Author: The Truth in Labeling Campaign

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Yeast extract, now with more toxic, brain damaging ‘food flavor enhancement’

Yeast extract might well be called the darling of the processed food industry, and the straw that breaks the camel’s back for MSG-sensitive people. Like MSG it’s manufactured (not “natural”), and also like MSG it contains toxic manufactured free glutamic acid (MfG).

Yeast extract is one of those “clean label” ingredients, often used in products such as soups and fake proteins that state “No added MSG” on the label (which is actually against FDA regulations, but enforcing that rule is no longer bothered with by the FDA). Also qualifying as a “clean label” ingredient would be any ingredient other than MSG that contains MfG. (Check out over 40 ingredient names that contain varying amounts of MfG here.)

Now we’re learning of a recent invention, a method for “large scale” production of a yeast extract product with nearly triple the brain damaging “glutamic acid content” of other yeast extracts. Its patent describes how this new and improved yeast extract “possesses more delicious flavor and improved capability for food flavor enhancement.” Glutamic acid, the patent states, in free form can “strengthen the delicate flavour of food.” We’re being told in this official document that the more MfG an ingredient contains, the more flavor it will impart to any food it’s added to.

The patent was applied for and owned by Angel Yeast Co., which calls itself a “high-tech yeast company in China” with 10 “advanced” manufacturing facilities in China, Egypt and Russia. Angel provides yeast extract to food manufacturers for use in everything from soup to snacks, promising its product provides a “magic flavor explosion.”

It’s a “magic flavor explosion” that comes with brain-damaging — excitotoxic — glutamate.

When consumed in excess (which differs from person to person), free glutamate becomes excitotoxic, with the capacity to overstimulate glutamate receptors in the body, causing them to fire rapidly and die. In simple terms, it causes brain damage.

We know that the new and improved yeast extract will contribute to the accumulation of toxic free glutamate.

What we don’t know is how much it will take to cause an excitotoxic “explosion.”

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Industry’s FDA

MSG is a flavor-enhancing additive used in so many processed foods you probably couldn’t count them all.

No doubt you’ve read that it is perfectly “safe,” only causing transient adverse reactions in a small set of people sensitive to it.

The Truth in Labeling Campaign, independent scientists and journalists (not on the glutamate payroll) will tell you a different story, how MSG and other sources of free glutamate can trigger adverse reactions ranging from simple skin rash to migraine headache, heart irregularities, seizures and anaphylactic shock.

However, no one — even those in the glutamate industry — can say that ingestion of MSG doesn’t cause adverse reactions. Despite that, there is no restriction imposed by the FDA on use of either MSG or its toxic free glutamic acid component in foods or beverages.

But here’s the really interesting part — food scientists and neuroscientists are turning out study after study exploring the “protective effects” of various chemicals, dietary supplements and even foods to shield against monosodium glutamate-induced abnormalities. On January 30, 2022, there were 377 such studies listed by the National Library of Medicine. And all this research is going on while the FDA, along with those who profit from the manufacture and sale of MSG, claim that MSG is totally safe for use in food.

The FDA has been representing the interests of the glutamate industry since 1968 if not before. The Truth in Labeling Campaign has told that story many times. See: https://www.truthinlabeling.org/fda.html and, https://www.truthinlabeling.org/assets/manuscript2.pdf

There are laws that specify just what the FDA must do to proclaim an ingredient GRAS (generally recognized as safe), which is how it lists MSG. And in claiming that monosodium glutamate is GRAS, the FDA violates its own rules.

That little fact was revealed in a citizen petition filed by TLC co-founder Adrienne Samuels in January of 2021, requesting that monosodium glutamate and its toxic component have its GRAS status withdrawn. The FDA has yet to respond.

Adrienne also filed two other petitions related to MSG last year. Check out this page link to learn the details of them all. Even better, click on the link there that says “vote,” and leave your own comment at the FDA docket.

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How glutamate caused (and continues to cause) the obesity epidemic

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

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An open letter to Dr. Anthony G. Comuzzie

This February 28, 2022 letter to Dr. Anthony G. Comuzzie, CEO of the Obesity Society (which publishes the journal Obesity), requesting that he suggest a vehicle for making information about brain damage caused by free glutamate ingested by pregnant women and passed to their fetuses and neonates available to researchers and healthcare practitioners, has not been answered or even acknowledged.   

A copy of the letter is being posted here as an open letter to Dr. Comuzzie, with the hope that someone may forward it to him, and that he will respond.

