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Consumers appear to be losing their appetites for fake meats and other ‘alternative’ proteins made with brain-damaging amino acids

Here at the Truth in Labeling Campaign we’ve posted quite a bit about fake meat products that contain brain-damaging amino acids. These plant-based, so-called alternative proteins aren’t made from plants but in plants.

Not long ago, products such as Beyond Meat, the Impossible Burger and others appeared to be unstoppable. They managed to infiltrate supermarkets, restaurants such as Burger King and Dunkin’ Donuts and even more elegant sit-down establishments.

Now, however, something is happening to the fake food industry – a great many consumers just aren’t buying these “substitute” foods (as the FDA calls them) anymore. U.S. sales of the Beyond brand (makers of Beyond Meat and the Beyond Burger) recently took a deep dive. Other manufacturers in the pretend food business are seeing their profits sink as well. One CEO of a Canadian company said the “category performance” of plant-based products “has basically flatlined.”

Could it be that people are becoming aware that fake fish, mock meat and counterfeit chicken are nothing more than highly processed promotors of obesity, infertility and migraines? Have consumers figured out that they contain large amounts of manufactured free glutamate (MfG) — the same toxic ingredient found in monosodium glutamate? In other words, are folks catching on to this con?

We believe so.

While it’s no shock that a cattleman wouldn’t support bogus burgers, the comments one made about these ersatz meat products is a bit surprising (perhaps he reads the TLC blog!).

Robert McKnight, Jr., president of the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association, said in a trade publication article that medical professionals are concerned about plant-based “meats” as they contain “dozens of highly processed, laboratory-invented ingredients.”

You’ll find an assortment of those “laboratory-invented ingredients” in most all of these products. For example, take a look at four of the top ingredients in Beyond Beef, all that contain MfG:

  • Pea protein
  • Rice protein
  • Natural flavors
  • Dried yeast

The Impossible Burger does even better, with 6 MfG-containing ingredients:

  • Soy-protein concentrate
  • Natural flavors
  • Potato protein
  • Yeast extract
  • Food starch, modified, and
  • Soy-protein isolate

Now, there’s even “fish-free” tuna on the market. Good Catch brand is a catch of 7 brain damaging MfG ingredients:

  • Pea protein isolate
  • Soy protein concentrate
  • Faba protein
  • Lentil protein
  • Soy protein isolate
  • Citric acid, and
  • Yeast extract

Despite all the clever marketing and hoopla over these foods, a recent survey found that nearly half of the consumers questioned want “more information” about plant-based foods before trying them, and over 43 percent want “complete transparency of ingredients.”

But based on the ingredients already on the labels, we’ve seen enough to say that they are nothing more than well-packaged chemical concoctions.  

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Were those beautiful raspberries fertilized with MSG?

Last week we told you about a product called AuxiGro, a plant yield enhancer that contains MSG’s toxic component MfG (manufactured free glutamate). According to a label found on the Internet, AuxiGro WP (wettable powder) contains 29.2 percent L-glutamic acid. 

The Truth in Labeling Campaign first learned of AuxiGro in the late 1990’s and tracked its approval in the U.S. as it made formal objections to federal and state authorities, including the California Department of Pesticide Regulations.

Emerald BioAgriculture, which manufactured AuxiGro for the U.S. market, told us this past summer that they “exited the AuxiGro business” starting in 2005, with final sales of the product in 2007. “It is no longer available,” they said.

Or is it?

We recently came across this video (posted below) from 2014, a testimonial for using AuxiGro on raspberries from Mexico. You don’t need to speak Spanish to get the drift of it – big, beautiful berries, all due to AuxiGro.

While it’s hard enough to determine what pesticides and fertilizers have been used on U.S. grown produce, it’s practically impossible to uncover what has been applied to imports. We have noticed, however, that the imported berries in the supermarket are exceptionally large this year. Is that due to AuxiGro? We’ll probably never know, but where fruits and vegetables are concerned, bigger isn’t always better.

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Be sure to check out a bonus secret posted at Saturday’s Secrets here!

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Traces of 450 Pesticides Found in Popular Fruits and Vegetables. And they didn’t even check for the ones grown with MSG.

The Ajinomoto MSG production facility in Eddyville, Iowa

According to an October 15th article in Newsweek, analysis conducted by Consumer Reports on five years of data collected by the Department of Agriculture uncovered traces of more than 450 different pesticides in fruits and vegetables. Some of the residues exceeded what CR considers a “potentially harmful threshold.”

Why, you might ask, would someone who publishes a blog focused on the hazards of Manufactured free Glutamic acid (MfG) in food suddenly be talking about the hazards of pesticides? Unless, of course, some pesticides contain MfG.

