Tag: Monosodium Glutamate

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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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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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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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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

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Saturday’s Secrets have been moved!

Saturday’s Secrets have been moved from the pages of the Truth in Labeling Campaign to its own website: https://saturdaysecrets.org/saturdays-secrets-best-kept-secrets-of-the-glutamate-industry/

There you’ll discover a new secret each Saturday, giving you time to absorb each one and carefully consider the damage that excessive use of free glutamate is doing to human health.

Should you want to lean more immediately, however, below are seven links to evidence of the toxicity of free glutamate that is accumulated from consumption of processed foods, snacks, protein powders and protein drinks, protein substitutes, dietary supplements, enteral care products, infant formula and pharmaceuticals.

1. Seven lines of evidence leading to the conclusion that manufactured free glutamate, no matter where it is found, is excitotoxic: https://www.truthinlabeling.org/assets/seven_lines_master_mfg_notmsg.pdf

2. It Wasn’t Alzheimer’s It Was MSG – a true story
Samuels A. (2003): https://www.truthinlabeling.org/assets/it_wasnt_az.pdf

3. The toxicity/safety of processed free glutamic acid (MSG): a study in suppression of information: Samuels A. Account Res. 1999;6(4):259-310.  doi: 10.1080/08989629908573933. PMID: 11657840. https://www.truthinlabeling.org/assets/manuscript2.pdf

4. Dose dependent toxicity of glutamic acid: A review
Samuels A. (2020) International Journal of Food Properties, 23:1, 412-419, DOI: 10.1080/10942912.2020.1733016     

5. Adverse reactions known to be caused by MSG: https://www.truthinlabeling.org/assets/reactions_list2.pdf

6. Names of the 40+ ingredients that contain Manufactured free Glutamate (MfG): https://www.truthinlabeling.org/assets/names_ingredients_linkedin.pdf

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

Also, see the Truth in Labeling Campaign website: https://www.truthinlabeling.org/

Note: It is only since 1957 that there has been sufficient free glutamate available to cause it to be excitotoxic

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Excitotoxic free glutamate: The ultimate trade secret

Everyone loves a secret.  Some like to keep them all to themselves.  Kids love to share them with their best friends.

Trade secrets are a very special type of secret that describe practices or processes of a company generally not known outside of the company. They are often products of internal research and development.

Moreover, to be legally considered a trade secret in the United States, a company must make a reasonable effort to conceal the information from the public, the secret must intrinsically have economic value, and the trade secret must contain information.

Trade secrets of the glutamate industry are unique in that they obscure the toxic nature of their products, concealed from public view by a well-coordinated effort that involves both government and private industries.

Glutamate industry fabrications spring from the basic falsehood that monosodium glutamate (MSG) is a harmless, or even beneficial, food additive. They go on to twist the facts of MSG’s chemical structure, lie about the permeability of the blood-brain barrier, fail to define terms and/or define terms to meet their needs, parade half-truths before the public (leaving out anything that might contradict their story), take materials out of context and convert them to their own advantage, cite studies that support their story while ignoring others, recite the history of production and use of MSG (leaving out significant aspects of that story), rig the research presented as evidence that MSG is harmless, and maintain a close working relationship with the FDA.

The Truth in Labeling Campaign has written volumes about the toxic effects of MSG and its free glutamic acid component. With our new blog, Saturday’s Secrets, we’re reducing years or research to simple sound bites, focusing on the multitude of secrets that the glutamate industry doesn’t want you to know.

We invite you to join us for the launch of Saturday’s Secrets on Nov. 20th. Stay tuned for details.

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FDA panel approves Pfizer’s COVID vaccine … but there’s no FDA panel that ever said that MSG is ‘safe’

According to an article by Jackie Salo in the November 1, 2021 New York Post, the FDA has a panel that approves food and drugs submitted to them.   At least that’s what I took from her article, “FDA panel approves Pfizer’s COVID vaccine for kids ages 5-11.”

I was truly impressed. Although the article didn’t name the panel members, I thought there might be some real people from the FDA involved. And there might even be records in the Federal Register of past meetings held by panel members, and maybe even discussion of the data they had considered before making their recommendation.

But here’s the rub.  If you ask the FDA about the safety of monosodium glutamate or the free glutamic acid in it, the FDA will respond with the statement that MSG is “safe.”  And most often they will offer as evidence an allegedly “independent” review done by the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, or FASEB, for the FDA by persons with serious conflicts of interest – an “independent” review that was rejected by the FDA and sent back to FASEB for an additional year’s study.  Or they will offer something called “Questions and Answers on MSG” that contains no evidence/data but instead reads like an excerpt from the glutamate-industry propaganda that is widely circulated by the U.S. manufacturer of MSG.

So, I decided to ask the FDA for the evidence – the data – behind making the assertion that MSG is “safe,” and spent the whole day Monday searching for someone who could answer that question – or even someone who could tell me how to ask that question. And before FDA closing time on Monday, I had filed the following Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request:

“Requested are copies of data used by the FDA for determining to give GRAS (generally recognized as safe) status to free glutamic acid used in food.   Requested also are copies of data used by the FDA for determining to give GRAS (generally recognized as safe) status to monosodium glutamate (MSG) and other ingredients that contain free glutamic acid.  

“Also requested are copies of the scientific procedures used to produce those data.

“According to its U.S. manufacturer, the free glutamic acid produced by genetically modified bacteria for use in monosodium glutamate (MSG) was first used in food in 1957.  Since neither it nor its ensuant MSG had been used in food prior to that time, the newly developed MSG and manufactured free glutamate (MfG) could not have been found to be safe by reason of a history of safe use.  It is not possible for MSG produced in this manner to have been found safe by reason of a history of safe use.

