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Do they really think they can keep the FDA from removing the GRAS (generally recognized as safe) status from MSG and the other products that contain excitotoxic free glutamic acid?

As I mentioned in last week’s blog, on March 18 of this year, I submitted a Citizen Petition to the FDA requesting that the FDA Commissioner remove misleading and incorrect information presently displayed on the FDA website in a post titled “Questions and Answers on Monosodium Glutamate” (Q&A), and replace it with accurate information about monosodium glutamate (MSG) toxicity, which I supplied. 

On August 16, 2021, The Glutamate Association (TGA) and the International Hydrolyzed Protein Council (IHPC) submitted comments to Citizen Petition Docket No FDA-2021-P-0301, challenging my Petition.  They maintain that the Q&A accurately reflects the data and information on MSG, and that my proposed changes should be rejected.

Completely unrelated to the filing of my Citizen Petition, Kumar et al. published results of a study that looked at the relationship of dietary glutamic acid to obesity and depressive symptoms in patients with schizophrenia, and on October 24, 2021, Kahn, Sievenpiper, and Fernstrom (a long-time resource proficient in creating and spreading glutamate-industry disinformation) published a response – a criticism — of  the Kumar study. 

In analyzing that response, I found it to be generally characteristic of glutamate-industry propaganda, even inventing and using words and phrases that were not used in the Kumar et al. article, and then criticizing their own untruthful creative writing for containing statements that were untrue.

For those of you interested in things like fake news and scientific fraud, I have reproduced my response below, sent to the journal that published the Kahn, Sievenpiper, and Fernstrom piece, and included a question about how the journal allowed a critique, with no presentation of evidence/data, written by persons with conflicts of interest, to be published.

Adrienne Samuels

Samuels analysis of: Commentary: Dietary Glutamic Acid, Obesity, and Depressive Symptoms in Patients With Schizophrenia

Introduction

Kahn et al. (1) have criticized the article written by Kumar et al.(2), (The Article), attributing to it content that it did not have, stating as fact information that is not true, and criticizing information that is not relevant to the message of The Article.

Fabrications of content that The Article did not contain

Fabrication: “Their interpretation of the findings in non-obese individuals seems to be that ingesting dietary protein, which contains glutamate, raises blood glutamate concentrations sufficiently to cause an increase in glutamate penetration into brain, where it acts on neuronal glutamate receptors to cause depression.” [Emphasis added]

Fact: The phrase “raises blood glutamate,” the word “blood,” and the word “penetration” appear nowhere in The Article.

Fabrication: “The authors infer in their introduction that ingesting glutamate can lead directly to increases in brain glutamate levels and adversely modify brain functions via its neurotransmitter role.” 

Fact: Kumar et al. state that “Data shows that over activation of the NDMA receptors by glutamate can be neurotoxic and result in cell death (5).”

Falsehoods

Falsehoods are woven into the text of the Khan et al. criticism as misleading statements, untenable suppositions, and distortions of fact.

Misleading statements

Statement: “The authors conclusions are based on a linear regression analysis…”

Fact: The authors conclusions are based only in part on a linear regression analysis.

Untenable suppositions

“In Table 1 of their paper, the BDI data appear to be non-normally distributed…”

“Furthermore, it is possible that…”

“A non-linear or threshold analysis may show interesting…”

“We believe that the conclusions based upon a linearity assumption in this paper are spurious. If the authors were to run the analysis with appropriate transformation or explore non-linear or threshold analysis using appropriate methods (6), then we surmise that…”

“A more likely path through which dietary glutamate could influence the brain is via its interaction in the alimentary canal with glutamate receptors that occur in the mouth, stomach and intestines.

Distortions of fact / misleading statements 

Distortion: “Such increases in plasma glutamate are insufficient to push glutamate into brain, owing to…”  

Fact: plasma glutamate has never been shown to be relevant to glutamate induced brain damage.

Distortion: ‘These cells are joined by tight junctions, and form the “blood-brain barrier” (BBB)… that prevent glutamate passage from blood into brain (16).”

