Author: The Truth in Labeling Campaign

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Exactly what are ultra-processed foods and what makes them so unhealthy?

Note: Recently, there was an odd PR push extolling the virtues and even need for ultra-processed foods. Topped off with a Time Magazine feature story in Aug. 2024, it looks like the very creative minds of certain public relations firms are going all out to keep Big Food’s cheap and unhealthy concoctions in our shopping carts.

The Time story, promoting RD Jessica Wilson, who experimented with eating “highly processed foods” for a month, claims that diet gave her “more energy and less anxiety.” How, you might ask? As Time tells it, “She felt better eating an ultra-processed diet than she had before, a change she attributes to taking in more calories by eating full meals, instead of haphazard combinations of whole-food ingredients.”

If you’re eating such “combinations of whole-food ingredients,” good for you. Keep it up. And read the story below to learn what Dr. Carlos Monteiro, a professor of Nutrition and Public Health in Sao Paulo, Brazil calls “The Ultra-Processed Food Group.”

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What makes a food “ultra-processed?”

Apologists for Big Food are working hard to make us believe that (with a few exceptions) ultra-processed foods are simply the natural evolution of food processing. Bread, they tell us, is likely the very first “processed” food, originally crafted over 30,000 years ago. Then there are cheeses, beer, and fermented foods – all created by humans to advance how we eat.

But along with the introduction of more and more novel ready-to-eat processed foods (such as canned beans and grape jelly in the 1920s and breakfast cereals hitting the market in the 1940s), something odd happened to large categories of these items. No longer did they retain the basic identity of food itself, with some being made entirely of laboratory-created ingredients.

These new creations, later labeled ultra-processed foods, surreptitiously emerged around the 1980s.

Before this sneaky shift in how many “foods” were being manufactured was realized, however, the effects of consuming these items became quite obvious — a growing epidemic of obesity along with a marked rise in chronic diseases.

And despite the increased scrutiny these types of foods have garnered lately you won’t find any kind of FDA-sanctioned labeling or notice that what you’re considering serving for dinner may look like what’s traditionally thought of as food, only it really isn’t.

The ‘Ultra-Processed Food Group’

Investigations by Dr. Carlos Monteiro, a professor of Nutrition and Public Health in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and other researchers at the University of Sao Paulo led to a first-of-its-kind classification of processed foods called Nova in 2010.

Using Nova, Monterio and others published a paper in 2019 that defines what makes up ultra-processed food.

Ingredients characteristic of ultra-processed foods are either food substances of no or rare culinary use, or else classes of additives whose function is to make the final product sellable, palatable and often hyper-palatable.

Classes of additives used only in the manufacture of ultra-processed foods are flavors, flavor enhancers, colors, emulsifiers, emulsifying salts, artificial sweeteners, thickeners, and foaming, anti-foaming, bulking, carbonating, gelling, and glazing agents. All of them, most notably flavors and colors, either disguise unpleasant sensory properties created by ingredients, processes, or packaging used in the manufacture of ultra-processed foods, or give the final product intense sensory properties especially attractive to see, taste, smell and/or touch, or both.

Manufactured flavoring agents, such as MSG and dozens of other additives containing brain-damaging free glutamate are key indicators of these ultra-processed foods. And all of these additives that make a non-food look and taste like real food have been given free rein by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Monterio gives this tip as a way to ID ultra-processed foods:

Generally, the practical way to identify if a product is ultra-processed is to check to see if its list of ingredients contains at least one item characteristic of the ultra-processed food group. These are either food substances never or rarely used in kitchens or classes of additives whose function is to make the final product palatable or more appealing.

The FDA has done its part to help in the proliferation of this “ultra-processed food group” by distracting consumers into reading its mandated and relatively meaningless nutrition facts label and declaring these toxic additives to be either “safe” or GRAS — generally recognized as safe.

Sadly, also making the Nova list of ultra-processed foods are infant formulas and “meal replacement” beverages for the elderly and infirm.

As Dr. Monterio said in an interview in 2023, the “main purpose of ultra-processed food is to make products that can replace real foods (to) amplify profits of the food industry.”

And when the food industry has friends like the FDA to help it along, you can bet the farm that more ultra-processed foods will be replacing real farm-grown foods than ever before.

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Umami: The Con of the Decade?

