Tag: obesity

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The evolution of Type 2 Obesity

Type 2 Obesity is the intractable, unyielding obesity that follows when excessive amounts of a toxic chemical:

1. Are ingested by pregnant women,

2. Are “fed” through the placenta to their fetuses,

3. Destroy brain cells in the fetus that would have played a role in weight control.

Check it out.  The data are published.

The obesity epidemic was set in motion when virtually unlimited amounts of brain damaging flavor enhancers were added to practically every processed food and snack. 

History paints a clear picture of the obesity epidemic timeline.

  • Prior to 1957, there had been no reports of food-induced adverse reactions to flavor-enhancers, no studies demonstrating food-induced brain damage, no obesity epidemic, no infertility crisis, and the incidence of glutamate-induced abnormalities had not yet begun to skyrocket.

  • 1957 was the year that a new and improved method for producing virtually unlimited amounts of the excitotoxic – brain damaging – (manufactured) free glutamate (MfG) was put into production.

  • 1960 was the year that increased obesity began to be noticed. 1960-62 saw the first statistics kept on numbers of overweight people. 

  • In 1969, the first studies documented the fact that brain cells were destroyed following intake of substantial amounts of MfG. In that year, the first of many animal studies were published demonstrating that MfG causes brain lesions in the area of the brain responsible for appetite and satiety (i.e. weight control).  Those studies documented the fact that brain cells were destroyed following intake of substantial amounts of MfG, that ablated brain cells were not replaced with neurons, and that the obesity manifested by those animals became evident as they reached maturity. 

  • By the mid-1970s, obesity had reached epidemic proportions.

And that’s the evolution of the obesity epidemic: Excessive amounts of free glutamate ingested by pregnant women are passed to their fetuses where it causes brain lesions in the arcuate nucleus followed by gross obesity.

Adrienne

RESOURCES:

Glutamic acid: initiator of the obesity epidemic  (data)
https://www.truthinlabeling.org/assets/obesity_review_shortened_final_with_reference.pdf

Getting to the root of obesity (an overview)
https://www.truthinlabeling.org/assets/MASTERS_Perspective.pdf

How I know what I know about the obesity epidemic
https://www.truthinlabeling.org/assets/obesity_how_i_know.pdf

Seven lines of evidence leading to the conclusion that manufactured free glutamate, no matter where it is found, is toxic:

  • Review of animal studies done in the 1970s that have demonstrated the toxicity of MSG and MfG: evidence that the glutamate in MSG and other flavor enhancers and protein substitutes becomes excitotoxic – brain damaging – when present in amounts that exceed what a healthy subject needs for normal body function.
    https://www.truthinlabeling.org/assets/seven_lines/Seven_Lines_Lines2.pdf

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What changed in 1957 that triggered the obesity crisis?

Did you ever wonder why consumers didn’t have problems with monosodium glutamate before 1968?   That’s one of the favorite stories told in the ongoing MSG-is-safe-for-you propaganda, and it happens to be true.  True, because of a 1957 invention that enabled production of so much MSG so quickly that it became easily and cheaply available. What had once been a harmless amino acid available and used in limited quantity became poisonous when available and used in great quantity.

Until Dr. Kwok wrote his well-known 1968 letter titled “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome,” physicians passed off reactions to MSG as allergic reactions, and the brain damage caused by MSG wasn’t obvious.

Prior to 1957, the amount of free glutamate in the average diet had been unremarkable.  But that 1957 change (in which Ajinomoto switched from extraction of glutamate from a protein source, a slow and costly method, to a method of bacterial fermentation), allowed them to churn out virtually unlimited amounts of MSG. And Ajinomoto began to market its product aggressively.  Shortly thereafter, food manufacturers found that profits could be increased by utilizing flavor-enhancing additives that contained free glutamate. Over the next two decades, the marketplace became flooded with manufactured/processed free-glutamate in ingredients such as hydrolyzed proteins, yeast extracts, maltodextrin, soy protein isolate, and MSG. And an ever-increasing variety of free glutamate-containing products became readily available to consumers who were being actively solicited.