Enter a product called AuxiGro. In 1998, Auxein Corporation had applied and was granted permission to spray unregulated amounts of monosodium glutamate combined with MfG from other sources on agricultural products. 

The free glutamate components of MSG and every other flavor-enhancer and protein substitute are excitotoxic – brain damaging — amino acids, known to cause migraine headache, fibromyalgia, asthma, heart irregularities, seizures and more.

We learned of AuxiGro in a curious way. In the late 1990s, an MSG-sensitive friend reported that after eating potatoes (in addition to her otherwise standard diet) she’d had an MSG reaction. Another friend independently told the same story, but his story was about lettuce. What did husband Jack and I believe?  Our friends had gone off the deep end, that’s what we believed.  Maybe too much MSG had gotten to them.

Then came the information that MSG was being sprayed on crops.  Two of the crops that had been used in field tests and then brought to market (prior to approval) were lettuce and potatoes.  This told us that monosodium glutamate sprayed on crops could cause adverse reactions in MSG-sensitive people who ate those crops. 

Not long after AuxiGro was approved for use, Auxein Corporation applied to the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) for organic certification.  The independently owned and operated Organic Materials Review Institute (OMRI) was in charge of the approval process.  When Jack made his presentation to the NOSB, the OMRI report recommending approval was already in the hands of NOSB board members.  Based on Jack’s presentation which included demonstration of the fact that AuxiGro was a synthetic product, the board denied approval of AuxiGro and L-glutamic acid for use in organic foods.

When the NOSB rejected the application, we assumed that OMRI would cancel its relationship with AuxiGro.  We found, however, that OMRI merely tabled the issue, suggesting to us that they would try again sometime in the future to have AuxiGro approved for use as an organic fertilizer.

During the course of various discussions, we learned that OMRI charged a fee to any company submitting a product for its review prior to receiving an OMRI recommendation to have the product added to the NOSB list of approved organic products.  We also learned that if a product was approved, the producing company would pay OMRI an annual fee as long as the product remained approved.  If there was no NOSB approval, there would be no annual fees paid to OMRI.   Conflict of interest?

AuxiGro came to our attention because it contains MSG.  And although to the best of our knowledge that product is no longer sold and used in the U.S., there are a myriad of fertilizers, pesticides, and plant growth enhancers that contain excitotoxic MfG just as MSG does.  There will be no information about these toxic chemicals on ingredient labels – or anywhere else on a product label for that matter.  But the fruits, grains and vegetables treated with these chemicals will have absorbed them, and will pass them on to the people who consume them.

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The MSG migraine connection

Despite the glutamate industry’s widely disseminated marketing material, practically every headache clinic in the U.S. lists MSG as a migraine trigger.  FDA records even list migraines as the single most common reaction to both MSG and the low-cal sweetener aspartame (both of which contain excitotoxic amino acids.)

In addition, the Truth in Labeling Campaign has received untold numbers of reports over the years from those who were able to prevent the intense suffering of a migraine by eliminating sources of manufactured free glutamate (MfG) – which includes MSG and dozens of other additives.

You would think the new and exciting findings out of the University of Utah would put the “MSG doesn’t cause migraines myth” away for good. The study, published in the journal Neuron this past February, found that migraines appear to be triggered by “massive ‘plumes’ of glutamate,” described by the researchers as filling the “area between brain cells” and sparking “tsunami-like waves of activity that spread across the brain in migraine and other nervous system disorders.”

Researcher K.C. Brennan, M.D., who participated in the study, calls glutamate plumes “a completely new mechanism of migraine, and it’s a good bet that they are players in other diseases of the nervous system.”

While glutamate plumes may be “something new under the sun,” if you are a frequent blog-reader of the Truth in Labeling Campaign, the fact that MfG is a causative factor in a slew of neurological and non-neurological abnormalities, not just migraines, won’t be a new concept. And the fact that this new study doesn’t turn up top-of-the-list for searches on “migraines” is both bad news for the many millions who suffer from what the World Health Organization calls one of the “10 most disabling medical illnesses” one can have, and testimony to the clout of the glutamate industry to keep anything negative about MSG from appearing in major media.

You can read MSG linked to migraines? Chemical used in processed food could trigger brutal headaches at: https://www.studyfinds.org/msg-migraines-processed-food/ And as you read, do note that even while describing in detail how devastating these glutamate plumes can be, the article’s author appears to have felt compelled to promote the “no definite link” between MSG and “poor health” concept the Glutes so often manage to get into print.

As always, the Truth in Labeling Campaign has questions.

What would it take to recognize a definite link between MSG and poor health? Would the manufacturer of MSG have to admit that MSG causes reactions such as migraine headache along with brain damage — and that the FDA has been representing glutamate-industry interests since 1968, if not before?