Anthony G. Comuzzie, PhD, FTOS
contact@obesity.org 

Dear Dr. Comuzzie,

Are you aware that the editors of Obesity have refused to publish studies that demonstrate that the obesity epidemic was set in motion, and is sustained, by brain damage caused by pregnant women passing excitotoxic free glutamate to their offspring?  

Both 1) an overview of the subject submitted as a Perspective, and 2) a Review, demonstrating the role that ingestion of free glutamate ingested by pregnant women plays in the production of intractable obesity have been offered to your journal Obesity, and been refused consideration. 

I find that very strange.  How can papers that suggest and document the fact that a common amino acid used in processed food is responsible for the obesity epidemic not be assigned sufficient priority to allow publication in Obesity? 

It is obvious from texts of rejection letters that the editors of Obesity have no interest in resolving the cause of the obesity epidemic, suggesting new lines of investigation, and providing those who are afflicted with obesity appropriate psychological and medical interventions. 

The first manuscript was submitted as a perspective, a category that limits submissions to 1000 words and 10 references.   As specified by the journal’s instructions, “Perspectives can provide new ideas on an old problem or commentary/opinion of a hot topic.”  Accordingly, the manuscript provided a new idea on an old problem within the limited (10) references allowed, although there are many more references available to support its thesis. Appropriately, given that this was submitted as a perspective, taking seemingly unrelated things and putting them together to generate a new idea as Einstein was in the habit of doing, there was no hypothesis testing or experimental design for new data demonstrating suitable controls, and there were no statistical tests reported.  

In rejecting it, editor Eric Ravussin stated that “there was really nothing novel on the specific role of glutamate as a trigger of obesity in your piece. All the scientific references but one were from more than 20 years ago.” 

I find it hard to comprehend how it could be that the idea of glutamate ingested by pregnant women causing brain damage in fetuses and neonates followed by intractable obesity is not novel.  To suggest that data have a shelf life of 20 years would put Einstein and Galileo out of business. 

The second submission was a request to submit a review to Obesity.  It was rejected in part because it was submitted by a single author, and in part because there was “no systematic evaluation of clinical trials or meta-analysis to evaluate glutamate on obesity risk,” neither of which would necessarily be appropriate for a review.  Moreover, it was rejected because “we also request reviews on hot topics in the field of obesity.”  I can’t think of any hotter topic in the field of obesity than the cause of the obesity epidemic. 

Given that the journal of the Obesity Society will not publish information on the cause of the obesity epidemic, sharing insights that will benefit those who suffer intractable weight gain, would you, please, suggest a vehicle for making information about brain damage caused by free glutamate ingested by pregnant women and passed to their fetuses and neonates available to researchers and healthcare practitioners? 

I look forward to your response.

Sincerely, 
Adrienne Samuels, Ph.D.
Director
Truth in Labeling Campaign
Chicago, Illinois   USA 

truthlabeling@gmail.com

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Questions and answers: What’s causing the obesity epidemic?

What’s causing the obesity epidemic?

They’re called excitotoxins.

These are Jekyll and Hyde amino acids.

On the one hand, they’re absolutely necessary for human
health.

On the other hand, they turn toxic/poisonous when more are
eaten than needed.

What damage do they do?

They damage the brains of vulnerable people.

People who have had head injuries,

People whose brains are not yet mature,

A newborn child,

A child in the womb: a fetus.

How can excitotoxins get to the immature brains of newborns and
fetuses?

Excitotoxins are eaten by pregnant women.

Pregnant women pass what they eat to their unborn offspring
(fetuses) through the umbilical cord and the placenta.

Nursing mothers pass what they eat to their babies through mother’s
milk.

Exactly what damage do these excitotoxins do to the brains of fetuses and newborns that brings about obesity?

They obliterate (wipe out) the neurons (nerve cells) in that part of the
arcuate nucleus of the hypothalamus that would have played a role in
weight control, had they not been destroyed.

And although the empty space left in the brain when the neurons are
destroyed is filled in with other cells, the neurons are not replaced.

What excitotoxins do this?

The one known best from research done in the 1970s is glutamic acid
(a.k.a. glutamate).

Glutamate is essential for normal body function. There has always
been glutamate in food. Why haven’t more people always been
obese?

Until 1957, the glutamate in food (and there is glutamate in
essentially all food) was almost always part of something larger than
itself. It was a part of protein. Scientists who wanted to examine
glutamate had to break the protein apart before they could examine it.
(They speak of glutamate being “bound up” in protein: tied to other
amino acids in long chains. That’s still true.)

Glutamate bound in protein is not excitotoxic. Only glutamate outside
of protein causes brain damage.

