Truth in Labeling Campaign Blog
The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about MSG and manufactured free glutamate
Alzheimer’s and ALS are just two of the neurological diseases with studies being done on the protective effects of lowering levels of free glutamate, see this, and this:
while the elimination of free glutamate, which is added to processed foods (in huge amounts), supplements, and drugs, is not considered.
A new article by Dr. Joseph Mercola reports that California lawmakers are hoping to ban five toxic chemicals used in the manufacture of many processed foods. Combined, the chemicals damage the central nervous system, disrupt the gut microbiome and are linked to hyperactivity in children.
While it’s always a good idea to focus on cleaning up our food supply, why did California stop there? Sure, banning five toxic chemicals used in the manufacture of processed food is great. But what about banning excitotoxic – brain damaging — manufactured free glutamate? Scientists have known since 1969 that monosodium glutamate contains brain-damaging free glutamate (1). And now we know that brain-damaging free glutamate is responsible for both the obesity epidemic and the infertility crisis (2). Shouldn’t monosodium glutamate be included in the list of toxic chemicals to be banned instead of being added without restriction to processed food with the blessings of the FDA?
It’s a question we have repeatedly asked the FDA without getting so much as a response. Our research has demonstrated that for over a half-a-century the FDA has served as a pawn of the glutamate industry (3). The fiction of the safety of MSG and its manufactured free glutamate component was written by the United States manufacturer of MSG, and has been parroted by the FDA to consumers, healthcare professionals, journalists, legislators, foreign health care agencies, the media and those who write “MSG is safe to eat” propaganda, without any one of them raising a question.
Read Dr. Mercola’s article: https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/california-law-toxic-chemicals-processed-foods-cola/
Other things in which you might be interested include:
Olney, J. W. Brain Lesions, Obesity, and Other Disturbances in Mice Treated with Monosodium Glutamate. Science. 1969, 164(3880), 719–721. DOI: 10.1126/science.164.3880.719.
Samuels, A. There are seven lines of evidence leading to the conclusion that the manufactured free glutamate (MfG) in monosodium glutamate is toxic. https://www.truthinlabeling.org/assets/seven_lines.pdf
Samuels, A. Industry’s FDA https://www.truthinlabeling.org/assets/industrys_fda_final.pdf
Citizens Petitions to the FDA (click the “download” buttons to view each petition) and please leave a comment at the FDA site!
https://www.regulations.gov/document/FDA-2021-P-0035-0001
https://www.regulations.gov/document/FDA-2021-P-0267-0001
https://www.regulations.gov/document/FDA-2021-P-0301-0001
Samuels, A. (2020) Dose dependent toxicity of glutamic acid: a review, International Journal of Food Properties, 23:1, 412-419, DOI: 10.1080/10942912.2020.1733016
Samuels, A. The Toxicity/safety of Processed Free Glutamic Acid (MSG): A Study in Suppression of Information. Accountability Res. 1999, 6. http://www.truthinlabeling.org/l-manuscript.html Accessed Jan/19/2020. 259–310. doi:10.1080/08989629908573933.
Samuels, A “Glutamic acid: initiator of the obesity epidemic” https://www.truthinlabeling.org/assets/obesity_review_shortened_final_with_reference.pdf
Excitotoxic free glutamate eaten by pregnant women and passed to fetuses is responsible for the obesity epidemic. The Perfect Poison tells it all. Available in both paperback and Kindle editions.
Samuels, A. The Perfect Poison https://www.truthinlabeling.org/perfect_poison.html
References
Now, Food & Water Watch has gone a step further. Its recent 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, 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.
In our past three blogs we’ve told you about fake fish, meat and eggs, all disguised to look like the real thing. Despite all the extravagant claims made by manufacturers, if you read the ingredient labels on these products you’ll find that they are not eggs, meat or fish, and not the kinds of “plants” grown by farmers either. As we’ve said before, a better name might be chemical-based junk foods.
Reading labels is vital, but there’s one tip that can save you some time in the supermarket:
Watch out for products that make protein claims on the packaging. Most are made from combinations of manufactured free amino acids such as those found in MSG and in aspartame. This includes snack bars, cookies, smoothie mixes, protein powders and protein drinks in addition to fake eggs, fish, and meat.
All, “substitute” protein products will contain MSG or its toxic MfG.
Remember also that soy, pea and bean protein do not taste remotely like meat, fish or eggs, so MfG-containing flavor enhancers like MSG are added to trick your tongue into making that taste association.
Check out our list of ingredient names that contain MfG as well as our brochure to take shopping with you. Better yet, if you want to do all you can to have a healthy diet, ditch the processed foods and ultra-processed fake foods, altogether.