Note: This blog, authored by Truth in Labeling Campaign co-founder Adrienne Samuels, is even more relevant today than when she wrote it several years ago. The MSG “marketing department” is going full-steam ahead with the idea of “umami,” hoping that everyone will forget that monosodium glutamate has always been considered a “flavor enhancer” with no taste of its own.

It has always been my opinion that the concept of umami was developed to promote the sale of monosodium glutamate, with a very large enterprise developed to promote the fiction.

When I was first introduced to “umami” I had a creeping suspicion that the concept of umami had been promoted in an effort to legitimize the use of monosodium glutamate in food, drawing attention away from the fact that monosodium glutamate is a neurotoxic amino acid which kills brain cells, is an endocrine disruptor (causing obesity and reproductive disorders), and is the trigger for reactions such as asthma, migraine headache, seizures, depression, irritable bowel, hives, and heart irregularities.

It’s common knowledge that there are glutamate receptors in the mouth and on the tongue. Could researchers be hired to produce studies demonstrating that glutamate containing food can stimulate those glutamate receptors, and then declare to the world that a fifth taste has been discovered — calling it umami? I wondered.

Never mind that for years monosodium glutamate was described as a tasteless white crystalline powder. Never mind that Julia Child, who in her later years was recruited to praise the use of monosodium glutamate, never once mentioned the additive in her cookbooks. Never mind that if there was taste associated with monosodium glutamate, people who are sensitive to MSG would be highly motivated to identify that taste and thereby avoid ingesting MSG – which they claim they cannot do.

It certainly would be wonderful, I thought, if the glutamic acid in processed free glutamic acid (MSG) had a delicious, robust, easily identifiable taste of its own. Even if the taste was unpleasant instead of delicious, it would still be wonderful — at least the adults who are sensitive to MSG could identify the additive in their food and avoid eating it. MSG-induced migraine headaches, tachycardia, skin rash, irritable bowels, seizures, depression, and all of the other MSG-induced maladies, could become nothing more than bad memories.

Sometime after Olney and others demonstrated that monosodium glutamate was an excitotoxin — killing brain cells and disrupting the endocrine system — Ajinomoto, Co., Inc. began to claim that their researchers had identified/isolated a “fifth taste.” The “fifth taste,” they said, was the taste of processed free glutamic acid. This alleged fifth taste was branded “umami.”

The word “umami” has been in the Japanese vocabulary for over a century, being in use during the Edo period of Japanese history which ended in 1868. In the 1990s, it was written that “umami” can denote a really good taste of something – a taste or flavor that exemplifies the flavor of that something. It was said that the taste of monosodium glutamate by itself does not in any sense represent deliciousness. Instead, it is often described as unpleasant, and as bitter, salty, or soapy. However, when monosodium glutamate is added in low concentrations to appropriate foods, the flavor, the pleasantness, and the acceptability of the food increases.

For years, certainly up to the turn of this century, monosodium glutamate had been thought of as a flavor enhancer – like salt. Something that enhances the taste of the food to which it is added. Early encyclopedia definitions of monosodium glutamate stated that monosodium glutamate was an essentially tasteless substance. The idea (advanced by Ajinomoto) that monosodium glutamate has a taste of its own, as opposed to being a flavor enhancer, is relatively recent. Not just a taste of its own, mind you, but something newsworthy that could attract national or international attention. A fifth classification of taste added to the recognized tastes of sweet, salty, bitter, and sour.

The idea that monosodium glutamate has a unique taste can be tracked in the scientific literature if you read vigilantly. I don’t know whose brainchild it was, but it certainly was a brilliant move on the road to marketing monosodium glutamate – a move precipitated by a growing public recognition that monosodium glutamate causes serious adverse reactions. And even one step farther up the brilliance chart, this monosodium-glutamate-taste-of-its-own was given a name. Naming things makes them easy to talk about and gives them respectability. The monosodium-glutamate-taste-of-its-own was named “umami.”

We started writing about umami years ago. We were already familiar with the research that the glutamate industry used to claim that umami was a fifth taste, and we knew that, with possible rare exception, all of that research had been funded by Ajinomoto and/or their friends and agents. We also sensed that researchers outside of the direct employ, or outside of the indirect largess of the glutamate industry, found the idea of a fifth taste to be without merit.

