I wonder if it’s a conspiracy that’s behind keeping the truth about the obesity epidemic from the public, or if it’s just one immensely powerful person pulling the strings. There has always been propaganda by the boatload, even carried in distinguished publications such as the New York Times and Washington Post. Sometimes as an advertisement. Sometimes dressed up as news. But ever present.
From the time that neuroscientist Dr. John W. Olney discovered that free glutamic acid (a.k.a. glutamate) given to animals killed brain cells in the part of the brain responsible for controlling weight, one rich and powerful manufacturer of glutamate (also the manufacturer of monosodium glutamate – MSG), set out to convince the American public that MSG is a harmless food additive.
The campaign began by pretending to replicate Olney’s studies. That didn’t work out, because they were quickly exposed for what they were, and by 1980 researchers were using MSG to kill neurons and produce obesity in experimental animals to facilitate their research on a whole variety of abnormalities, all with ties to glutamate.
Then, as people began to realize that ingestion of MSG was followed by adverse reactions ranging from simple skin rash to asthma, migraine headache, tachycardia, atrial fibrillation, anaphylaxis and seizures, the Glutes turned to producing double-blind studies that failed to find more reactions to MSG than reactions to a placebo, claiming they now had what amounted to proof that MSG is harmless. But since the placebos all contained excitotoxic amino acids that cause reactions identical to the reactions caused by MSG, they only demonstrated that they were not above doing something that might qualify as scientific fraud.
Now the idea of conspiracy has come back to haunt me. You see, I’ve uncovered the fact that the root of the obesity epidemic lies in damage done to the vulnerable brains of unborn children. I studied the 1970s studies done by Olney and others, thinking that if obesity could be caused by feeding glutamate to infant animals, it could be caused by feeding glutamate to infant humans – or even more effectively to fetuses.
These are the facts:
Olney began with infant animals. Newborn humans and fetuses would be comparable.
Olney began with animals whose brains could be damaged by excitotoxic glutamate. Newborn humans and fetuses would be comparable.
Olney fed exceedingly large amount of glutamate to those animals. Since 1957, exceedingly large amounts of free glutamate have been available, accessible and consumed by humans.
In 1957:
1) the method for producing glutamate (found in MSG) was changed to facilitate virtually unlimited production of free glutamate and MSG, and
2) ultra-processed foods — all of which contain flavor-enhancing free glutamate in ingredients such as autolyzed yeast extract, sodium caseinate, maltodextrin, glutamic acid, and hydrolyzed proteins as well as MSG – became readily available, accessible, and increasingly more popular.
It is true that any one ingredient will contain a limited amount of free glutamate. But glutamate in amounts needed to produce brain damage in vulnerable humans is readily available to those who consume a number of processed and ultra-processed foods during the course of a day.
The glutamate delivered to Olney’s neonatal animals was delivered in food fed to them. The glutamate delivered to humans with vulnerable brains is delivered by their pregnant mothers.
Newborn humans could only receive glutamate in mothers’ milk or infant formula. But fetuses are “fed” through the umbilical cord, through the placenta. And if a pregnant woman ingested large quantities of free glutamate, as she might if her diet included processed and ultra-processed food, the excitotoxic free glutamate would cause damage to the brain of her fetus just as it caused damage to the brains of Olney’s animals. And in humans that brain damage would be followed by intractable obesity just as it was in Olney’s animals.
(And isn’t it interesting that the obesity epidemic has hit hardest in low- income areas — locations with limited access to real food, and a dependence on processed and ultra-processed food).
Journal after journal has refused to publish the information that I have just shared with you. The latest was Obesity, the prestigious journal of The Obesity Society. It is common knowledge among the well informed that medical journals are now controlled by Big Pharma. But that hardly qualifies as a “conspiracy.” It’s just the way things are in the world of power and greed.
But when access to my account in LinkedIn disappeared along with all mention of the Safe Food group that I had established, the word “conspiracy” appeared brightly before me and will not go away.
Also finding its way into my consciousness are the assurances that 1) my description of how the obesity epidemic happened is accurate, and 2) that the Glutes have no way to defend against the truth that manufactured free glutamate consumed by pregnant women lies at the root of the obesity epidemic – except to bury that truth – which their assault on my LinkedIn account demonstrates.
Adrienne Samuels