{"id":3077,"date":"2026-01-27T16:21:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T16:21:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/truthinlabeling.org\/blog\/?p=3077"},"modified":"2026-01-27T16:21:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T16:21:08","slug":"is-it-news-or-is-it-propaganda-part-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/truthinlabeling.org\/blog\/2026\/01\/27\/is-it-news-or-is-it-propaganda-part-two\/","title":{"rendered":"Is It News or Is It Propaganda? Part Two"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When it comes to MSG, the food-additive cabal appears to have gotten the entire mainstream-media realm under its direction.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Linda Bonvie<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This past spring, I received an email from a writer by the name of Clarissa Wei.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She wrote: \u201cI\u2019m a freelance journalist currently working on a story about the history of MSG for National Geographic, with a focus on how public narratives have shifted over the past decade. I found your Substack piece Is it News or is it Propaganda?<\/a> to be a valuable counterpoint.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhile many recent stories emphasize the science clearing MSG\u2019s name, your piece raises important questions about how that message is packaged, funded, and disseminated. and who ultimately benefits.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019d love to include your voice in my piece.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clarissa even provided links to past articles she had done for big-name media outlets, such as The New York Times, BBC<\/em>, and The New Yorker<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI appreciate the chance to be included,\u201d I unsuspectingly wrote back, adding, \u201cThanks for tracking me down.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u2018Big Fat Lies\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the mid-1990s, I was introduced to Adrienne Samuels and her husband, Jack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ultimate accidental consumer advocates, Jack and Adrienne spent the second half of their lives informing regulators and warning the public about the dangers of free glutamic acid, which is the active ingredient in monosodium glutamate and a long list of other food additives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I worked with Adrienne<\/a> (who held a Ph.D.) until her passing at the age of 89 in 2024. And over those many years, I learned a lot from her, especially what she liked to call the \u201cBig Fat Lies<\/a>\u201d on the subject.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But her most important lesson, something she would tell me again and again, is that no mainstream media organization would EVER include information in an article that goes against the official propaganda line bought and paid for by the glutamate industry. You\u2019re apt to come across its misinformation\/lies online, in print, or on TV<\/em>, Adrienne wrote, in what appear to be \u201clegit\u201d articles, and in cutesy video presentations that pop up on Facebook. All that propaganda \u2013 that hype — is constructed on six falsehoods\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Based on what I learned, I even wrote extensively<\/a> about the Ajinomoto\/Edelman PR World Umami Forum in 2018, which, in truth, turned out to be nothing more than a boot camp for journalists and bloggers to help them effectively spread the messaging of Ajinomoto<\/em>, the world\u2019s largest producer of monosodium glutamate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But somehow, when Clarissa contacted me, I thought perhaps times had changed. After all, National Geographic<\/em> is all sciency, a supposed pillar of scholarly information since 1888. Never mind that it somehow seemed an odd venue for an article on MSG.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clarissa sent me her questions, which I promptly answered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enter Edelman<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The piece that caught Clarissa\u2019s eye, titled \u201cIs it news or is it propaganda<\/a><\/em>?\u201d appeared on my Substack almost two years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It revealed a spate of CBS programming that was straight out of the Ajinomoto playbook and that of its PR agency, Edelman Public Relations. The messaging I described that appears in all MSG programming and articles, not just those from CBS, always follows the same predictable path\u2014namely, that MSG is \u201cmaking a comeback\u201d (a term used so often that it must be a mandatory line).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Invariably included in such messaging is a letter sent over 55 years ago to the New England Journal of Medicine that <\/em>started the entire \u201ccontroversy.\u201d In addition, there has since been \u201cdecades of research;\u201d bevies of chefs making appearances to discuss what a wonderful addition MSG is to culinary creativity, and for the grand finale, the xenophobic zinger \u2013 that avoidance of MSG is somehow \u201canti-Asian.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clarissa\u2019s article<\/a> in National Geographic<\/em> came out in June without including either my \u201cvoice\u201d or that of anyone else with a \u201cvaluable counterpoint.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, the article followed the blueprint of hundreds of others that preceded it so perfectly, it even included \u201cmaking a comeback\u201d in the headline and ended by touching on \u201cdecades of racialized fear.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The brain-cell threat that disappeared from the dialogue<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The concept of MSG\u2019s \u201cmaking a comeback\u201d after a ruinous blow from that aforementioned doctor\u2019s 1968 letter to the New England Journal of Medicine<\/em>, describing his reactions after eating in Chinese restaurants, is a rather interesting marketing device.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As it happened, a much bigger and well-publicized event occurred the very next year. Never mentioned in one of these almost certainly \u201cplaced\u201d articles are the 1969 findings by Dr. John Olney, a top researcher at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, who had recently published<\/a> data showing that when newborn mice were exposed to the additive, they suffered extensive brain damage and endocrine disorders. Olney coined the term \u201cexcitotoxin\u201d at the time to describe those reactions caused by monosodium glutamate. Shortly afterwards, Olney found the same brain-damaging effects could be duplicated in infant rhesus monkeys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Certainly, fessing up to \u201cChinese Restaurant Syndrome\u201d is a lot more palatable to industry than debating whether or not MSG kills brain cells in baby monkeys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And keep in mind that back then, MSG was actually being added as a flavor enhancer to baby food, making the resulting publicity and backlash immediate, and causing three major companies to remove MSG from their baby-food jars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years, the glutamate industry has worked hard to rearrange or obliterate such inconvenient facts whenever possible, using clever PR techniques and well-placed articles promoted by extensive contacts with legitimate journalists who have access to top-tier outlets, along with social media \u201cinfluencers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the most long-lived lies include the repetitive refrain that the glutamate in MSG is \u201cidentical\u201d to what\u2019s found in the human body*, and that the additive occurs \u201cnaturally\u201d in food**.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The dissemination of this type of disinformation, no doubt, won\u2019t stop anytime soon. It is, after all, extremely well-funded, and the continued, unabated use of MSG and other similar flavor-enhancing additives will go on being regarded as a necessary ingredient in cheap, ultra-processed foods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I\u2019m thinking that perhaps I did have a small but significant effect on Clarissa\u2019s story after all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mentioning a \u201ccorporate narrative\u201d at the end, she also says, \u201cWhen identity, science, and branding align, it can be hard to tell who\u2019s leading the conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Considering the formidable food-industry forces she was up against, I guess that counts for something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

