cross the blood brain barrier:

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3136011/

Ok, here's an article for you guys. Scientists say we come from aliens, so it must be true.

www.news.com.au/[...]

WE ARE STAR PEOPLE: Scientific proof we were created by aliens

This is not proof, scientific or otherwise.

well, it's 'scientists'. so how come they're wrong?

Well, they might be right.

But if you go back through the links to the actually article, you will notice that it has been pumped up by the media. The 1st article goes on to say "DON'T be alarmed, but you have alien DNA in your genetic code. Science says so." which is unequivocal. They then say in their next paragraph "... scientists believe..." which is less than equivocal. Going back to discovery they say "... scientists hypothesize..." then going back to the article it says "As the actual scenario for the origin of terrestrial life is far from being settled, the proposal that it might have been seeded intentionally cannot be ruled out." where they are saying "a possible explanation is..." which they then present.

A good example why it is important to trace everything that the media writes with a grain of salt. Believing any science article in the media without actually checking the original source material is folly. They not only get it completely wrong sometimes but misquote, make their own conclusions (more often than not wrong ones) and selectively pull out data which either contradicts or disagrees with the authors conclusions or general theme.