We thought that we should begin by making the case that what was called the “taste” produced by monosodium glutamate is not a taste, per se, but is little or nothing more than the vague sensation that nerves are firing. We would start by reminding our readers that what industry calls the “taste” of monosodium glutamate is its manufactured free glutamic acid; that glutamic acid is a neurotransmitter; and that as a neurotransmitter, glutamic acid would carry nerve impulses to nerve cells called glutamate receptors, and trigger responses/reactions. Then we would explain that there are glutamate receptor cells in the mouth and on the tongue, and that monosodium glutamate could trigger reactions in those glutamate receptors — leaving the person who was ingesting the monosodium glutamate with the perception that food being ingested with it had a bigger, longer lasting taste than it would have had if there was no monosodium glutamate present.

Ask Ajinomoto, and they will tell you that there are studies that prove that umami is a fifth taste. Review of those studies has proved to be extremely interesting, but when read carefully, offers no proof that monosodium glutamate does anything more than stimulate receptors in the mouth and on the tongue and promote the perception of more taste than the ingested food would otherwise provide.

I actually spoke with one of the umami researchers on the phone, a Dr. Michael O’Mahoney, Professor in the Department of Food Science and Technology, UC Davis. He was doing research for the glutamate industry and, therefore, could certainly provide information.

Dr. O’Mahoney was warm and friendly, but said that because he had a contract with Ajinomoto to study the taste of monosodium glutamate he was not able to share information with me. An academician who refused to share information was an animal I had not met before.

Based on personal observations and conversations with MSG-sensitive friends, I have become increasingly certain that monosodium glutamate has no taste; that in stimulating the glutamate receptors in the mouth and on the tongue, glutamate causes the person ingesting monosodium glutamate to perceive more taste in food than the food would otherwise have; that umami is a clever contrivance/device/public relations effort to draw attention away from the fact that processed free glutamic acid and the monosodium glutamate that contains it are toxic.

And taste? A savory taste? Given what I know about Ajinomoto’s rigging studies of the safety of monosodium glutamate, I couldn’t help but wonder if they might have done something unsavory to support their claim that monosodium glutamate has a savory taste.

  • They certainly have studies allegedly demonstrating that monosodium glutamate has a savory taste. Were those studies rigged?
  • Did Ajinomoto feed something to the genetically modified bacteria that excrete their glutamic acid that would cause the glutamic acid to have a taste? A savory taste?
  • When the L-glutamic acid used in monosodium glutamate is produced, there are unavoidable by-products of production. Does one of those by-products contribute a savory taste?
  • Is some savory flavoring added to the monosodium glutamate product before it leaves the Eddyville plant?
  • Is “savory taste” a fiction invented by Ajinomoto and reinforced through repetition of the concept?

When it comes down to what really matters, whether there are four or five tastes is irrelevant.

When it comes down to what really matters, whether monosodium glutamate is a flavor enhancer or a flavor itself is inconsequential.

What really matters is that chemical poisons are being poured into infant formula, enteral (invalid) care products, dietary supplements, pharmaceuticals and processed foods — and one of those chemical poisons is manufactured free glutamic acid, found in monosodium glutamate and four dozen or so other ingredients with names that give no clue to its presence. That’s my opinion.

Adrienne Samuels, Ph.D.

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Something Fishy Is Going on with Canned Tuna

In 2022 we told you about a product put out by a company called Good Catch given the absurd name “fish-free tuna.”

Concocted out of pea protein isolate, soy protein concentrate, and several other brain-damaging, free glutamate ingredients, this product is one of several brands of fake “tuna” on supermarket shelves.

While most are in pouches, the latest faux tuna, TUNO, is deceptively marketed in a can to look as much like the real deal as possible. And that brings us to another tuna topic, one that’s a sucker punch to consumers. Only this time it’s aimed at those who eat actual tuna that came from a real fish.

Identity Theft

While researching the TUNO product we came across a curious Federal Register notice, a proposed rule issued by the FDA titled in part, “Canned Tuna Standard of Identity…”

A standard of identity, or SOI, is (or was) a way for consumers to be able to have assurances that certain foods are indeed what they claim to be. These FDA-enforceable rules were established way back in 1939 to make sure that peanut butter is made from peanuts and jam contains fruit.