Prior to 1957, the date of Ajinomoto’s launch of mass-production, there had been no reports of MSG-induced adverse reactions; no studies demonstrating MSG-induced brain damage; no obesity epidemic; no infertility crisis; and the incidence of glutamate-induced abnormalities such as multiple sclerosis (MS), Parkinson’s disease, and autism had not yet begun to skyrocket.

In 1968, eleven years after Ajinomoto began mass producing MSG, the first report of MSG-induced adverse reactions was made public. And soon MSG-induced obesity and infertility would be recognized in young adults who had suffered glutamate-induced brain damage before birth or as newborns.

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Saturday’s secrets — Best kept secrets of the glutamate industry

It’s not a secret anymore

If your mother was pregnant with you after 1960 and she ate a fair amount of processed food and drank diet soda, chances are that today you’re overweight, and have found that diet and exercise don’t help. That’s because the flavor enhancers in processed food and the aspartic acid in aspartame are excitotoxins that kill/destroy the brain cells that would have controlled satiety, appetite, and food intake had they not been obliterated by flavor-enhancers like MSG, and aspartic acid-containing sweeteners such as aspartame, equal, and others found in low-cal and diet foods and beverages.

Yes, there’s science that says so:

Samuels A. (2020) Dose dependent toxicity of glutamic acid: a review, International Journal of Food Properties, 23:1, 412-419, DOI: 10.1080/10942912.2020.1733016:

and

Without pregnant women passing excitotoxic – brain damaging – free glutamic acid to fetuses and neonates, there would be no obesity epidemic. https://7lines.org/obesity-and-mfg/

So now that you understand that you’re not lazy, unmotivated or whatever else people are blaming you for, stand tall and be proud of the person you are.  Once you’ve accepted the fact that you have a disability and are not to blame for being overweight, you can work to minimize your disability without beating yourself up for something over which you had no control. Whatever you and your doctors or counselors design for your future can now be based on realistic expectations. Yes, if you choose to modify your weight, there will be limits imposed on you by the brain damage done to you in utero. So, make sure the doctors and counselors you choose are tuned in to help you.

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You could blame it on your mother, but there was no way for her to know

Did you know that obesity can be caused by pregnant women passing manufactured free glutamate to fetuses and newborns where it causes brain damage that in turn causes gross obesity, behavior disorders and reproductive disfunction (infertility)? Where do you find manufactured free glutamate? Think hydrolyzed proteins and MSG. 

Watch for it.

Over the course of the next few blogs the Truth in Labeling Campaign will be unveiling the Seven Lines of Evidence that lead inevitably to the conclusion that manufactured free glutamate (MfG), such as that found in hydrolyzed proteins and monosodium glutamate (MSG) is a well-disguised poison – a poison that may well be hidden in your very own pantry.

The first blog in the series will be August 24.

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If you have questions or comments, we’d love to hear from you. If you have hints for others on how to avoid exposure to MfG, send them along, too, and we’ll put them up on Facebook. Or you can reach us at questionsaboutmsg@gmail.com and follow us on Twitter @truthlabeling.

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Without MSG, processed food wouldn’t sell — and there would be no obesity epidemic.

Have you ever stopped to consider that before there was ultra-processed food there was no obesity epidemic? And without MSG there wouldn’t be many, if any, ultra-processed foods on the market.

Flavor-enhancing ingredients aren’t highly visible in processed food, but they’re absolutely essential. Flavor enhancers mask off-flavors, make chemicals taste like food and bring what industry calls an “umami taste” to otherwise bland and unappetizing products.

Those who reap huge profits from the sale of processed foods wouldn’t have a foot in the door without flavor enhancers and won’t be giving them up any time soon. That’s despite the fact that each and every one of them contains excitotoxic (brain damaging) glutamic acid – a.k.a. glutamate.

There are three prerequisites for producing brain damage that will lead to obesity.

First is a brain that is vulnerable to damage due to injury or the immaturity of a fetus or newborn.