There are seven lines of evidence leading to the conclusion that manufactured free glutamate, no matter where it is found, is excitotoxic. See https://bit.ly/3vkZ6Cl or if you like graphics with your information, https://7lines.org. Take special note of the details of industry’s programs for rigging studies: https://www.truthinlabeling.org/assets/seven_lines/Seven_Lines_Lines3.pdf and: https://www.truthinlabeling.org/assets/seven_lines/Seven_Lines_Line6.pdf.

You might also be interested in details of the role played by the FDA https://www.truthinlabeling.org/assets/industrys_fda_final.pdf.

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Food for Thought

Who has more clout with the FDA?  Is it Big Food or Big Pharma?

The FDA requires this statement to appear on all direct-to-consumer drug advertising:

You are encouraged to report negative side effects of prescription drugs to the FDA. Visit www.fda.gov/medwatch, or call 1-800-FDA-1088.

But you won’t find a phone number dedicated to taking reports of negative side effects of food.

In the mid 1990s, when there was consumer pressure (and a lawsuit) on the FDA to identify and label MSG and its toxic manufactured free glutamate (MfG), one could report reactions to the FDA’s Adverse Reactions Monitoring System (ARMS) if you could figure out a way to reach them. But ARMS was eventually shut down, not because it was no longer receiving reports, but because “They” knew that MSG and MfG and aspartame and sulfites were harmless.

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A new twist to glutamate-industry disinformation

“MSG has an image problem.”

That was the first sentence in the latest online propaganda received by the Truth in Labeling Campaign today. 

“An estimated 42% of us are trying to limit or avoid MSG entirely, according to the International Food Information Council,” as reported by Karen Ansel in the TODAY article appearing at msn health — Is MSG bad for your health? The Surprising truth.   

Is that an admission or what?  Especially coming from the IFIC, an industry front group that’s been representing Ajinomoto, MSG’s U.S. manufacturer, for years. (It was the IFIC that orchestrated the damage control plan for Ajinomoto when concerned about the 60 Minutes program on MSG in 1991.) *

Then Ansel goes on to ask, “Is MSG really as problematic as we’ve been led to believe, or is it time to give it a second look?”  And the answer, of course, is that it’s time to give MSG a second look.

From that point forward, the piece reads like much of the glutamate-industry propaganda we’ve seen over the years. As would be anticipated, there’s growing reference to MSG as a salt substitute, ignoring, as always, the downside of substituting excitotoxic amino acids for sodium. But there’s also a hint that authors for glutamate-industry propaganda are getting hard to come by, as evidenced by Ansel giving her article over to Toby Amidor, quoting generously from Amidor who has been representing Ajinomoto for years.

The article concludes by saying: “In the end, if you’re one of those people who is MSG sensitive, it makes sense to avoid it. For everyone else, there’s no need to stress about it.” 

Are you serious? No need to stress if you don’t get something you notice like a-fib or headache after consuming MSG?  Think about the fact that you won’t be able to notice the brain damage that occurs if you accumulate more glutamate than your body requires.

Resources

Toby Amidor:
http://truthinlabeling.org/blog/2020/03/21/scientists-have-known-msg-is-toxic-for-decades-why-doesnt-media-spokesperson-toby-amidor/

Excitotoxins: 
https://www.truthinlabeling.org/assets/seven_lines/Seven_Lines_Line1.pdf

“It Wasn’t Alzheimer’s.  It Was MSG.”  Page 34.    https://www.truthinlabeling.org/assets/it_wasnt_az.pdf

PROPAGANDA 101: The 8 ingredients in cutting edge propaganda:
http://truthinlabeling.org/blog/2019/05/01/propaganda-101-the-8-ingredients-in-cutting-edge-propaganda/  Featuring Stefan Chin’s YouTube presentation

Six Big Fat Lies:
https://www.truthinlabeling.org/lies.html

Seven Lines of Evidence leading to the conclusion that manufactured free glutamate, no matter where it is found, is excitotoxic:
https://bit.ly/3vkZ6Cl    and    https://7lines.org

* 60 Minutes:

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Grocery cartels: Gobbling up food dollars at the ‘expense of farmers, food chain workers and eaters’

When the non-profit Oxfam created a graphic several years ago showing how just 10 companies* control practically everything you’ll find in the supermarket — from pet and baby food to soup to nuts — it was an eye-opening look into the world of Big Food.

Now, Food & Water Watch has gone a step further. Its new report The Grocery Cartels explains how the Covid-19 pandemic became a profit-maker for mega food retailers, helping dish out the final death blow to smaller grocers.