Fact: I know of only one author (reference 16) who alleges to demonstrate that the blood brain barrier (BBB) prevents glutamate passage from blood into brain, while there are studies that report BBB permeability. The five studies identified here are examples. (3-7).

Distortion: “humans do not willingly consume such large amounts of pure MSG, because it tastes unpleasant (26),” 

Fact: It is the free glutamate in MSG that is excitotoxic, and while the amount of free glutamate in any one ingredient may not be sufficient to cause adverse reactions or brain damage, since the 1957 change in method of MSG production, there are so many products that contain excitotoxins that it is easy for a consumer to ingest an excess of excitotoxic material during the course of a day (8-12).

When glutamic acid accumulates in quantities greater than needed for normal body function, glutamic acid becomes excitotoxic with glutamate neurotransmitter firing repeatedly at glutamate receptors until the cells associated with those glutamate receptors die. 

Brain damage done by excitotoxic glutamate to the fetus and neonate, passed to the fetus across the placenta and to newborns though mothers’ milk, causes obesity and behavior disorders, and reproductive dysfunction during maturity.  MSG (which contains free glutamate) can cross the placenta during pregnancy (13-15), cross the blood brain barrier (BBB) in an unregulated manner during development(16), and pass through the five circumventricular organs which are leaky at best at any stage of life (17-18). At one time it would have been meaningful to note that the excitotoxic material in a particular ingredient would not be sufficient to cause brain damage or adverse reactions.  But since the 1957 change in method of MSG production, there are so many products that contain excitotoxins that it is easy to ingest an excess of excitotoxic material during the course of a day (8-12). 

Information irrelevant to the subject of The Article

1) “Each antipsychotic (and antidepressant) should have been identified.… smoking should have been included as a factor in this study.”

2) The topics cited by Kahn et al. in their criticism of The Article (glutamate metabolism, the contribution of free glutamate to metabolism of glutamate, and plasma glutamate levels) as being misunderstood by Kumar et al. are topics without evidence/data relating them to glutamate-induced brain damage. None are relevant to the subject of The Article.

(Studies alleging these subjects are relevant to glutamate safety have always been sponsored by the glutamate industry.)

3) Information about taste, glutamate binding, and a distinction between protein ingestion and MSG ingestion are irrelevant to The Article.

Conflicts of interest of the critics

Sievenpiper admits working for a large segment of the processed food industry as well as the International Life Science Institute (ILSI), the International Food Information Council (IFIC), and the International Glutamate Technical Committee (IGTC), three representatives of the U.S. manufacturer of MSG.

In the face of a 1991 60 Minutes program on monosodium glutamate, the IFIC ran damage control for MSG manufacturer Ajinomoto.  Prior to being exposed for inappropriate conduct, the IGTC‘s chairman designed and implemented double-blind studies claiming there was no evidence that MSG is toxic.  Their “fail-safe” tactic was to use excitotoxic aspartic acid in placebos.  Aspartic acid is an amino acid known to cause adverse reactions identical to those caused by the glutamate in MSG.

Fernstrom has represented the interests of the glutamate industry for more than four decades. And given the extremes to which he has gone to reinvent the article being criticized, this work gives every appearance of suffering from conflicts of interest.

Summary and conclusions

The article, Commentary: Dietary Glutamic Acid, Obesity, and Depressive Symptoms in Patients With Schizophrenia by Khan, Sievenpiper and Fernstrom is nothing but an exercise in disinformation.

References

1. Kahn TA, Sievenpiper JL, Fernstrom JD.  Commentary: Dietary Glutamic Acid, Obesity, and Depressive Symptoms in Patients With Schizophrenia. Front Psychiatry. (2021) 14 October 2021 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.725786

2. Kumar P, Kraal AZ, Prawdzik AM, Ringold AE, Ellingrod V. Dietary Glutamic Acid, Obesity, and Depressive Symptoms in Patients With Schizophrenia. Front Psychiatry. (2021) Jan 21;11:620097. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2020.620097. PMID: 33551881; PMCID: PMC7859478.