The FDA currently has a legally binding SOI for foods ranging from pasta to bread to cheese and condiments, consisting of a detailed description of that food and what it can (or must) contain. Canned tuna is one of 250 items with a SOI.

The first SOI for canned tuna went into effect in 1958. According to the National Fisheries Institute, not a whole lot has changed since that time. But in 2015, three major manufacturers of canned tuna, StarKist, Chicken of the Sea, and Bumble Bee, filed a citizen petition with the FDA asking for alterations to that SOI.

Now to the casual observer, this FDA-proposed rule that was published in the Federal Register last August appears to be just a lot of industry lingo on how to weigh canned tuna, such as what the “standard of fill,” should be based on, and to utilize “drained weight” instead of “Pressed cake” weight.

But if you look carefully at what the FDA is proposing to do, based on that nine-year-old industry petition, there’s a lot in there about “flavorings.” In essence, this would allow for canned tuna to contain “any flavoring.” The FDA even proposed marking the words “seasonings and flavorings” for deletion, to be replaced with “optional ingredients.”

Now it’s not as if canned tuna was perfect to begin with. Plenty of noxious ingredients such as MSG are already allowed (if you haven’t read The Perfect Poison yet, get a copy and read chapters one and two). But this appears to go beyond what we’ve learned to look for when buying tuna, creating a mystery list of “flavorings” that could go unnamed in a canned tuna product.

Reading both the published notice and the industry petition doesn’t give much clarity. One section says: (except if flavoring is added, this paragraph applies only to the terms “_____ flavored” or “with _____ flavoring,” not to the constituent ingredients of that flavoring or to any optional solubilizing or dispersing ingredient used in connection with such flavoring ingredients)

That seems to indicate what comprises these unidentified flavorings or “optional ingredients” and their dispersing agents will not be disclosed, known only to the manufacturer. To try and further understand what this means, we reached out to the companies who gave the FDA this modified language.

Here’s what we found out!

Chicken of the Sea, which is represented by a publicity firm called Hunter PR, said our questions were too technical and we should take them to the FDA.

StarKist and Bumble Bee have yet to respond at all. At The National Fisheries Institute, it appears no one is yet available. And the FDA sent one email just saying they received our questions.

‘Evolving tastes and consumer preferences’

Of course, according to industry and the FDA, this is all for the benefit of the consumer! The FDA says that it will help “better meet evolving tastes and consumer preferences.” Industry says that this will “allow manufacturers to use flavorings that match the public’s changing tastes (and) help consumers increase their intake of seafood.”

Of the meager 16 comments on this notice, most were from industry partners applauding the changes. The National Consumers League (which calls itself “America’s pioneering consumer advocacy organization”) commended the FDA for this rulemaking saying it “greatly appreciates” all the trouble the agency went to for consumers and thanking them several times.

Only one commenter appeared to recognize the risks, stating that the “optional ingredient” provision could create “potential safety and allergen issues for consumers who may not be aware of what ingredients are added to canned tuna,” and “impair consumer rights.”

If we do get any of our questions answered on this, we’ll update it here. In the meantime, it appears that the FDA has not just handed over the keys to its headquarters to Big Food, it has stopped locking the doors entirely.

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If the ‘dose makes the poison’ there’s more than enough MSG and MSG-aliases in processed food to cause brain damage as well as serious observable reactions

There’s more than enough excitotoxic glutamic acid (a.k.a. free glutamate) in processed foods to create the excesses needed to cause brain damage, obesity, reproductive dysfunction, migraine headache, heart irregularities, irritable bowel, nausea and vomiting, asthma, seizures and more. In fact, excitotoxic glutamate has been known to trigger all the reactions listed as side effects of prescription drugs.

It hasn’t always been that way.

Prior to 1957, free glutamate available to people in the U.S. came largely from use of a product called Accent, which is pure MSG marketed as a flavor enhancer. In 1957, however, Ajinomoto’s method of glutamate production changed from extraction from a protein source (a slow and costly method), to a technique of bacterial fermentation wherein carefully selected genetically modified bacteria secreted glutamate through their cell walls — which enabled virtually unlimited production of MSG, allowing Ajinomoto to market its product aggressively.

