to eat, a US government report has concluded.

High levels of MSG, the report said, may cause brief, generally mild reactions in a small number of people, with some asthma patients being the most susceptible.

The report, by scientific advisers to the US Food and Drug Administration, has infuriated some people who say that MSG, or monosodium glutamate, makes them severely ill.

"When an individual only reacts when they ingest MSG, it's pretty clear'' what is to blame, 60-year-old Chicago resident Jack Samuels, who contends that MSG causes his blood pressure to plummet suddenly to life-threatening levels, told the Associated Press.

MSG, a salt form of an amino acid called glutamate that is present in almost every food, is commonly added to Oriental cooking, snack chips and other processed foods as a flavour enhancer. But the naturally occurring "free'' or easily absorbed form of glutamate is present in everything from mushrooms to tomatoes. MSG has been blamed for a variety of medical symptoms over the years, from headaches and numbness or tingling to asthma, seizures and even death. In 1980, however, scientists began declaring that MSG wasn't the culprit. Twelve years later, the FDA hired a scientific panel to analyse the controversy and help it decide how strictly to make companies label foods containing MSG and free glutamate.

The report, released last Thursday, declared MSG safe for everyone except a small number who are sensitive to high doses. A high dose was defined as three grams, or five times the amount that the average American eats in a day.

*** Further on the links between food and people's health, most women do not know that heart disease is the biggest single risk to their health and are ignorant about such heart-disease-causing factors as cholesterol, doctors reported last week.

Women, the British Health Foundation found, still think that heart disease only affects men, even though it is the cause of 25 percent of all female deaths in Britain.

British men and women, who eat high-fat diets and exercise rarely, have among the highest heart disease rates in the world.

A survey commissioned by the British Heart Foundation found that more than 70 percent of British women do not think they are at risk from coronary heart disease.

It also found that many women do not recognise the symptoms of heart disease and therefore do not act upon them.

"The research also indicated that women buy food in over 90 percent of households yet feel confused about cholesterol,'' the Foundation said in a statement. "On average, 52 percent of women were unaware that saturates are the key fat to cut down on, and in women over 65 years -- those at most risk of coronary heart disease -- the figure rose to 73 percent.'' Saturated fat is found in animal products like meat and cheese. Doctors recommend that people get their fat needs from polyunsaturated vegetable oils.

Smoking and a lack of exercise are also linked with heart disease.

*** Impatient eaters, the Associated Press reported, will be able to tuck into their seafood a little quicker in the coming months when a French inventor who has found a way of fitting oysters with pop-open tabs hits the food market with full force.

In recent weeks, a French company called Read has swung briskly into production, saying it expects to sell some 50 million "ringed'' oysters in France this winter.

"The process could change the habits of daily life,'' inventor Yves Renaut, an unemployed engineer, told the newspaper Liberation. "You can go home and eat oysters straight away, just as you would serve yourself a slice of salmon.'' Before being sold, live oysters are dipped during Renault's process into a salty bath, which makes them temporarily open up. A wire fitted with a handy plastic tab is then looped around the powerful muscle with which the stubborn bivalve keeps its shell tightly shut.

Instead of struggling with an oyster knife, the oyster-lover should be able to simply yank on the tab to get at the creature's flesh. The wire is consequently supposed to snap the muscle and pop the shell wide open.