3. Pollak TA, Drndarski S, Stone JM, David AS, McGuire P, Abbott NJ. The blood-brain barrier in psychosis. Lancet Psychiatry. (2018) Jan;5(1):79-92. doi: 10.1016/S2215-0366(17)30293-6. Epub 2017 Aug 3. PMID: 28781208.

4. 8. Vazana U, Veksler R, Pell GS, Prager O, Fassler M, Chassidim Y, Roth Y, Shahar H, Zangen A, Raccah R, Onesti E, Ceccanti M, Colonnese C, Santoro A, Salvati M, D’Elia A, Nucciarelli V, Inghilleri M, Friedman A. Glutamate-Mediated Blood-Brain Barrier Opening: Implications for Neuroprotection and Drug Delivery. J Neurosci. (2016) Jul 20;36(29):7727-39. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0587-16.2016. PMID: 27445149; PMCID: PMC4951577.

5. Michinaga S, Koyama Y. Dual Roles of Astrocyte-Derived Factors in Regulation of Blood-Brain Barrier Function after Brain Damage. Int J Mol Sci. (2019) Jan 29;20(3):571. doi: 10.3390/ijms20030571. PMID: 30699952; PMCID: PMC6387062.

6. Gynther M, Petsalo A, Hansen SH, Bunch L, Pickering DS. Blood-brain barrier permeability and brain uptake mechanism of kainic acid and dihydrokainic acid. Neurochem Res. (2015) Mar;40(3):542-9. doi: 10.1007/s11064-014-1499-4. Epub 2014 Dec 9. PMID: 25488153.

7. Zhang C, Jiang M, Wang WQ, Zhao SJ, Yin YX, Mi QJ, Yang MF, Song YQ, Sun BL, Zhang ZY. Selective mGluR1 Negative Allosteric Modulator Reduces Blood-Brain Barrier Permeability and Cerebral Edema After Experimental Subarachnoid Hemorrhage. Transl Stroke Res. (2020) Aug;11(4):799-811. doi: 10.1007/s12975-019-00758-z. Epub 2019 Dec 12. PMID: 31833035.

8. Hashimoto S. Discovery and History of Amino Acid Fermentation.  Adv Biochem Eng Biotechnol. (2017)159:15-34. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27909736/

9. Sano C. History of glutamate production. Am J Clin Nutr. (2009) 90(3):728S-732S.  https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19640955/

10. Market Research Store. Global Monosodium Glutamate Market Poised to Surge from USD 4,500.0 Million in 2014 to USD 5,850.0 Million by 2020.https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2016/03/17/820804/0/en/Global-Monosodium-Glutamate-Market-Poised-to-Surge-from-USD-4-500-0-Million-in-2014-to-USD-5-850-0-Million-by-2020-MarketResearchStore-Com.html  (Accessed 5/29/2020.)

11. Open PR Worldwide Public Relations for Verified Market. Global Flavor Enhancers Market. https://www.bccresearch.com/partners/verified-market-research/global-flavor-enhancers-market.html (Accessed 5/29/2020.)

12. Dataintelo. Global Food Flavor Enhancer Market Report, History and Forecast 2014-2025, Breakdown Data by Manufacturers, Key Regions, Types and Application.  https://dataintelo.com/report/food-flavor-enhancer-market   (Accessed 5/29/2020)

13. Frieder B, Grimm VE. Prenatal Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) Treatment Given through the Mother’s Diet Causes Behavioral Deficits in Rat Offspring. Int. J. Neurosci. (1984) 23(2), 117–126. DOI: 10.3109/00207458408985353. 

14. Gao J, Wu J, Zhao XN, Zhang WN, Zhang YY, Zhang ZX. [Transplacental Neurotoxic Effects of Monosodium Glutamate on Structures and Functions of Specific Brain Areas of Filial Mice.] Sheng Li Hsueh Pao. Acta Physiologica Sinica. (1994) 46(1), 44–51. 