Second is sufficient free glutamate — or other potentially excitotoxic material to produce the excesses needed to become excitotoxic. More than enough free glutamate is present in processed foods to accomplish that.

Third, there needs to be a way to deliver this excitotoxic material to a vulnerable brain.

The fetus and newborn have brains that are vulnerable to damage by excitotoxins

In the 1970s it was demonstrated that the brains of newborn animals are vulnerable to glutamate insult. Brain damage, followed by obesity was produced in newborn mice (whose brains, like those of humans, are not fully developed). A student in Dr. John Olney’s lab had observed that mice being used in studies of glutamate-induced retinal dysfunction had become grotesquely obese. A series of studies by Olney and others followed. Many were studies of MSG fed to animals.

Today, there is more than sufficient excitotoxic glutamic acid in ultra-processed food, “fake” food, protein substitutes, and dietary supplements to cause excitotoxicity

When present in amounts needed for normal body function, the neurotransmitter glutamic acid is essential. But when accumulated in amounts greater than the body requires, glutamic acid becomes an excitotoxic neurotransmitter, firing repeatedly and damaging the cells that host targeted glutamate-receptors and/or causing death by over-exciting those glutamate receptors until their host cells die.

Additional confirmation of the brain-damaging effects of excitotoxic free glutamic acid comes from research focused on identifying and understanding human diseases and abnormalities associated with glutamate, often for the purpose of finding drugs that would mitigate glutamate’s adverse effects. By 1980, glutamate-associated disorders such as headaches, asthma, diabetes, muscle pain, atrial fibrillation, ischemia, trauma, seizures, stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Huntington’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, depression, multiple sclerosis, schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), epilepsy, addiction, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), frontotemporal dementia and autism were on the rise, and evidence of the brain-damaging effects of glutamate were generally accepted by the scientific community.

To become excitotoxic, glutamic acid must be accumulated in considerable quantity. There have always been excitotoxins, although not in food in excessive amounts. But that changed in 1957 when extraction of glutamate from a protein source (which had been a slow and costly method) was replaced by carefully selected genetically modified bacteria that excrete glutamate through their cell walls. That transformation allowed, and still allows, for virtually unlimited production of manufactured free glutamate and MSG.

It wasn’t long before food manufacturers found that profits could be increased by using manufactured free glutamate to produce their own flavor-enhancing additives, and dozens of excitotoxic ingredients were added to the food supply.

Over the next two decades foods containing manufactured/processed free glutamate in ingredients such as hydrolyzed proteins, yeast extracts, maltodextrin, soy protein isolate and MSG flooded the marketplace. And the large amounts of manufactured free glutamate needed to cause excitotoxicity became readily available to anyone consuming multiple processed food products during the course of a day.

Excitotoxins are delivered to the vulnerable brains of fetuses and newborns by their pregnant mothers

Delivery of excitotoxins to the fetus and newborn is easy to understand. Nourishment (and not so nourishing material) is delivered to the fetus in the form of material ingested by a pregnant woman and passed to the fetus through the placenta. A newborn is nourished through its mothers’ milk.

Data from Frieder and Grimm and others confirm that free glutamate can be passed in excessive quantities to neonates and fetuses by expectant mothers who ingest excessive amounts. Glutamate can cross the placenta during pregnancy, can cross the blood brain barrier (BBB) in an unregulated manner during development and can pass through the five circumventricular organs (unique areas of the brain that lie outside the BBB) which are leaky at best at any stage of life. Moreover, the BBB is easily damaged by fever, stroke, trauma to the head, seizures, ingestion of MSG, and the normal process of aging. Similar to drugs and alcohol, free glutamate can also be passed to infants through mothers’ milk.

The obesity epidemic was set in motion as the amount of manufactured free glutamate in processed food, “fake” food, protein substitutes, and dietary supplements became sufficient to wipe out brain cells in the area of the arcuate nucleus of the hypothalamus that would have controlled satiety, appetite, and food intake had they not been obliterated by flavor-enhancers like MSG.