It wasn’t long before Big Food discovered that increased profits could be generated by liberally using flavor enhancers (which all contain free glutamate) in every processed food product imaginable. And over the next two decades, the marketplace became flooded with manufactured/processed free-glutamate added to processed foods in ingredients such as hydrolyzed proteins, yeast extracts, maltodextrin, soy protein isolate, and MSG.

Today, more free glutamate than ever before will be found in ingredients used in processed and ultra-processed foods, snacks, and protein-fortified foods, protein drinks and shakes, and protein bars. And hydrolyzed proteins such as pea protein powder and mung bean protein isolate contain all three excitotoxic (brain-damaging) amino acids: aspartic acid (as in aspartame) and L-cysteine (used in dough conditioners), as well as glutamic acid. On top of that, excitotoxins marketed as “protein” sources have become increasingly available and extremely popular.

Recently we have seen excitotoxic amino acids in products such as Real Egg (mung bean protein isolate, the enzyme transglutaminase, and natural flavors), the Impossible Burger (textured wheat protein, potato protein, natural flavors, yeast extract, and soy protein isolate), Beyond Meat Beast Burger (pea protein isolate, natural flavoring, yeast extract, and maltodextrin), and the Lightlife Burger (water, pea protein, expeller pressed canola oil, modified corn starch, modified cellulose, yeast extract, virgin coconut oil, sea salt, natural flavor, beet powder (color), ascorbic acid (to promote color retention), onion extract, onion powder garlic powder) as well as excitotoxins added to an increasing array of ultra-processed foods. Most ultra-processed foods are made exclusively of chemicals and poor-quality ingredients to which glutamate-containing flavor enhancers have been added.

Prior to the time that Ajinomoto reformulated its method of MSG production (now over 60 years ago), accumulating excesses of glutamate through food sufficient to turn it excitotoxic would have been nearly impossible. But in the decades that followed Ajinomoto’s reformulation of MSG, obesity and infertility escalated to epidemic proportions.

The names of ingredients that contain manufactured free glutamate can be found at this link.

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The FDA’s Long Goodbye to Brominated Vegetable Oil: The Back Story

In July 2024, the U.S, Food and Drug Administration finally gave the boot to brominated vegetable oil, commonly called BVO. Its food additive regulation was revoked, and this purely cosmetic additive — an oil modified with bromine – will eventually be phased out of the food supply.

BVO, which is used mostly in beverages for the highly important purpose of keeping ingredients all neatly blended, builds up in fatty tissue and has been shown to cause heart damage in research animals. The FDA was aware of this back in the late 1960s, but instead of taking action to ban its use, it did something most curious by creating a special regulatory place for BVO to reside. Deeming it neither safe or harmful, the FDA placed the ingredient in a new and special category in 1977 called “food additives permitted in food or in contact with food on an interim basis pending additional study.” And there it sat for decades.

This interim classification came about due to a lawsuit filed in the 1970s by the late consumer interest attorney James S. Turner and former director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) Michael Jacobson, to block its use as a food additive.

Over the years that BVO remained an “interim” food additive, it got company in that category. Acrylonitrile copolymers (banned from beverage bottles in the late 1970s and still used to make certain plastics such as food containers), mannitol (a sweetener), and the artificial sweetener saccharin, are all still legally used on an “interim basis.”

While BVO remained in regulatory limbo at the FDA, other countries took the lead in banning it. According to CSPI, BVO was banned in the UK in 1970, India in 1990, the EU in 2008 and Japan in 2010.

Perhaps anticipating that the boom would fall someday, the additive was previously phased out of popular beverages such as Gatorade and Fanta (made by PepsiCo and Coca-Cola, respectively), but according to today.com, a USDA database lists a whopping 600 products still containing BVO.

Some of the more popular ones include a citrus soda made by Keurig Dr. Pepper called Sun Drop, Orangette from Walmart and Giant brand orange soda.

And despite taking 47 years for the FDA to act on BVO, it’s not quite gone yet.

The pending ban becomes official on August 2, 2024, but manufacturers have another year to remove it from their products.

It should be noted that BVO, which was also patented by Dow as a flame-retardant additive in 2011, once resided on the FDA’s generally recognized as safe (GRAS) list. Other food additives in use today that have reams of scientific evidence attesting to their harm are currently considered GRAS. One of the more notable is monosodium glutamate (MSG).