15. Yu, T.; Zhao, Y.; Shi, W.; Ma, R.; Yu, L. Effects of Maternal Oral Administration of Monosodium Glutamate at a Late Stage of Pregnancy on Developing Mouse Fetal Brain. Brain Res. (1997) 747(2), 195–206. DOI: 10.1016/S0006-8993(96)01181-X. 

16. Skultetyova, I.; Tokarev, D.; Jezova, D. Stress-induced Increase in Blood-brain Barrier Permeability in Control and Monosodium Glutamate-treated Rats. Brain Res. Bull. (1998) 45(2), 175–178. DOI: 10.1016/S0361-9230(97)00335-3. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]

17. Price, M. T.; Olney, J. W.; Lowry, O. H.; Buchsbaum, S. Uptake of Exogenous Glutamate and Aspartate by Circumventricular Organs but Not Other Regions of Brain. J. Neurochem. (1981) 36(5), 1774–1780. DOI: 10.1111/jnc.1981.36.issue-5. 

18. Broadwell, R. D.; Sofroniew, M. V. Serum Proteins Bypass the Blood-brain Fluid Barriers for Extracellular Entry to the Central Nervous System. Exp. Neurol. (1993) 120(2), 245–263. DOI: 10.1006/exnr.1993.1059. 


If you have questions or comments, we’d love to hear from you. If you have hints for others on how to avoid exposure to MfG, send them along, too, and we’ll put them up on Facebook. Or you can reach us at questionsaboutmsg@gmail.com and follow us on Twitter @truthlabeling.

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The ruse of the whistleblowers

Somewhere in the millions of mystery stories that have been written, you’ll come across the words “If you want to catch a criminal you have to learn to think like a criminal,” which would be good advice for dealing with certain people in the glutamate industry.

I thought of those words when I read a post about the dangers of MSG that didn’t sit quite right with me, and I thought of them again when a new webpage surfaced.  It would be a perfect ploy for the “Glutes” to set up people as anti-MSG activists, get them quite a bit of publicity, and, when needed, have those people “blow the whistle” and declare that that they had been mistaken when they wrote or spoke of the dangers of MSG.

That would be similar to quoting words taken out of context and using that to smear the writer.  Directors of the Truth in Labeling Campaign have, in the past, been set-up for that purpose.

A bit different but clearly designed for the same purpose would have been the scheme to discredit the work of Dr. David Allen.  In setting up the fail-safe agenda of the glutamate industry for the glutamate industry, the FDA had referred to the research of Dr. David Allen which identified 3.0 grams MSG as an asthma trigger.

Once the 3-gram figure had been established as the amount that would cause an MSG reaction, the research reported by David Allen would be discredited – just in case someone should later refer to the fact that Allen had also found that .5 grams of MSG could also cause a reaction. The work of discrediting Dr. Allen was left to Drs. Simon and Stevenson or Scripps Clinic, LaJolla, California.

Setting up someone as an anti-MSG activist ready to “blow the whistle” could certainly be in the works, and it would not surprise me. The campaigns, propaganda, clear-cut lies and media exploits I’ve already seen lead me to believe that at this point, anything is possible.


If you have questions or comments, we’d love to hear from you. If you have hints for others on how to avoid exposure to MfG, send them along, too, and we’ll put them up on Facebook. Or you can reach us at questionsaboutmsg@gmail.com and follow us on Twitter @truthlabeling.

Resources

It Wasn’t Alzheimer’s, It Was MSG. (2013) A. Samuels. Pp 47-50; Pp103-106; Chapters 6 and 9. https://www.truthinlabeling.org/assets/it_wasnt_az.pdf

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Your turn to tell the FDA what you think of their promoting poisons for use in food

In March of this year, I submitted a Citizen Petition to the FDA requesting that the FDA Commissioner remove misleading and incorrect information presently displayed on the FDA website in a post titled “Questions and Answers on Monosodium Glutamate” (Q&A) and replace it with accurate information about monosodium glutamate (MSG) toxicity.  