“According to the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and the FDA Code of Federal Regulations, the use of a food substance may be GRAS only through scientific procedures or, for a substance used in food before 1958, through experience based on common use. I am not familiar with any data gathered through scientific procedures that demonstrate that free glutamic acid – which neuroscientists recognize as an excitatory – brain damaging – amino acid, is “safe.”  It is for that reason that I ask you to please send me all data, complete with the scientific procedures used to produce those data, that establish that free glutamic acid, MSG, or any other free-glutamate-containing food ingredient has met the requirements established by the FDA for establishment of GRAS status. I don’t believe that such data exist.”

The FOI request was submitted electronically.  Turnaround time should be 2-3 days, unless, of course, the FDA is short-staffed as they usually are when the Truth in Labeling Campaign asks for information.

In the meantime, I spent the evening anticipating just how the FDA would respond to a question about the safety of an excitotoxic – brain damaging – amino acid.  They’ve had fifty years’ experience fronting for the glutamate industry (1), and having chosen to ignore three Citizen Petitions filed with the FDA requesting that the FDA strip GRAS status from free glutamic acid, MSG and the other ingredients that contain free glutamic acid (2), I would expect them to be extremely creative.

They will of course offer the paper titled “Questions and Answers on Monosodium glutamate (MSG)” that is posted on the FDA website. It has the requisite number of MSG-is-safe statements and talks about reviews by authoritative bodies (all of whom did no reviews of data, but reviewed material brought to them by the FDA or other agents of the glutamate industry).  They will undoubtedly refer to the many negative studies that failed to conclude that MSG is harmful, without mentioning that in their double-blind studies, their agent in charge of glutamate-industry research supplied his researchers with placebos containing aspartic acid, an excitotoxic amino acid that produces both brain damage and reactions identical to those cause by the excitotoxic glutamic acid in MSG.

We’ll keep you posted.

Adrienne Samuels

References

Industry’s FDA https://www.truthinlabeling.org/fda.html

Webpage petition post summaries https://www.truthinlabeling.org/petition.html

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Week 2

Ajinomoto is the Japanese brand name for monosodium glutamate (MSG).  It is also the name of the unimaginably rich and powerful company behind the campaign to convince unsuspecting consumers that MSG (and the excitotoxic free glutamate in it) — both manufactured by Ajinomoto — are harmless “safe” food ingredients. They also want you to believe that MSG (which contains relatively little sodium) should be used as a salt substitute.

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FDA/industry collusion: here’s how it works

The fiction about the safety of monosodium glutamate (MSG) is written by the U.S. manufacturer of MSG and distributed throughout the world by its many “outlets,” described in part in “Meet the Glutes:” https://www.truthinlabeling.org/glutes.html.

A large part of the Glutes’ post-1957 success in marketing MSG has been due to the close cooperation of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) – the Glutes official mouthpiece for the “safety” of MSG. They’ve been partners since 1968 when the toxicity of MSG was first recognized. (https://www.truthinlabeling.org/assets/industrys_fda_final.pdf)

The Glutes rely heavily on repeating the statement that the FDA finds MSG to be GRAS (generally recognized as safe). The fact that in assigning GRAS status to MSG the FDA has violated its own rules is just one of many examples of the FDA’s allegiance to the glutamate industry (https://www.truthinlabeling.org/assets/FDA_is_in_violation_FINAL.pdf).

The story of FDA/glutamate-industry collusion is told in the pages of “Industry’s FDA” which can be accessed at https://www.truthinlabeling.org/assets/industrys_fda_final.pdf    

It details:

  • Blatant lies told about the safety of MSG, lies originating with the glutamate industry and repeated by the FDA,
  • Dispensing positive information about MSG while withholding information that might be considered negative,
  • Officially approving study protocols for MSG-is-safe studies that used placebos known to cause the same adverse reactions as those caused by MSG test material,
  • Refusing to collect reports of reactions to MSG “because we know that no one reacts to MSG,” and
  • Withholding key information from dietitians, nutritionists, consumers, and the medical community.

The most recent FDA contribution to the Glutes’ marketing plan has been the FDA’s failure to post my scathing response to the Glutes’ attack on my Citizen Petition FDA-2021-P-0267. Suppression of information such as that is often used by the glutamate-industry to promote their product.

My Citizen Petition FDA-2021-P-0267 was posted by the FDA on February 28, 2021. The Glutes sent in a condemnation of the Petition, received on August 15 and posted on August 19 (a four-day delay in posting).  In turn, I submitted a comment in which I tore apart the Glutes’ criticism, pointing out that platitudes but no data made up the body of their retort. My comment was marked received by the FDA on October 20, but as of November 3 it had not been posted (14 days without posting).

My guess (based on past glutamate-industry behavior) is that my critique of the glutamate-industry response would never have been posted had I not had the temerity to search out a way to contact Docket’s Management and disputed the omission.

“Oh” was what I heard from the person who picked up the phone when I finally got connected. “It must have been because it was so large that it got overlooked. Just give me half an hour to 45 minutes, and you’ll be able to see it posted.” (And in an hour, it was posted.)

More on suppression of information can be found in The toxicity/safety of processed free glutamic acid (MSG): a study in suppression of information. Account Res. 1999;6(4):259-310. doi: 10.1080/08989629908573933. PMID: 11657840.

We invite you to learn more about the FDA at https://www.truthinlabeling.org/assets/industrys_fda_final.pdf where you can get a feel for how your tax dollars are being spent for the benefit of the glutamate industry.

Adrienne