Truth in Labeling Campaign Blog
The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about MSG and manufactured free glutamate
It wasn’t Alzheimer’s. Jack’s doctor said that monosodium glutamate was the cause of his frightening symptoms. But was it?
Find out more at: www.TruthinLabeling.org
The Truth in Labeling Campaign website is getting a facelift. References to monosodium glutamate (MSG), the flavor-enhancing food additive that causes adverse reactions and brain damage are being replaced with references to free glutamate, the excitotoxic amino acid component of MSG that actually does the damage.
What’s the big deal?
Those who have noticed having “MSG reactions” after eating processed foods containing yeast extract, corn starch, soy protein, maltodextrin, or natural flavor, for example, and nothing listed as “MSG” on ingredient labels will understand right away. There’s a tremendous amount of manufactured free glutamate out there just waiting to do damage to unsuspecting consumers. Avoiding the one product/ingredient called MSG isn’t enough.
Take a look – www.truthinlabeling.org
Last week my Google MSG alert went wild. Could it be that news sites are finally covering the story that monosodium glutamate causes brain damage leading to obesity and infertility?
Turns out the MSG frenzy was about a NY Rangers fan who sucker punched a Tampa Bay Lightning fan at the Madison Square Garden – MSG.
I’d like to see the day that our MSG story goes viral — the one that exposes the FDA/industry lies alleging that MSG and MfG are harmless. Until that time comes, you can count on the Truth in Labeling Campaign to give you all the facts.
Truth in Labeling Campaign website
Saturday’s Secret: Things the “Glutes” don’t want you to know
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!
Watch for the next blog
Over the course of the next few blogs the Truth in Labeling Campaign will be unveiling the Seven Lines of Evidence that lead inevitably to the conclusion that manufactured free glutamate (MfG), such as that found in hydrolyzed proteins and monosodium glutamate (MSG) is a well-disguised poison – a poison that may well be hidden in your very own pantry.
Look for Line One on Thursday.
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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.
Although the terms “toxin” and “poison” are often used interchangeably, there are some significant differences. According to encyclopedia.com “A chemical is said to be a poison if it causes some degree of metabolic disfunction in organisms. Strictly speaking, a toxin is a poisonous chemical of biological origin, being produced by a microorganism, plant, or animal.” (Emphasis added.)
It goes on to say: “It is critical to understand that while any chemical can cause poisoning, a threshold of tolerable dose must be exceeded for this to actually happen.”
So, strictly speaking, MSG, which is manufactured by humans as opposed to being produced by a microorganism, plant, or animal, is a poison.
The Free Dictionary would seem to agree. It defines a poison as “a substance that, on ingestion, inhalation, absorption, application, injection, or development within the body, in relatively small amounts, may cause structural or functional disturbance.”
There are four very interesting facts about the poison in MSG.
1) The poisonous component of MSG is free glutamate. It’s free glutamate that triggers glutamate receptors, enhancing the flavor of food, and at the same time operating as a poison.
2) There are lots of products in addition to MSG that contain free glutamate. Just like the free glutamate in MSG, each enhances the flavor of the food with which it is eaten while it plays out its role as a poison.
3) Prior to 1957, tolerable doses of free glutamate would not have been exceeded, and the small amounts of free glutamate in processed foods would have not been poisonous. Prior to 1957, there wasn’t enough free glutamate in processed foods eaten during the course of a day to produce more free glutamate than could be tolerated.
4) In 1957, a revolutionary method for producing MSG and the free glutamate in it was introduced and the use of both MSG and other free glutamate-containing flavor-enhancers began to grow exponentially. From that point forward, the amount of free glutamate in processed foods easily exceeded the amount that could be ingested without causing adverse reactions and/or brain damage.
The dose makes the poison.
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Watch for it.
Over the course of the next few blogs the Truth in Labeling Campaign will be unveiling the Seven Lines of Evidence that lead inevitably to the conclusion that manufactured free glutamate (MfG), such as that found in hydrolyzed proteins and monosodium glutamate (MSG) is a well-disguised poison – a poison that may well be hidden in your very own pantry.
The first blog in the series will be August 24.
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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.
Free copies of It Wasn’t Alzheimer’s, It Was MSG are going fast. Download your copy now.
I’m certainly not afraid to speak out. I’ve been speaking out on the hazards of MSG for more than 30 years along with Jack Samuels, slowing down only to grieve his death and tell his story, “It Wasn’t Alzheimer’s, It Was MSG.” Given that the US maker of MSG controls the medical journals, the media, and the FDA as well as legislators who might have FDA oversight, speaking out has been limited to updating our fact-based webpage, making it easier to use and writing blogs. And I filed three Citizen Petitions with the FDA requesting that MSG and the toxic glutamate in it be stripped of their GRAS (generally recognized as safe) status. But apparently those who would or could do something for the welfare of the American people were not paying attention.
But something changed in the 2020s. Maybe the pandemic caused some soul searching – at least in Asia and Africa. Maybe there was so much free-glutamate in processed food (free-glutamate being the toxic ingredient in MSG and all other flavor enhancers) that the numbers of people reacting to flavor enhancers escalated to the point that it couldn’t be denied. Or maybe Ajinomoto’s campaigns to clear MSG of its bad name backfired, and people realized that it was lies that were being told over and over and over again in industry propaganda dressed up as news — or lies being told by celebrity chefs who really don’t use MSG in their cooking.
Today a friend of the Truth in Labeling Campaign sent me a copy of this research: “Worldwide flavor enhancer monosodium glutamate combined with high lipid diet provokes metabolic alterations and systemic anomalies: An overview” that included the warning, “This comprehensive review formulates health care strategies to create global awareness about the harmful impact of [MSG with a high lipid diet] on the human body and recommends the daily consumption of more natural foods rich in antioxidants instead of toxic ingredients.”
And that wasn’t the only warning I’ve seen in recent years. Others have included:
In the 1980s, researchers focused on identifying and understanding abnormalities associated with glutamate, often for the purpose of finding drugs that would mitigate glutamate’s adverse effects. It is well documented that free glutamate is implicated in kidney and liver disorders, neurodegenerative disease, and more. By 1980, glutamate-associated disorders such as headaches, asthma, diabetes, muscle pain, atrial fibrillation, ischemia, trauma, seizures, stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Huntington’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, depression, multiple sclerosis, schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), epilepsy, addiction, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), frontotemporal dementia and autism were on the rise, and evidence of the toxic effects of glutamate were generally accepted by the scientific community. A November 15, 2020 search of the National Library of Medicine using PubMed.gov returned 3872 citations for “glutamate-induced.”
Millions of health care dollars could be saved by simply considering MSG when making diagnoses. And if the truth about the toxic potential of free glutamate were told and its use in food reduced, disease and disability would certainly be reduced with it. Given that free glutamate plays a role in a wide variety of abnormalities, decreasing the amount of free glutamate added through ingestion of free glutamate in flavor enhancers and protein substitutes to the body’s glutamate pools certainly wouldn’t do any harm, and many have argued that evidence says that decreasing the presence of excitotoxic amino acids in processed and ultra-processed foods is called for. It’s time to follow the science of independent researchers and not the propaganda spewed forth by the glutamate industry.
Adrienne Samuels
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.