Both the Glutamate Association and the International Hydrolyzed Protein Council responded with characteristic glutamate industry propaganda, stating that the Q&A accurately reflects the data and information on MSG, and that Petitioner’s proposed changes should be rejected.

And I, with characteristic vigor, tore their response apart, pointing out the deceptive and misleading statements and outright lies – in six parts, no less (links below).

Part 1: https://www.regulations.gov/comment/FDA-2021-P-0301-0028

Part 2: https://www.regulations.gov/comment/FDA-2021-P-0301-0027

Part 3: https://www.regulations.gov/comment/FDA-2021-P-0301-0026

Part 4: https://www.regulations.gov/comment/FDA-2021-P-0301-0025

Part 5: https://www.regulations.gov/comment/FDA-2021-P-0301-0024

Part 6: https://www.regulations.gov/comment/FDA-2021-P-0301-0023

Now it’s your turn to tell the FDA what you think of their promoting poisons for use in food.  Even one sentence will help get the word out. 

Below is the link you need to use to post your comment. Just click on the blue “comment” button on the upper left side of that page and cut and paste your story or start writing in the box provided.

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

It’s the easiest thing in the world to do – and could even be therapeutic. 

Adrienne Samuels

PS Our new website, 7 Lines of Evidence, has just posted a special page about the connection between free glutamic acid and obesity. Check it out here: https://7lines.org/obesity-and-mfg/


If you have questions or comments, we’d love to hear from you. If you have hints for others on how to avoid exposure to MfG, send them along, too, and we’ll put them up on Facebook. Or you can reach us at questionsaboutmsg@gmail.com and follow us on Twitter @truthlabeling.

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Burger King: Still serving up brain damaging ingredients despite what you may have heard

When Burger King recently announced it was dropping 120 “non-essential artificial ingredients” from its food, two important things were exposed.

First, just how many chemical additives, colors and preservatives are actually used in processed foods, and second, that you shouldn’t believe everything Big Food tells you.

How the company came up with this list is difficult to tell, as not all toxic chemical ingredients used in Burger King foods are revealed. To add to the mystery, Burger King makes no effort to provide ingredients online, but shares only “nutritional facts” information — such as details on sodium, fat, calories and carbs. Calls and emails to its agency, Alison Brod Public Relations, to find out more have been ignored.  And finally, BK brags that it has “removed around 8,500 tons of artificial ingredients globally.” But how they computed the tonnage of nasty additives put into their products is also unknown.

Although we don’t know all the details behind BK’s well publicized claims of “realness,” we do know that despite there being a number of excitotoxic (brain damaging) additives in the “banned” inventory, many are missing. Not only that, some are still alive and well on the current BK menu.

Take the “Impossible Whopper” made with the popular fake meat product known as the Impossible Burger. The Impossible Whopper contains five ingredients containing brain damaging amino acids: soy-protein concentrate, potato protein, yeast extract, modified food starch and soy-protein isolate – six if you count natural flavors. And not one of those excitotoxic chemical concoctions is found on the BK “dropped” list.  

If you’re looking to avoid brain damaging chemical additives, eliminating excitotoxic glutamate from your diet would be a good place to start — and the ones that BK picked for its “dropped” list are just the tip of the iceberg. You’ll find several dozen more ingredients that contain excitotoxic Manufactured free Glutamate on our list of hidden sources of MfG. https://www.truthinlabeling.org/assets/names_ingredients_linkedin.pdf  

Print out that list and take it with you whenever you go shopping. And if you happen to pass by a Burger King, why not stop in and give a copy to the manager.

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Trouble avoiding MSG?

Trouble avoiding MSG?  That’s because it’s not MSG per se  that’s causing your reactions. it’s the Manufactured free Glutamate in it.  And MfG is found in snacks, processed foods, protein drinks, protein powders, dietary supplements, infant formula and pharmaceuticals.

