When a popular grocery chain says they’re offering an entire line of products that contain no monosodium glutamate (MSG), if you’re serious about searching out quality food, you have to sit up and take notice.
Trader Joes offers what they call Joe’s Brand, a line of private label products with
- NO artificial flavors
- NO artificial preservatives
- NO MSG
- NO genetically modified ingredients
- NO partially hydrogenated oils (artificial trans-fats)
- And colors derived only from naturally available products
“Great quality fare for exceptional everyday prices,” is how these products are marketed. So, we thought we’d check out how they deal with MSG.
“No artificial flavors” is easy, it means the product will contain no artificial flavors. But MSG poses a problem because when Trader Joe’s advertises “NO MSG” the average shopper will think that means the food won’t cause MSG-type reactions. And that simply is not true. That isn’t true because there are more than 60 ingredients besides the one named MSG that contain the one component of MSG – free glutamate — that actually causes what we call MSG-reactions. And those ingredients all have different names https://www.truthinlabeling.org/names.html
Casual conversation with shoppers, has made us aware that the NO MSG claim has given a false sense of security to health-conscious people who want to avoid MSG but do not yet understand that the toxic component of MSG (the manufactured free glutamate) will be found in 60+ ingredients in addition to the one named MSG.
From a purely business standpoint, it may be for good reason that Trader Joe’s includes MSG in its list of banned ingredients in its private-label products. For health-conscious people, failure to ignore the toxic effects of MSG would surely ruin Trader Joe’s health-conscious image. But they’re not concerned enough to share a list of ingredients that contain excitotoxic free glutamate (http://truthinlabeling.org/blog/2023/05/18/names-of-ingredients-that-contain-free-glutamate/) with their readers. (It has been offered.)
Note that all of the ingredients Trader Joe’s bans from its branded products are FDA approved. That doesn’t say much for the FDA now does it?