In 1969 when researcher Dr. John Olney of Washington University in St. Louis observed that process in his laboratory, it should have resulted in sweeping changes in how food additives are regulated.
He noted that glutamate fed as monosodium glutamate (MSG) to laboratory animals killed brain cells and subsequently caused gross obesity, reproductive dysfunction, and behavior abnormalities.
Before that, the world knew nothing of what Dr. Olney had dubbed “excitotoxins.” And after Olney’s discovery, the existence of free excitotoxic amino acids present in food became the best-guarded secret of the food and drug industries.
Today, excitotoxins present in food remain largely ignored or unknown, mostly because the rich and powerful food and pharmaceutical industries want it that way. A great deal of food industry profit depends on using excitotoxins to “enhance” the taste of cheaply made food. And a great deal of pharmaceutical industry profit depends on selling drugs to “cure” the diseases and disabilities caused by the excitotoxins in the food supply.
What are excitotoxins?
Excitotoxins are often amino acids, but not all amino acids are excitotoxins. The amino acid with the greatest excitotoxic footprint is glutamate. When present in protein or released from protein in a regulated fashion (through routine digestion), glutamate is vital to normal body function. It is the major neurotransmitter in humans, carrying nerve impulses from glutamate stimuli to glutamate receptors throughout the body. Yet, when present outside of protein in amounts that exceed what the healthy human body was designed to accommodate (which can vary widely from person to person), glutamate becomes an excitotoxic neurotransmitter, firing repeatedly, damaging targeted glutamate-receptors and/or causing neuronal and non-neuronal death by over exciting those glutamate receptors until their host cells die.
Technically speaking, neurotransmitters that over-stimulate their receptors to the point of killing the cells that host them are called excitotoxic neurotransmitters, and the resulting condition is referred to as excitotoxicity. Glutamate excitotoxicity is the process that underlies the damage done by MSG and the other ingredients that contain processed free glutamic acid (MfG).
Glutamate is called a non-essential amino acid because if the body does not have sufficient quantities to function normally, any needed glutamate can be produced from other amino acids. So, there is no need to add glutamate to the human diet. The excitotoxins in MSG and other ingredients that contain MfG are not needed for nutritional purposes. MSG and many other ingredients have been designed to enhance the taste of cheaply made food for the sole purpose of lining the pockets of those who manufacture and sell them.
Glutamate neurotransmitters trigger glutamate receptors both in the central nervous system and in peripheral tissue (heart, lungs, and intestines, for example). After stimulating glutamate receptors, glutamate neurotransmitters may do no damage and simply fade away, so to speak, or they may damage the cells that their receptors cling to, or overexcite their receptors until the cells that host them die.
There’s another possibility. There are a great many glutamate receptors in the brain, so it’s possible that if a few are damaged or wiped out following ingestion of MfG, their loss may not be noticed because there are so many undamaged ones remaining. It is also possible that individuals differ in the numbers of glutamate receptors that they have. If so, people with more glutamate receptors to begin with are less likely to feel the effects of brain damage following ingestion of MfG because even after some cells are killed or damaged, there will still be sufficient numbers of undamaged cells to carry out normal body functions.
That might account for the fact that some people are more sensitive to MfG than others.
Less is known about glutamate receptors outside the brain – in the heart, stomach, and lungs, for example. It would make sense (although that doesn’t make it true) that cells serving a particular function would be grouped together. It would also seem logical that in each location there would be fewer glutamate receptors siting on host cells than found in the brain, and for some individuals there might be so few cells with glutamate receptors to begin with, that ingestion of even small amounts of MfG might trigger asthma, atrial fibrillation, or irritable bowel disease; while persons with more cells hosting glutamate receptors would not notice damage or loss.
Short-term effects of excitotoxic glutamate (such as asthma and migraine headache) have long been obvious to those not influenced by the rhetoric of the glutamate industry and their friends at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Hopefully, researchers will soon begin to correlate the adverse effects of glutamate ingestion with endocrine disturbances such as reproductive disorders and gross obesity. It is well known that glutamate plays an important role in some mental disorders and neurodegenerative diseases, but the fact that ingestion of excitotoxic glutamate might contribute to existing pools of free glutamate that could become excitotoxic, still needs to be considered. Finally, a few have begun to realize the importance of glutamate’s access to the human body through the mouth, nose and skin.
There are three excitotoxic amino acids used in quantity in food, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, protein drinks and powders, and dietary supplements:
1) Glutamic acid — found in flavor enhancers, infant formula, enteral care products for invalids, protein powders, processed foods, anything that is hydrolyzed, and some pesticides/fertilizers.
