{"id":821,"date":"2020-03-21T15:26:11","date_gmt":"2020-03-21T15:26:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.truthinlabeling.org\/blog\/?p=821"},"modified":"2020-05-23T15:36:42","modified_gmt":"2020-05-23T15:36:42","slug":"scientists-have-known-msg-is-toxic-for-decades-why-doesnt-media-spokesperson-toby-amidor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/truthinlabeling.org\/blog\/2020\/03\/21\/scientists-have-known-msg-is-toxic-for-decades-why-doesnt-media-spokesperson-toby-amidor\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists have known MSG is toxic for decades. Why doesn\u2019t \u2018media spokesperson\u2019 Toby Amidor?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Today I came across a 2018 article in the U.S.News & World Report<\/em> health section titled \u201cScientists Have Known MSG Is Safe for Decades. Why Don\u2019t Most Americans?\u201d by Toby Amidor. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toby Amidor, according to U.S News<\/em>, has a string of credentials five lines long including Adjunct Professor at Teachers College, Columbia University and Hunter School of Urban Public Health, where she teaches food service management. The magazine advises us to follow her \u201ccutting edge nutrition information\u201d at various online outlets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In her U.S. News<\/em> article, Toby Amidor first tells the reader that MSG\u2019s bad reputation isn\u2019t deserved. She then proceeds to spew out the glutamate-industry propaganda we have seen over and over again in the last two years as part of Ajinomoto\u2019s multi-million-dollar campaign trying to prove that MSG got a bad rap and is safe for everyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The best of Ajinomoto\u2019s sound bites are all in this piece, such as MSG is \u201cnaturally present in many everyday foods like tomatoes\u2026\u201d (ignoring the fact that MSG is manufactured, not grown in foods such as tomatoes and mushrooms).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And she learned what she knows about MSG from THE experts at a conference sponsored by Ajinomoto. According to Toby Amidor, this negative impression of MSG started with a letter that appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine<\/em> in 1968 that the editors titled Chinese Restaurant Syndrome. I guess they didn\u2019t mention at that conference that right around the same time studies had shown that MSG causes brain damage when fed to infant mice. And that there were U.S. Senate hearings calling for removal of MSG from baby food \u2013 which industry promised to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In her article, Toby Amidor didn\u2019t skip a beat. There\u2019s the line \u201c\u2026when they injected extremely high doses of MSG directly into newborn mice\u2019s abdomens, the mice were likely to develop health issues including obesity, stunted physical development and disturbances in brain development.\u201d (Toby Amidor referred to it as \u201cbrain development\u201d instead of what it really was — brain damage. And she left out infertility.) Ignored were the many MSG feeding studies that produced brain damage, obesity, learning and behavior deficits along with reproductive disorders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The article claims that in the 1990s American scientists started questioning the validity of Chinese restaurant syndrome. Note, however, that if you actually look up the articles, those scientists were all supported, directly or indirectly by Ajinomoto, or one of their agents, such as the International Food Information Council (IFIC).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And finally, there are the so-called \u201cindependent studies\u201d done by glutamate industry researchers who used placebos that caused reactions identical to those caused by MSG. Placebos that contained the excitotoxic aspartic acid found in aspartame. And the not so surprising results? \u201c\u2026those who had been given MSG didn\u2019t experience any more \u2018Chinese restaurant syndromes\u2019 than those who\u2019d taken the placebo.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe more a-fib, nausea and vomiting, asthma, or seizures, but those aren\u2019t included in Chinese restaurant syndrome, And, guess what? Toby Amidor didn\u2019t bother to mention those reactions either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But this is all business as usual for Toby Amidor. Her list of published articles spreading the glutes\u2019 catchphrases is quite lengthy, as is the list of her clients and corporate sponsors. She even advertises services such as \u201ccorporate and social media messaging,\u201d saying that she \u201cteams up with food companies and organizations as their media spokesperson.\u201d One client listed is Ketchum Public Relations, a huge PR firm headquartered in NYC. And on a Ketchum client list you\u2019ll find mega-MSG producer Ajinomoto.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that is certainly no surprise. Especially when one can rattle off the glutamate party line as glibly as Toby Amidor can. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you have questions or comments, we\u2019d love to hear from you. If you have hints for others on how to avoid exposure to MfG, send them along, too, and we\u2019ll put them up on <\/em>Facebook<\/em><\/a>. Or you can reach us at questionsaboutmsg@gmail.com and follow us on <\/em>Twitter @truthlabeling<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Today I came across a 2018 article in the U.S.News & World Report health section titled \u201cScientists Have Known MSG Is Safe for Decades. Why Don\u2019t Most Americans?\u201d by Toby Amidor. Toby Amidor, according to U.S News, has a string of credentials five lines long including Adjunct Professor at Teachers College, Columbia University and Hunter … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Scientists have known MSG is toxic for decades. Why doesn\u2019t \u2018media spokesperson\u2019 Toby Amidor?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":822,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[8,25,4,41,190,24],"class_list":["post-821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ajinomoto","tag-monosodiumglutamate","tag-msg","tag-propaganda","tag-tobyamidor","tag-truthinlabelingcampaign"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/truthinlabeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821","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=821"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/truthinlabeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":900,"href":"http:\/\/truthinlabeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821\/revisions\/900"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/truthinlabeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/truthinlabeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/truthinlabeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/truthinlabeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}