In 2021 Adrienne Samuels, the late co-founder of the Truth in Labeling Campaign filed a petition with the FDA to strip MSG of its GRAS status. You can read the petition here and submit a comment to the FDA here.

If the action on BVO proves nothing else, it’s that although it might take a long time to accomplish, with enough consumer awareness and interest, today’s supposedly “safe” food additives may eventually become tomorrow’s banned ingredients.

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In memory and appreciation of Adrienne Samuels and her lasting impact on consumer safety and knowledge

Adrienne Samuels, co-founder of the Truth in Labeling Campaign, passed away at her home in Chicago on June 20, 2024; she was 89.

A tireless activist for honesty and clarity in food labeling, Adrienne brought into the spotlight many of the deceitful practices of government agencies, the media, and industry-supported academics. Working alongside her husband Jack, until his death in 2011, she continued to stand up against some of the world’s most powerful corporations.  

Formed in 1994, the Truth in Labeling Campaign was a result of Adrienne’s and Jack’s unintended evolution from typical consumers to consumer advocates in the course of searching for the reasons behind Jack’s puzzling Alzheimer-like symptoms.

The answers came in bits and pieces – a 1990 book In Bad Taste, the MSG Syndrome, by Dr. George Schwartz provided them with the names of ingredients to avoid. But Adrienne, an experimental psychologist by training and an educational psychologist by degree with a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, knew there was much more to unravel.

“What was the common element in the monosodium glutamate, hydrolyzed vegetable protein, and the other ingredients named in Dr. Schwartz’s book?” she later recalled. “Without understanding Jack’s sensitivity, there was no way for him to protect himself, and no way for me to help him.”

Eventually, what Adrienne had managed to piece together about the pernicious nature of various disguised additives in food, cosmetics, drugs, supplements, and infant formula was revealed in her 2022 book, The Perfect Poison: the story that Big Food and its friends at the FDA don’t want you to know.

The Truth in Labeling Campaign website, which went online in 1998, is considered one of the foremost sources for concise information on free glutamate (which is the active ingredient in MSG), where it is apt to be found, the innocuous names under which is labeled, and how best to avoid it.

Adrienne’s work on behalf of consumers over the years included sharing her findings with the FDA and various members of Congress, testifying before representatives of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) Life Sciences Research Office, and being one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the FDA (Truth in Labeling Campaign et al, vs. Donna Shalala et al), which requested that free glutamate in processed food be clearly identified on product labels.

More recently, in 2020 her research article, “Dose-dependent toxicity of glutamic acid: a review,” was published in the International Journal of Food Properties, where it received many thousands of views.

In 2021 Adrienne filed three citizen petitions with the FDA asking the agency to expose the names of ingredients that contain manufactured glutamate; strip MSG and manufactured glutamate of its GRAS (generally recognized as safe) status and to replace an inaccurate webpage at the FDA – Questions and Answers on Monosodium Glutamate – with truthful information.

By 2022 she had expanded her work on MSG and manufactured free glutamate, completing a review paper titled “Glutamic acid: initiator of the obesity epidemic” that identified them as risk factors for obesity when delivered to fetuses in the womb and infants during nursing.

Thanks to Adrienne and Jack, consumers no longer need to be in the dark as to where excitotoxic glutamic acid might be lurking in processed food and other common products. Their research has also revealed the inside story of how the “Glutes” (as she referred to those working in the glutamate industry) have engineered their “research” to arrive at the predetermined conclusion that MSG is safe and how the FDA still works hand-in-hand with the influential and powerful agents of Ajinomoto, MSG’s major manufacturer, to control what you hear and read about in mainstream media.

“We learned a great deal on this journey,” Adrienne said recently, noting that she was “proud of our accomplishments” that had resulted in a growing awareness of the toxic potential of MSG.

Consumer cognizance, she added, still needs to grow more—something she hoped can still be accomplished by the campaign to which she devoted her life.

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Neither Fish nor Fowl, as Imitation Foods Flood the Market the FDA Looks the Other Way

It doesn’t take a degree in marine biology to know that a concoction of pea protein isolates, soy protein concentrate, lentil and faba protein (all brain-damaging free glutamate ingredients), mixed up with some spices, yeast extracts, and natural flavors isn’t anything that came from the sea.