2) Aspartic acid — found in low-calorie sweeteners, aspartame and its aliases, infant formula, protein powders, anything that is hydrolyzed, and
3) L-cysteine — found in dough conditioners.
According to Dr. Edward Group, the six most dangerous excitotoxins are: MSG (monosodium glutamate), aspartate, domoic acid, L-BOAA, cysteine, and casein.
Resources
Dr. Edward Group The 6 Most Dangerous Excitotoxins. Global Healing Center. (accessed 8/20/2016)
Blaylock RL. Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills. Santa Fe, New Mexico: Health Press; 1994.
Olney JW. Brain Lesions, Obesity, and Other Disturbances in Mice Treated with Monosodium Glutamate; Science. 1969;164:719-21.
Olney JW, Ho OL. Brain damage in infant mice following oral intake of glutamate, aspartate or cystine. Nature. 1970;227:609-611.
Olney, J.W. Excitatory neurotoxins as food additives: an evaluation of risk. Neurotoxicology 2: 163-192, 1980.
Olney JW. Excitotoxins in foods. Neurotoxicology. 1994 Fall;15(3):535-44.
Gudiño-Cabrera G, Ureña-Guerrero ME, Rivera-Cervantes MC, Feria-Velasco AI, Beas-Zárate C. Excitotoxicity triggered by neonatal monosodium glutamate treatment and blood-brain barrier function. Arch Med Res. 2014 Nov;45(8):653-9.
Verywellhealth.com. An Overview of Cell Receptors and How They Work https://www.verywellhealth.com/what-is-a-receptor-on-a-cell-562554 (Accessed 5/5/2019)
Did you see this blog: Ultra-processed foods: Little nourishment, lots of toxic amino acids? We reported on the unfortunate fact that although U.S. supermarkets contain a wide variety of packaged foods, they mostly all come from 10 giant conglomerates.
One of those mega-companies is Nestlé, considered to be the world’s largest fast moving consumer goods company. Fast-moving consumer goods are products that sell quickly and at a relatively low cost.
This week Nestlé’s news came from a leaked document initially sent to its top executives, stating that over 60 percent of its “mainstream” food and drink products do not meet a “recognized definition of health” under Australia’s health star rating system.
(Health Star rates the nutritional profile of processed foods by assigning a number of stars, up to five. Only 37 percent of Nestlé products managed to rate above 3.5 stars.)
But low nutrition ratings aren’t the only concerns consumers should have, because Nestle products are loaded with manufactured free glutamate (MfG), an excitotoxic – brain damaging – ingredient. Their top brands include Hot Pockets (with a book-length list of ingredients including excitotoxic yeast extract, natural flavor, citric acid, disodium inosinate, disodium guanylate and dough conditioner), Lean Cuisine (soy protein isolate, yeast extract), Stouffer’s (textured soy protein concentrate, autolyzed yeast extract) and Maggi products, including the Liquid Seasoning (monosodium glutamate, disodium inosinate, flavour, protease).
According to the Indian digital news station CNCBTV18, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) banned Nestle’s Maggi “two minute” noodles in 2015 after test showed that it contained excessive lead and the labelling of its packets deceptively mentioned ‘No added MSG.’
Of course, what Nestlé tells it executives about its products, as revealed in that leaked in-house document, is far different than what it tells consumers, saying on its website that: “we unlock the power of food to enhance quality of life for everyone, today and for generations to come.”
Hey Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and National Public Radio, why aren’t you talking about this?
“Nowadays, the lifeline of urban population has been formed by commercial foods due to industrialization, urbanization, and rapid increase in working class. Commercial foods are time and energy saving foods but it compromising the nutritional value of foods. The term adulteration refers to the deliberate addition of compound which is usually not present in food. These compounds are known as food additives or food adulterant. Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) is one of the most common food additives. Several studies revealed that MSG has toxic effect on fetal development/fetus, children’s, adolescent, and adults. Physiological complication associated with MSG toxicity are hypertension, obesity, gastrointestinal tract troubles, and impairment of function of brain, nervous system, reproductive, and endocrine system. The effect of MSG depends upon its dose, route of administration and exposure time. Public awareness may play a major role in controlling the food adulteration by working in collaboration with National testing facilities to scrutinize each commercial food article from time to time. The aim of this review article is to highlight the deleterious impact of MSG on human health.”
–Chakraborty SP. Patho-physiological and toxicological aspects of monosodium glutamate. Toxicol Mech Methods. 2019 Jul;29(6):389-396. doi: 10.1080/15376516.2018.1528649. Epub 2019 May 6. PMID: 30273089.