In 1957, the U.S. manufacturer of excitotoxic glutamate (for use in
monosodium glutamate) revised its manufacturing process, and from
that point on, virtually unlimited amounts of excitotoxic manufactured
free glutamate (MfG) were produced. After 1957, there was sufficient
MfG in ultra-processed food (at least in the U.S.) to provide the
“excess” amounts of MfG needed to cause brain damage.

Then why didn’t the “obesity epidemic” happen in 1957?

1957 was the year that the new and improved method for fabricating
virtually unlimited amounts of the excitotoxic – brain damaging – MfG
was put into production. But 1960 was the year that increased
obesity began to be noticed. 1960-62 saw the first statistics kept on
numbers of overweight people.

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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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In memory of Jim Turner, attorney, consumer advocate and champion in the fight against chemical sweeteners

A crusader in the war against aspartame, Jim passed away at his home in Washington, DC on January 25. Below is a tribute to Jim published by the Children’s Health Defense Team at its website the Defender.
****************

The Children’s Health Defense team was deeply saddened to learn of the death of attorney James Turner on Jan. 25.

Turner, 81, was a consumer crusader and champion in the fight against chemical sweeteners who began his public advocacy career as one of Ralph Nader’s Raiders.

In 1970, Turner wrote “The Chemical Feast, a best-seller that exposed the food industry’s failure to protect the food supply. His fight to remove cyclamate from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Generally Recognized as Safe list led to the book being removed from the market, but it was republished in 1976 by Penguin Books.

A graduate of The Ohio State University (OSU) on a U.S. Navy scholarship, Turner served in the OSU student senate for three years. He received his law degree from The Ohio State University College of Law (now Moritz College of Law) where he served as Chief Justice of the Moot Court.

Between undergraduate and law school, Turner was a lieutenant on active duty in the U.S. Navy. He graduated with distinction from the Naval Justice School and served as a nuclear weapons handling officer and gunnery officer aboard the U.S.S. Purdy and the U.S.S. Austin.

Turner played a major role in the fight against the artificial sweetener aspartame. He also worked with Dr. John Olney in the late 1960s during the Senate hearings about monosodium glutamate (MSG) in baby foods.

Turner was concerned about Olney’s research proving aspartame caused brain lesions in baby rats and he fought to make sure it would not get approved as an artificial sweetener. He discovered that the aspartic acid in aspartame had similar properties to glutamate — an ingredient in MSG.

Representing a Washington, D.C. public interest group, Consumer Nutrition Institute, Turner and Olney filed formal objections with the FDA and challenged the validity of some of the key aspartame safety tests that the manufacturer, Searle, had submitted to the FDA.

Turner and Olney highlighted evidence that aspartame was causing brain damage, brain tumors, seizures and changes in animal brain chemistry and therefore it may have the potential to affect pregnant women and young children.

Turner and Olney were worried there was no way to control how much NutraSweet (aspartame) children were ingesting. Searle had not tested aspartame on humans and safe dosage data for children was not available. Turner and Olney insisted if children ate too many products containing NutraSweet they could easily cross the threshold that could trigger seizures.

After the Ramazzini Institute studies in Italy demonstrated for the second time that aspartame was a multipotential carcinogen, Turner wrote:

“When I testified before Congress in 1987 … I stated that just because a substance reaches the market it should not be treated as sacrosanct. It must be recognized that over time a substance that we know harms people will continue to harm people… If the standard of food safety is that a substance that only harms some people, but not all people is going to be allowed on the market, then special policies should be adopted to protect those at risk.

“This was never done… victims of aspartame continue to develop neurodegenerative disease, suffer diabetes, drug interactions, obesity, heart disease and loss of vision. Never has the public been warned that it triggers birth defects, a catastrophe the eminent Dr. Louis Elsas warned Congress about.

“In fact the average consumer of aspartame is not aware that the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) says that an acceptable daily intake (ADI) of aspartame is 40 milligrams/kilogram of body weight ­— about the amount in a six-pack of diet soda for a 10-year-old boy. Nor do they now know how to tell if that amount is being exceeded by intake of the more than 5000 food and drug products currently sweetened with aspartame.”

Turner worked fiercely to get aspartame banned — especially after Sen. Gerald Ortiz y Pino wrote a bill to ban it in 2007 with the help of Stephen Fox of Mission Possible NM in Santa Fe.

In a documentary on aspartame, “Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World,” Turner definitively points out that Donald Rumsfeld had total complicity in the forced approval of the toxin.

In 2021, Turner was instrumental in forcing the FDA to release its documents on aspartame.

At the time of his death, Turner had been preparing a lawsuit to get aspartame banned, using the Delaney Clause, incorporated into the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act by the Food Additives Amendment of 1958. The clause requires the FDA to ban food additives found to cause or induce cancer in humans or animals as indicated by testing.