Download our list of ingredient names here.

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Toxic glutamate in your food?

When I filed three citizen petitions with the FDA at the beginning of this year, I wasn’t expecting the Glutamate Association to respond. It typically never acknowledges anything negative about its flagship product MSG, that is loaded with toxic free glutamate. But this time it did.

Now, inspired by those comments from the “Glutes” I have produced a website dedicated to laying out the evidence behind the requests made in those petitions — one being that manufactured free glutamate (MfG) and those ingredients that contain MfG should be removed from the FDA’s list of GRAS (generally recognized as safe) substances.

It’s no secret that disease and disability may be caused, at least in part, by toxic chemicals released into the air and added to food. But while chemicals such as lead and asbestos and hazardous air pollutants are recognized as noxious by government agencies, poisonous chemicals used in foods and beverages are rarely acknowledged as such.

The website “Seven Lines of Evidence leading to the conclusion that manufacture free glutamate is toxic,” was created to draw attention to the class of chemicals known as excitotoxins – brain damaging amino acids – recognized by neuroscientists as being toxic, but not acknowledged by the FDA as such. 

Glutamic acid (as in pea protein isolate) and aspartic acid (as in aspartame), two of the three excitotoxic amino acids used in food, are being used as flavor enhancers, protein supplements, and low calorie (diet) sweeteners, added in quantity to infant formula, enteral care products, protein powders, dietary supplements, processed foods, so-called “plant-based” products, snacks, anything that is hydrolyzed, some pesticides/fertilizers and pharmaceuticals.

The FDA, EPA, and USDA will claim that the excitotoxins used in food are perfectly safe.  The evidence says otherwise.

You’ll find Seven Lines of Evidence at https://7lines.org/.  Please use the contact form at the webpage for questions and comments.

In Health,

Adrienne Samuels, Ph.D.
Director, Truth in Labeling Campaign

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Do your ‘eggs’ come from a chicken or a laboratory? The FDA could care less.

Just Egg is the creation of food technologists who make their livings by replacing nutritious whole foods with laboratory-created compounds topped off with chemical flavor enhancers like monosodium glutamate (MSG).

This plant-based yellow liquid contains no real food, and positively not a trace of real eggs.

What it does contain, it’s second ingredient, is mung bean protein isolate, which, along with the natural flavors can pack enough excitotoxic amino acids to give migraine headaches to many, and possibly send some MSG-sensitive people to the ER.

But brain-damaging ingredients aside, you may wonder how this product can get away with being called not just “egg” but JUST EGG?

The FDA maintains what’s called a “standard of identity,” a legally binding description of what a particular food name represents and what it may consist of or even look like. Want to manufacture peanut butter? It better be made by the grinding of shelled and roasted peanuts. If you make noodles, they need to be “ribbon-shaped” with vermicelli mandated to be “cord-shaped.”

But as far as eggs go, not only have regulators refused to define them, but have prohibited such a definition from being made. It’s bizarre even by FDA standards.

What this means to the egg-expecting public is that if you don’t see it cracked from a shell, an “egg” can be made from just about anything, even the chemical concoction listed below.

Just Egg ingredients:

Ingredients: Water, Mung Bean Protein Isolate, Expeller-Pressed Canola Oil, Contains less than 2% of Dehydrated Onion, Gellan Gum, Natural Carrot Extractives (color), Natural Flavors, Natural Turmeric Extractives (color), Potassium Citrate, Salt, Soy Lecithin, Sugar, Tapioca Syrup, Tetrasodium Pyrophosphate, Transglutaminase, Nisin (preservative). (Contains soy.)

If you have questions or comments, we’d love to hear from you. If you have hints for others on how to avoid exposure to MfG, send them along, too, and we’ll put them up on Facebook. Or you can reach us at questionsaboutmsg@gmail.com and follow us on Twitter @truthlabeling.

Reference:
https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/CFRSearch.cfm?fr=160.100

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Umami: the con of the decade?