If you have questions or comments, we’d love to hear from you. If you have hints for others on how to avoid exposure to MfG, send them along, too, and we’ll put them up on Facebook. Or you can reach us at questionsaboutmsg@gmail.com and follow us on Twitter @truthlabeling.

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The food industry helped get us where we are today. Now it’s profiteering on the results.

It’s something we’ve all heard before: Those at the highest risk of a severe reaction or death from a COVID-19 infection have an “underlying condition.”

And the top “condition,” as it turns out, is obesity. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released results from a study last month that examined those who were hospitalized due to COVID-19 in 99 counties across 14 states, and the results are staggering. Close to 60 percent in the 18-49 group involved those who were obese. For people 50-64, obesity was the underlying condition for nearly 50 percent who were hit hard, along with 41 percent of patients 65 and over.

While it’s hardly news that obesity, especially in America, is so widespread it’s now referred to as an “epidemic,” many experts seem to have just realized that the food industry has been working for a very long time to make its ultra-processed foods considered normal eating options for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Some, such as UK cardiologist Dr. Aseem Malhotra, are going so far as to say that if health authorities don’t warn citizens to change the way they eat, it would constitute “negligence and ignorance.” 

Professor Tim Spector, an expert in genetic epidemiology at King’s College in London remarked that “Obesity and poor diet is emerging as one of the biggest risk factors for a severe response to COVID-19 infection that can no longer be ignored.”

And Professor Robert Listig, from the University of California commented on the CDC report by saying that “ultra-processed food sets you up for inflammation,” which is something COVID-19 is “happy to exploit.”

But as they say, talk is cheap. What isn’t, however, is how much money Big Food spends to make sure that these stockpiles of processed products that have undermined our health so much keep on selling. And despite what that CDC report revealed, ultra-processed, obesity-spawning foods are flying off the shelves faster than ever before.

A distressing comfort

At one time, comfort foods used to constitute mom’s mac and cheese, homemade mashed potatoes or a batch of oatmeal raisin cookies fresh out of the oven. Now it appears that our eating habits have deteriorated to the point where many of the hundreds of New York Times readers commenting on an article titled “‘I Just Need the Comfort’: Processed Foods Make a Pandemic Comeback,” are arguing the vital need to consume unlimited amounts of Velveeta, canned pasta and “cheese” that comes from a can.

For Big Food, it’s likely a sales dream come true.

General Mills reported that sales are up “across-the-board” during the last month, including packaged dinner mixes such as Hamburger Helper, described by a spokesman as a “simple and delicious meal.”

Conagra Brands saw a 50 percent increase for products such as Slim Jim and Chef Boyardee canned pastas during March. Kraft/Heinz now needs to keep some factories working three shifts just to keep cranking out enough boxed macaroni and cheese, with Campbell’s soup sales jumping almost 60 percent from where they were a year ago.

And Impossible Foods, which makes the additive filled, ultra-processed fake meat called the “Impossible Burger,” has been able to use this pandemic to get its products into 777 more grocery stores in the U.S.

If, as many experts are saying, the threat posed by COVID-19 will be with us for quite a while — even gaining tragic traction in the fall — now is the time to make sure you’re in fighting shape. And judging from the CDC’s research, it appears that can best be started right in your kitchen.

Linda Bonvie

Linda Bonvie is journalist, blogger and co-author of “A Consumer’s Guide to Toxic Food Additives: How to avoid synthetic sweeteners, MSG, artificial colors, and more,” Skyhorse Publishing, March 2020.

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Mr. President…

Donald J. Trump
President
United States of America

Mr. President,

I read in the Wall Street Journal that you’ve pledged to reduce end stage kidney disease by 25 percent by 2030. Wonderful! And you did it by Executive Order!

So I’m thinking. Would you be willing to fly in the face of Ajinomoto Co., producer of monosodium glutamate (MSG) in America,  and by Executive Order stop the FDA from calling MSG a “Generally Recognized as Safe” (GRAS) food additive? Science says it’s an excitotoxin – that when present in quantity (and there’s lots and lots of it in the food we eat) it kills brain cells and from there causes obesity and infertility; while Ajinomoto gets propaganda value out of the claim that the FDA says that it’s GRAS.