For more information on additives that contain free glutamate, see this page<\/a> at the Truth in Labeling Campaign<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*The glutamate in the human body is L-glutamate. L-glutamate, only. The glutamate of any manufactured glutamate (found in monosodium glutamate and pea protein isolate, for example) is made up of both L-glutamate and D-glutamate, plus numerous toxic impurities created during the manufacturing process that the industry has been unable to eliminate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

**MSG is manufactured using genetically modified bacteria that excrete glutamic acid through their cell walls. In the United States, monosodium glutamate is produced in Ajinomoto\u2019s plant in Eddyville, Iowa. Over the decades, there have been numerous patents filed for various methods of producing monosodium glutamate, which is most definitely not naturally occurring.<\/p>\n

<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When it comes to MSG, the food-additive cabal appears to have gotten the entire mainstream-media realm under its direction. Linda Bonvie This past spring, I received an email from a writer by the name of Clarissa Wei. She wrote: \u201cI\u2019m a freelance journalist currently working on a story about the history of MSG for National … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Is It News or Is It Propaganda? Part Two”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2920,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[540,8,638,325,4,639,24],"class_list":["post-3077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-adrienne-samuels","tag-ajinomoto","tag-clarissa-wei","tag-monosodium-glutamate","tag-msg","tag-national-geographic","tag-truthinlabelingcampaign"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/truthinlabeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/truthinlabeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/truthinlabeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/truthinlabeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/truthinlabeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3077"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/truthinlabeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3077\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3079,"href":"http:\/\/truthinlabeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3077\/revisions\/3079"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/truthinlabeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/truthinlabeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/truthinlabeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/truthinlabeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}