It has always been my opinion that the concept of umami was developed to promote the sale of monosodium glutamate, with a very large enterprise developed to promote the fiction.

When I was first introduced to “umami” I had a creeping suspicion that the concept of umami had been promoted in an effort to legitimize the use of monosodium glutamate in food, drawing attention away from the fact that monosodium glutamate is a neurotoxic amino acid which kills brain cells, is an endocrine disruptor (causing obesity and reproductive disorders), and is the trigger for reactions such as asthma, migraine headache, seizures, depression, irritable bowel, hives, and heart irregularities.

It’s common knowledge that there are glutamate receptors in the mouth and on the tongue. Could researchers be hired to produce studies demonstrating that glutamate containing food can stimulate those glutamate receptors, and then declare to the world that a fifth taste has been discovered — calling it umami? I wondered.

Never mind that for years monosodium glutamate was described as a tasteless white crystalline powder. Never mind that Julia Child, who in her later years was recruited to praise the use of monosodium glutamate, never once mentioned the additive in her cookbooks. Never mind that if there was taste associated with monosodium glutamate, people who are sensitive to MSG would be highly motivated to identify that taste and thereby avoid ingesting MSG – which they claim they cannot do.

It certainly would be wonderful, I thought, if the glutamic acid in processed free glutamic acid (MSG) had a delicious, robust, easily identifiable taste of its own. Even if the taste was unpleasant instead of delicious, it would still be wonderful — at least the adults who are sensitive to MSG could identify the additive in their food and avoid eating it. MSG-induced migraine headaches, tachycardia, skin rash, irritable bowels, seizures, depression, and all of the other MSG-induced maladies, could become nothing more than bad memories.

Sometime after Olney and others demonstrated that monosodium glutamate was an excitotoxin — killing brain cells and disrupting the endocrine system — Ajinomoto, Co., Inc. began to claim that their researchers had identified/isolated a “fifth taste.” The “fifth taste,” they said, was the taste of processed free glutamic acid. This alleged fifth taste was branded “umami.”

The word “umami” has been in the Japanese vocabulary for over a century, being in use during the Edo period of Japanese history which ended in 1868. In the 1990s, it was written that “umami” can denote a really good taste of something – a taste or flavor that exemplifies the flavor of that something. It was said that the taste of monosodium glutamate by itself does not in any sense represent deliciousness. Instead, it is often described as unpleasant, and as bitter, salty, or soapy. However, when monosodium glutamate is added in low concentrations to appropriate foods, the flavor, the pleasantness, and the acceptability of the food increases.

For years, certainly up to the turn of this century, monosodium glutamate had been thought of as a flavor enhancer – like salt. Something that enhances the taste of the food to which it is added. Early encyclopedia definitions of monosodium glutamate stated that monosodium glutamate was an essentially tasteless substance. The idea (advanced by Ajinomoto) that monosodium glutamate has a taste of its own, as opposed to being a flavor enhancer, is relatively recent. Not just a taste of its own, mind you, but something newsworthy that could attract national or international attention. A fifth classification of taste added to the recognized tastes of sweet, salty, bitter, and sour.

The idea that monosodium glutamate has a unique taste can be tracked in the scientific literature if you read vigilantly. I don’t know whose brainchild it was, but it certainly was a brilliant move on the road to marketing monosodium glutamate – a move precipitated by a growing public recognition that monosodium glutamate causes serious adverse reactions. And even one step farther up the brilliance chart, this monosodium-glutamate-taste-of-its-own was given a name. Naming things makes them easy to talk about and gives them respectability. The monosodium-glutamate-taste-of-its-own was named “umami.”

We started writing about umami years ago. We were already familiar with the research that the glutamate industry used to claim that umami was a fifth taste, and we knew that, with possible rare exception, all of that research had been funded by Ajinomoto and/or their friends and agents. We also sensed that researchers outside of the direct employ, or outside of the indirect largess of the glutamate industry, found the idea of a fifth taste to be without merit.