It wouldn’t cost you or your administration a penny. You might even get thank-you tweets from millions of MSG-sensitive people and their MSG-sensitive children. And if you could see your way to going just a step further, and issue an Executive Order that required that the toxic glutamate in MSG and all of the other ingredients that contain it (like hydrolyzed pea protein, autolyzed yeast, maltodextrin, and natural flavoring) had to be identified on food, drug, infant formula, protein powder, and dietary supplement labels, you could probably balance the national budget on health-care savings alone.

Ideas respectfully submitted,

Adrienne Samuels
Director
The Truth in Labeling Campaign

@truthlabeling
questionsaboutMSG@gmail.com

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The Real Food Recipe-less Cookbook is back by popular request!

The Real Food Recipe-less Cookbook is back! More than a cookbook, it’s a treasure of information for people who realize that their bodies rebel against the ingestion of excitotoxins.  And it’s an unparalleled resource for those who simply want to avoid excitotoxins – amino acids that run amuck when ingested in quantity, killing brain cells and causing endocrine disorders which include obesity and infertility.

Find it at the Truth in Labeling website here.

If you have questions or comments, we’d love to hear from you. If you have hints for others on how to avoid exposure to MfG, send them along, too, and we’ll put them up on Facebook. Or you can reach us at questionsaboutmsg@gmail.com and follow us on Twitter @truthlabeling.

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Excitotoxins in processed food: The best guarded secret of the food and drug industries

Excitotoxicity is the pathological process by which nerve cells are damaged or killed by excessive stimulation by neurotransmitters such as glutamic acid (glutamate).

In 1969 when researcher Dr. John Olney of Washington University in St. Louis observed that process in his laboratory, it should have resulted in sweeping changes in how food additives are regulated. 

He noted that glutamate fed as monosodium glutamate (MSG) to laboratory animals killed brain cells and subsequently caused gross obesity, reproductive dysfunction, and behavior abnormalities.

Before that, the world knew nothing of what Dr. Olney had dubbed “excitotoxins.” And after Olney’s discovery, the existence of free excitotoxic amino acids present in food became the best-guarded secret of the food and drug industries.

Today, excitotoxins present in food remain largely ignored or unknown, mostly because the rich and powerful food and pharmaceutical industries want it that way. A great deal of food industry profit depends on using excitotoxins to “enhance” the taste of cheaply made food. And a great deal of pharmaceutical industry profit depends on selling drugs to “cure” the diseases and disabilities caused by the excitotoxins in the food supply.

What are excitotoxins?

Excitotoxins are often amino acids, but not all amino acids are excitotoxins. The amino acid with the greatest excitotoxic footprint is glutamate. When present in protein or released from protein in a regulated fashion (through routine digestion), glutamate is vital to normal body function. It is the major neurotransmitter in humans, carrying nerve impulses from glutamate stimuli to glutamate receptors throughout the body. Yet, when present outside of protein in amounts that exceed what the healthy human body was designed to accommodate (which can vary widely from person to person), glutamate becomes an excitotoxic neurotransmitter, firing repeatedly, damaging targeted glutamate-receptors and/or causing neuronal and non-neuronal death by over exciting those glutamate receptors until their host cells die.

Technically speaking, neurotransmitters that over-stimulate their receptors to the point of killing the cells that host them are called excitotoxic neurotransmitters, and the resulting condition is referred to as excitotoxicity. Glutamate excitotoxicity is the process that underlies the damage done by MSG and the other ingredients that contain processed free glutamic acid (MfG). 

Glutamate is called a non-essential amino acid because if the body does not have sufficient quantities to function normally, any needed glutamate can be produced from other amino acids. So, there is no need to add glutamate to the human diet. The excitotoxins in MSG and other ingredients that contain MfG are not needed for nutritional purposes. MSG and many other ingredients have been designed to enhance the taste of cheaply made food for the sole purpose of lining the pockets of those who manufacture and sell them.