He wrote:

“The only responsible thing to do is ban the sweetener. And if they refuse to ban it then it should carry heavy warnings… To loose upon an entire unwarned continent a chemical that destroys the fetus, triggers mental illness and cancer, and sickens millions without a word of warning is corrupt and depraved. EFSA is responsible to prevent such depredations, not simply protect the greedy pockets of the poison producers.”

Turner’s longtime friend and associate, Dr. Betty Martini, stated:

“I’ve known Jim for decades. Never once has he deterred from his passion to get this toxin removed. He told me the FDA told Dr. Olney and him that they would never allow children to ever get aspartame because it causes birth defects and mental retardation, yet it’s in countless children’s products, and many have perished.”

Martini said she was exhilarated about Turner’s upcoming bombshell suit against the FDA — a gigantic step in finally removing aspartame from the marketplace.

Unfortunately, Turner became ill, robbing him of the chance to complete his last courageous act to free people from the dreadful addictive excitoneurotoxic, carcinogenic drug masquerading as an additive, she said.

Dr. Ralph Walton said of Turner: “The world has lost a powerful, courageous and consistent voice in the decades-long effort to demonstrate the hazards of aspartame.”

We, at the Children’s Health Defense Team, salute a great man who spent decades working to remove deadly toxins like aspartame from the market making the food and drug supply a safer place for the public.

Many more of his accomplishments could be listed but this is what he should most be remembered for.

Watch this podcast in which Turner discussed the horrors of aspartame.

Note from the Truth in Labeling Campaign: Aspartame is what the FDA approves for use in glutamate-industry double blind study placebos, having the nerve to claim that they have demonstrated that MSG is “safe.”

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‘Recycled FDA commissioner’ with Big Pharma ties, returns to head agency. But does it really matter?

Dr. Robert Califf, a prominent cardiologist with extensive clinical research experience and big ties to Big Pharma, who served as FDA commissioner during Obama’s final year in office has once again been appointed top boss at the FDA.

Califf, who was dubbed the “ultimate industry insider” in 2015, hasn’t changed much during the years since he last was tagged to run the FDA. He may have even improved on his Pharma connections.

The consumer group Public Citizen notes that after Califf left the FDA in 2017 he “revived his lucrative ties with FDA-regulated pharmaceutical companies, receiving consulting fees totaling tens of thousands of dollars…”

The group called for the Senate to reject “Biden’s recycled FDA commissioner pick.”

But they didn’t. Despite being close, 50 YEAs to 46 NAYs, Califf’s nomination was confirmed. But in the scheme of how things work at the FDA, does the name of the FDA head really matter?

Big Food and Big Pharma run the show at the FDA, with agents in place at every level saving the commissioner from making hard decisions – such as how to continue to claim that toxic MSG and its toxic manufactured free glutamate (MfG) are harmless. 

But thinking on the bright side, maybe the Senate confirmation hearings could be made to serve a different purpose. Perhaps someone could get those 46 Senators who voted against Califf to have the use of toxic glyphosate (Roundup) banned – or even just limited. Or, maybe they could order an investigation as to why the FDA continues to serve the glutamate industry and not have MfG banned from use in processed foods – or at least labeled.  Now that would really be something.

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Biden’s cancer ‘moonshot’ tiptoes around damaging the bottom line of those who peddle carcinogens for profit

They have it all tied up in a neat little bundle. 

A recent article in The Hill, “Biden looks to jumpstart cancer moonshot,” brought the evil of overlooking prevention home to me with a bang.

This proposed plan to “end cancer as we know it” focuses on earlier diagnosis by increased access to screenings, wider data sharing regarding effective treatments, and for those who missed cancer screenings due to Covid-19 disruptions, Biden issued an “official call to action,” to go get screened now.

So, what’s missing?

Nowhere is there a mention of reducing air pollution, of removing toxic chemicals in agricultural products, or of banning toxic food additives from use in food.

Big Food, Big Pharma, and Big Ag continue to bring in billions in profits, while raping the public. Health care initiatives, including those issued by the government, are all about Big Pharma selling drugs to combat the poisons added by Big Food (like MSG) and Big Agriculture (like glyphosate).  Never broached is the subject of prevention.

Take glyphosate (Roundup) as one example. Despite being a known carcinogen glyphosate remains the most widely used herbicide in the U.S., applied to 90 percent of crops such as corn and soy. How many cancers might have been prevented had this one chemical been restricted?  

The real longshot here is that Biden, along with any of our so-called health regulators, will ever propose measures that threaten the profits of big business.