We thought that we should begin by making the case that what was called the “taste” produced by monosodium glutamate is not a taste, per se, but is little or nothing more than the vague sensation that nerves are firing. We would start by reminding our readers that what industry calls the “taste” of monosodium glutamate is its manufactured free glutamic acid; that glutamic acid is a neurotransmitter; and that as a neurotransmitter, glutamic acid would carry nerve impulses to nerve cells called glutamate receptors, and trigger responses/reactions. Then we would explain that there are glutamate receptor cells in the mouth and on the tongue, and that monosodium glutamate could trigger reactions in those glutamate receptors — leaving the person who was ingesting the monosodium glutamate with the perception that food being ingested with it had a bigger, longer lasting taste than it would have had if there was no monosodium glutamate present.

Ask Ajinomoto, and they will tell you that there are studies that prove that umami is a fifth taste. Review of those studies has proved to be extremely interesting, but when read carefully, offers no proof that monosodium glutamate does anything more than stimulate receptors in the mouth and on the tongue and promote the perception of more taste than the ingested food would otherwise provide.

I actually spoke with one of the umami researchers on the phone, a Dr. Michael O’Mahoney, Professor in the Department of Food Science and Technology, UC Davis. He was doing research for the glutamate industry and, therefore, could certainly provide information.

Dr. O’Mahoney was warm and friendly, but said that because he had a contract with Ajinomoto to study the taste of monosodium glutamate he was not able to share information with me. An academician who refused to share information was an animal I had not met before.

Based on personal observations and conversations with MSG-sensitive friends, I have become increasingly certain that monosodium glutamate has no taste; that in stimulating the glutamate receptors in the mouth and on the tongue, glutamate causes the person ingesting monosodium glutamate to perceive more taste in food than the food would otherwise have; that umami is a clever contrivance/device/public relations effort to draw attention away from the fact that processed free glutamic acid and the monosodium glutamate that contains it are toxic.

And taste? A savory taste? Given what I know about Ajinomoto’s rigging studies of the safety of monosodium glutamate, I couldn’t help but wonder if they might have done something unsavory to support their claim that monosodium glutamate has a savory taste.

  • They certainly have studies allegedly demonstrating that monosodium glutamate has a savory taste. Were those studies rigged?
  • Did Ajinomoto feed something to the genetically modified bacteria that excrete their glutamic acid that would cause the glutamic acid to have a taste? A savory taste?
  • When the L-glutamic acid used in monosodium glutamate is produced, there are unavoidable by-products of production. Does one of those by-products contribute a savory taste?
  • Is some savory flavoring added to the monosodium glutamate product before it leaves the Eddyville plant?
  • Is “savory taste” a fiction invented by Ajinomoto and reinforced through repetition of the concept?

When it comes down to what really matters, whether there are four or five tastes is irrelevant.

When it comes down to what really matters, whether monosodium glutamate is a flavor enhancer or a flavor itself is inconsequential.

What really matters is that chemical poisons are being poured into infant formula, enteral (invalid) care products, dietary supplements, pharmaceuticals and processed foods — and one of those chemical poisons is manufactured free glutamic acid, found in monosodium glutamate and four dozen or so other ingredients with names that give no clue to its presence. That’s my opinion.

Adrienne Samuels, Ph.D.
Director, The Truth in Labeling Campaign

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The ultimate in rigged research approved by the FDA. Aspartame: the FDA-approved poison used in placebos in double-blind MSG-is-safe studies.

To make sure the conclusion that MSG is harmless would be beyond reproach, glutamate-industry researchers guaranteed that subjects would react to placebos with the same reactions that are caused by MSG. They did that by using aspartame as the toxic ingredient in their placebos, which worked well for them because the aspartic acid in aspartame and the glutamic acid in MSG cause virtually identical reactions (as well as identical brain damage). Having set that up, glutamate-industry researchers (and the propaganda artists who quote them) will say “These people aren’t sensitive to MSG, they reacted to the ‘placebo’ too.”

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