Yet, fake seafood abounds in the supermarket, even in some restaurants. Labeled as crab cakes, fish burgers, fish sticks, salmon burgers, prawns, shrimp, and even tuna, these imitation products are labeled to confuse.

We’ve told you about Good Catch “tuna” in a pouch, TUNO, and a few others, but the market for fake food is increasing so fast, it’s hard to keep up. We’ll give a closer look to some of these products in a minute, but first, let’s look at the labeling – something you would think the FDA would be doing.

According to the trade group the National Fisheries Institute these “alternative” products are “misbranded” and violate FDA’s labeling requirements. While not mentioning the toxic nature of the ingredients, the group says that due to their overall deficiency in nutritional benefits compared to real seafood, they should be required to say “imitation” prominently on package labeling.

“The FDA’s existing requirements state that nutritionally inferior substitutes must be labeled as “imitation.”  Mislabeling food is a serious infraction and can harm consumers both by depriving them of expected nutritional benefits and by possibly exposing them to food allergies.  The FDA statutes state labels that are misleading in any way are regarded as “misbranded.

“…the FDA refuses to enforce such a requirement on highly processed, plant-based alternative products designed and marketed to imitate fish without containing any fish protein.”

The National Chicken Council is also up in arms about fake chicken products labeled as “chicken tenders,” “chick’n strips,” and “chopped chick’n,” to name a few. The council states that such products are “misbranded under the Federal Food Drug and Cosmetic Act.”

But despite such complaints on behalf of industry, it seems that more and more imitation foods are being introduced and purchased by confused consumers looking to eat healthier. While “plant-based” is a great marketing term, all it typically means is that the product came from a manufacturing plant.

Think about it — how many manufactured, toxic flavoring additives does it take to make pea protein or soy protein taste even remotely like crabmeat or tuna?

An Imitation Game

Two companies flooding the market in the fake food business include:

Gathered Foods, makers of the Good Catch line of imitation seafood. This company, which recently opened a manufacturing plant in Ohio (about as far from an ocean as their products are from fish), uses its proprietary “6-plant protein blend” along with a host of natural flavors, oils, starches, yeast extracts, corn starch, methylcellulose, corn maltodextrin, and corn flour to make a “tender, flaky whitefish texture.”

The special protein blend consists of pea protein isolate, soy protein concentrate, chickpea flour, faba protein, lentil protein, and soy protein isolate, all sources of brain-damaging free glutamate.

The company markets fake “crab cakes,” “tuna,” “fish fillets,” “salmon burgers,” along with food service versions so restaurants can cook up seafood fakery too.

Mega-food company Conagra Brands jumped on the pretend protein bandwagon with a complete array of pseudo-foods under the Gardein name. Its “f’sh filets” for example, contain a full line-up of chemical concoctions including “textured vegetable protein product,” “soy protein concentrate,” “titanium dioxide,” “yeast extract,” “natural flavors,” and “autolyzed yeast extract.”

Despite the fakery involved in the marketing of its products, Gathered Foods executives say on their website that they are helping to “feed” and “save the world.”

But however much funding they receive, fancy packaging they create, and cliché mission statements they post, they are nothing more than purveyors of imitation foods filled with toxic, brain-damaging ingredients.

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Exactly what are ultra-processed foods and what makes them so unhealthy?

What makes a food “ultra-processed?”

Apologists for Big Food are working hard to make us believe that (with a few exceptions) ultra-processed foods are simply the natural evolution of food processing. Bread, they tell us, is likely the very first “processed” food, originally crafted over 30,000 years ago. Then there are cheeses, beer, and fermented foods – all created by humans to advance how we eat.

But along with the introduction of more and more novel ready-to-eat processed foods (such as canned beans and grape jelly in the 1920s and breakfast cereals hitting the market in the 1940s), something odd happened to large categories of these items. No longer did they retain the basic identity of food itself, with some being made entirely of laboratory-created ingredients.

These new creations, later labeled ultra-processed foods, surreptitiously emerged around the 1980s.

Before this sneaky shift in how many “foods” were being manufactured was realized, however, the effects of consuming these items became quite obvious — a growing epidemic of obesity along with a marked rise in chronic diseases.