While operations such as Walmart and Costco appear to offer convenience and lower prices, the pandemic “pulled back the curtain on the idea that the current food system offers abundance, efficiency, and resilience.”

Despite the myth of a competitive marketplace, or the “illusion of choice,” the current food retail system we have now, says Food & Water Watch, “is functioning as it was designed: to funnel wealth from local communities into the hands of corporate shareholders and executives.” 

For example, Food & Water Watch found that in 2019, four companies, Walmart, Kroger, Costco and Albertson’s, were taking in an estimated two-thirds of all grocery sales. When the pandemic took over in 2020, major supermarket chains saw “double-digit growth and surging stock values.” Walmart, in fact, takes in $1 out of every $3 spent at a food retailer.

Despite Walmart’s “Save money. Live better” slogan, Food & Water Watch reveals that the mega store is well-known to up its food prices once “it becomes the dominate grocery retailer in town.”

As Food & Water Watch points out, “market power enables intermediaries like retailers and processors to capture an ever-growing share of food dollars, at the expense of farmers, food chain workers and eaters.”

And while we’re encouraged to “shop small” at independently owned retailers this holiday season, it seems our options where food is concerned, both brand-wise and where it’s purchased, are becoming smaller and smaller.

Read the Food & Water Watch full report here: https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/IB_2111_FoodMonoSeries1-SUPERMARKETS.pdf

*The Big Ten food companies: Nestle, Coca-Cola, Unilever, Danone, Mars, Mondelez, Associated British Foods, Kellogg’s, General Mills and Pepsico.

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They’re having trouble keeping up with the Truth in Labeling Campaign

From the time they began revving up their propaganda until Kate Bratskeir’s article appeared in GoodRx (June 23, 2021), the Glutes had proclaimed that the glutamate in MSG was identical to the glutamate in plants, animals, and the human body. It’s one of their favorite things to say.

But now we find that the story has changed.  Indeed, Kate Bratskeir informed us that “The glutamate in MSG is chemically different from glutamate present in food proteins.”  And that, she said was “according to the FDA.”

This reminds me of the Glutes’ mantra about MSG having been safely used in food for over 2,000 years.  That changed shortly after The Truth in Labeling Campaign began pointing out, repeatedly, that MSG was invented in 1908.  Looks like now someone in one of Ajinomoto’s public relations firms read ‘Seven lines of evidence leading to the conclusion that manufactured free glutamate, no matter where it is found, is excitotoxic,’ or read one of Adrienne Samuels’ Citizen Petitions providing data to support the request that the GRAS (generally recognized as safe) status of monosodium glutamate be revoked.

You may not be paying a great deal of attention to the warnings of the Truth in Labeling Campaign but the Glutes certainly are.  They seem to be extremely careful about being caught in a lie.  And while one way to avoid that is to cautiously not respond to allegations (just like they never responded when it was pointed out that the placebos used in their double-blind studies cause reactions identical to those caused by MSG), a second way is to change out the lie they’ve been telling for a lie less likely to be discovered.

In this case, the Glutes have moved their emphasis from “the glutamate in MSG is identical to the glutamate in plants, animals, and the human body,” to “Our bodies metabolize both [the glutamate in MSG and the glutamate present in food proteins] in the same way.”

Why bother?  What’s the big deal?  The big deal is that while the Glutes have insisted that the two glutamates are identical, Adrienne Samuels has explained how the two forms of glutamate differ.  And rather than take the chance that some media source slips out from behind the veil of silence that the Glutes have had in place since the 1991 60 Minutes program on MSG, and actually broadcasts the truth about the toxicity of MSG, they’ll change out one lie for another one that won’t be as easily invalidated.

The fallback to the metabolism of glutamate is a no-brainer, for there’s no research on the subject.  Certainly there are studies of the metabolism of glutamic acid (on November 28, 2021, 8,223 such studies were cited on pubmed.gov).  But there’s been no study of the metabolism of MSG. While “metabolism” of MSG has been mentioned many times, often by Glutes saying that the metabolism of the glutamate in MSG and the metabolism of glutamate from plant and animal proteins do not differ, there has been no study of the metabolism of MSG.

Another way to avoid being caught in a lie about the safety of MSG would be to simply stop lying about the safety of MSG.

Resources

Seven lines of evidence leading to the conclusion that manufactured free glutamate, no matter where it is found, is excitotoxic. https://7lines.org and https://bit.ly/3vkZ6Cl

Citizen Petition #1

https://www.regulations.gov/document?D=FDA-2021-P-0035-0001


Citizen Petition #2

https://www.regulations.gov/document/FDA-2021-P-0267-0001

Citizen Petition #3

https://www.regulations.gov/document/FDA-2021-P-0301-0001