Glutamate neurotransmitters trigger glutamate receptors both in the central nervous system and in peripheral tissue (heart, lungs, and intestines, for example). After stimulating glutamate receptors, glutamate neurotransmitters may do no damage and simply fade away, so to speak, or they may damage the cells that their receptors cling to, or overexcite their receptors until the cells that host them die.

There’s another possibility. There are a great many glutamate receptors in the brain, so it’s possible that if a few are damaged or wiped out following ingestion of MfG, their loss may not be noticed because there are so many undamaged ones remaining. It is also possible that individuals differ in the numbers of glutamate receptors that they have. If so, people with more glutamate receptors to begin with are less likely to feel the effects of brain damage following ingestion of MfG because even after some cells are killed or damaged, there will still be sufficient numbers of undamaged cells to carry out normal body functions.

That might account for the fact that some people are more sensitive to MfG than others.

Less is known about glutamate receptors outside the brain – in the heart, stomach, and lungs, for example. It would make sense (although that doesn’t make it true) that cells serving a particular function would be grouped together. It would also seem logical that in each location there would be fewer glutamate receptors siting on host cells than found in the brain, and for some individuals there might be so few cells with glutamate receptors to begin with, that ingestion of even small amounts of MfG might trigger asthma, atrial fibrillation, or irritable bowel disease; while persons with more cells hosting glutamate receptors would not notice damage or loss.

Short-term effects of excitotoxic glutamate (such as asthma and migraine headache) have long been obvious to those not influenced by the rhetoric of the glutamate industry and their friends at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Hopefully, researchers will soon begin to correlate the adverse effects of glutamate ingestion with endocrine disturbances such as reproductive disorders and gross obesity. It is well known that glutamate plays an important role in some mental disorders and neurodegenerative diseases, but the fact that ingestion of excitotoxic glutamate might contribute to existing pools of free glutamate that could become excitotoxic, still needs to be considered. Finally, a few have begun to realize the importance of glutamate’s access to the human body through the mouth, nose and skin.

There are three excitotoxic amino acids used in quantity in food, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, protein drinks and powders, and dietary supplements:

1) Glutamic acid — found in flavor enhancers, infant formula, enteral care products for invalids, protein powders, processed foods, anything that is hydrolyzed, and some pesticides/fertilizers.

2) Aspartic acid — found in low-calorie sweeteners, aspartame and its aliases, infant formula, protein powders, anything that is hydrolyzed, and

3) L-cysteine — found in dough conditioners.

According to Dr. Edward Group, the six most dangerous excitotoxins are: MSG (monosodium glutamate), aspartate, domoic acid, L-BOAA, cysteine, and casein.

Resources

Dr. Edward Group The 6 Most Dangerous Excitotoxins. Global Healing Center.  (accessed 8/20/2016)

Blaylock RL. Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills. Santa Fe, New Mexico: Health Press; 1994.

Olney JW. Brain Lesions, Obesity, and Other Disturbances in Mice Treated with Monosodium Glutamate; Science. 1969;164:719-21.  

Olney JW, Ho OL. Brain damage in infant mice following oral intake of glutamate, aspartate or cystine. Nature. 1970;227:609-611.

Olney, J.W. Excitatory neurotoxins as food additives: an evaluation of risk. Neurotoxicology 2: 163-192, 1980.

Olney JW. Excitotoxins in foods. Neurotoxicology. 1994 Fall;15(3):535-44.

Gudiño-Cabrera G, Ureña-Guerrero ME, Rivera-Cervantes MC, Feria-Velasco AI, Beas-Zárate C. Excitotoxicity triggered by neonatal monosodium glutamate treatment and blood-brain barrier function. Arch Med Res. 2014 Nov;45(8):653-9.

Verywellhealth.com.  An Overview of Cell Receptors and How They Work https://www.verywellhealth.com/what-is-a-receptor-on-a-cell-562554   (Accessed 5/5/2019)