And despite the increased scrutiny these types of foods have garnered lately you won’t find any kind of FDA-sanctioned labeling or notice that what you’re considering serving for dinner may look like what’s traditionally thought of as food, only it really isn’t.

The ‘Ultra-Processed Food Group’

Investigations by Dr. Carlos Monteiro, a professor of Nutrition and Public Health in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and other researchers at the University of Sao Paulo led to a first-of-its-kind classification of processed foods called Nova in 2010.

Using Nova, Monterio and others published a paper in 2019 that defines what makes up ultra-processed food.

Ingredients characteristic of ultra-processed foods are either food substances of no or rare culinary use, or else classes of additives whose function is to make the final product sellable, palatable and often hyper-palatable.

Classes of additives used only in the manufacture of ultra-processed foods are flavors, flavor enhancers, colors, emulsifiers, emulsifying salts, artificial sweeteners, thickeners, and foaming, anti-foaming, bulking, carbonating, gelling, and glazing agents. All of them, most notably flavors and colors, either disguise unpleasant sensory properties created by ingredients, processes, or packaging used in the manufacture of ultra-processed foods, or give the final product intense sensory properties especially attractive to see, taste, smell and/or touch, or both.

Manufactured flavoring agents, such as MSG and dozens of other additives containing brain-damaging free glutamate are key indicators of these ultra-processed foods. And all of these additives that make a non-food look and taste like real food have been given free rein by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Monterio gives this tip as a way to ID ultra-processed foods:

Generally, the practical way to identify if a product is ultra-processed is to check to see if its list of ingredients contains at least one item characteristic of the ultra-processed food group. These are either food substances never or rarely used in kitchens or classes of additives whose function is to make the final product palatable or more appealing.

The FDA has done its part to help in the proliferation of this “ultra-processed food group” by distracting consumers into reading its mandated and relatively meaningless nutrition facts label and declaring these toxic additives to be either “safe” or GRAS — generally recognized as safe.

Sadly, also making the Nova list of ultra-processed foods are infant formulas and “meal replacement” beverages for the elderly and infirm.

As Dr. Monterio said in an interview in 2023, the “main purpose of ultra-processed food is to make products that can replace real foods (to) amplify profits of the food industry.”

And when the food industry has friends like the FDA to help it along, you can bet the farm that more ultra-processed foods will be replacing real farm-grown foods than ever before.

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The Perfect Poison: The Story That Big Food and Its Friends at the FDA Don’t Want You To Know

A tell-all about the toxic effects of free glutamate and the U.S. regulatory agency that has been successfully suppressing that information for over 50 years.

This is the story of one man’s battle to survive unlabeled poisons in food, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and supplements. Poisons that put everyone at risk. Poisons found even in infant formula.

Part memoire, part history, part exposé this book will introduce you to the men and women who manufacture and market toxic chemicals dressed up as food. You will meet the people hired to execute carefully rigged research guaranteed to conclude that excitotoxic — brain damaging — free glutamic acid is safe for human consumption. People who get the government, media and medical community to do their bidding.

This is a story of Jack and Adrienne Samuels, who evolved from typical consumers to consumer advocates. A pair with the courage to stand up to one of the world’s most powerful, heartless corporations and the government agencies that empower it. A couple who worked tirelessly to solve the puzzle of Jack’s curious food sensitivity, and in so doing found that the manufactured free glutamate that caused his medical problems also plays a significant role in the obesity epidemic, various behavior disorders, and the infertility crisis, and likely contributes to a vast number of poorly understood abnormalities of the nervous system such as multiple sclerosis, autism, and Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease.

More than a myth-shattering book, The Perfect Poison provides readers with the tools needed to deal with reactions to excitotoxic manufactured free glutamate found in processed and ultra-processed food, or better yet, to avoid it altogether.

Available in paperback and e-book format here!

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MSG on 60 Minutes got people riled up 30 years ago. Could it do the same thing today?

Thirty years ago this 60 Minutes program (video below) on MSG was the second most-watched show of the year. Despite that, the show’s creator Don Hewitt caved to glutamate-industry pressure and refused to air it a second time.

Since then the Glutes have kept a tight wrap on information about the toxic effects of MSG, filling the Internet, newspapers and TV with cleverly crafted propaganda that carries the falsehood MSG is a harmless ingredient.