The insanity of using MSG as a salt-substitute

Did the people at Edelman Public Relations (who currently have a multi-million dollar Ajinomoto account) dream up substituting MSG for salt to cut down on sodium intake, or is this a Glutamate Association original to promote sales of MSG?

Plenty of “salt is bad for you” articles can be found, such as this one at SFgate that states: “… if you consume too much sodium, over time this can lead to potentially serious health problems. Managing your sodium intake is of key importance to maintaining your health and well-being.”

On the other hand, glutamate-industry propaganda almost always contains at least a line or two claiming that MSG contains less sodium than table salt – without mentioning that MSG contributes to brain damage, obesity, infertility, a-fib, migraine headache, asthma, seizures and more.

So, if you’re trying to manage your sodium intake for health reasons, why on earth would you purposefully ingest products that are loaded with brain-damaging, obesity-producing, infertility-causing glutamate?

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.

MSG isn’t made from natural products

Contrary to what you’ll hear from industry (which includes the majority of Internet and news stories as well as YouTube videos), monosodium glutamate (a.k.a. MSG) isn’t made from natural products like sugar cane and tapioca, corn starch, sugar beets or molasses. That’s not how Ajinomoto – the world’s largest producer of MSG – has been making it in the U.S. since 1957. For over 60 years MSG has been produced using carefully selected genetically modified bacteria that excrete glutamic acid through their cell walls.

And, contrary to Glute propaganda, that’s not how wine, beer, vinegar and yogurt are made.

Glutamic acid (a.k.a. glutamate) is the active ingredient in MSG. It’s glutamate that triggers glutamate receptors in the mouth and on the tongue, causing them to swell, so to speak, giving the food with which the MSG is ingested a bigger, more robust, taste, than it would have without it.

There’s nothing natural about MSG. It’s manufactured.

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.

Why are there no laws to protect our children from brain damage caused by neurotoxic food, drug, and vaccine additives?

There are car seat laws and seatbelt laws. There are helmet laws to protect the brain from a blow to the head. Why are there no laws to protect our children from brain damage caused by neurotoxic food, drug, and vaccine additives?

Football players wear helmets. The NFL won’t allow a player on the field without an approved one. Many bicycle riders do, too. In fact, this simple method of protecting the brain from damage following a blow to the head is required by law almost everywhere in the U.S. for kids under a certain age. Sure, it’s a bother to make certain that your helmet is in the right place, and that it’s fastened properly over your head – or your kid’s head. But to prevent brain damage? That’s certainly worth a little inconvenience.

So, why are we feeding our children and grandchildren food that is known to damage their brains instead of taking the time to feed them real food?

Doctors who practice mainstream medicine are trained to cure diseases. They’re not in the business of preventing illness. They could, of course, be taught prevention – if the establishment would allow it. But if there was prevention, how would Big Pharma make its billions? And think of the mega-rich who are Big Pharma stockholders. They have to profit, too.

Big Food is in business to make money. But it doesn’t seem to be satisfied with simply making huge profits when a king’s ransom could easily be had. Certainly, they advertise to make the consumer want to buy more and more of what they’re selling. You can’t fault that unless the things that they’re advertising – often directly to children – don’t tell the whole truth about their products, Sadly, there are many advertisers that can be faulted, including those who advertise that MSG, an excitotoxic, brain damaging flavor enhancer is a harmless food additive.

So, why are we feeding our children and grandchildren food that is known to damage their brains?

For those who care about the little ones in their lives, here are the tools you’ll need to help them:

Hidden sources

Adverse reactions

The Young are particularly at risk

Excitotoxins

For those who care about our civilization, these are things you need to know about the glutamate industry and the people who openly run it and their comrades behind the scenes:

MSG

Data from the 1960s and 1970s demonstrate that MSG causes brain damage.

Flawed industry studies

Label Lies

Six Big Fat Lies

Recipe for deception

MSU

The Whopper

Propaganda 101: The 8 ingredients in cutting edge propaganda

Is this propaganda hiding in the business section of your newspaper?

Sometimes you just have to stand up there and lie.

Industry’s FDA

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.

It’s the MfG in MSG that’s the culprit

Strictly speaking, MSG has gotten a bad rap.

No, not because it’s safe to eat. When ingested in quantity (and there’s plenty of it around to create that quantity), it causes brain damage, obesity, infertility, a-fib, fibromyalgia, migraine headaches, seizures, asthma and more.

MSG has a bad rap because it’s actually the manufactured free glutamate (MfG) in MSG that causes all those terrible reactions — and there are 40+ food ingredients besides MSG that contain MfG, which are just as toxic as MSG. But no one except the Truth in Labeling Campaign is talking about those excitotoxic ingredients being brain damaging, endocrine disrupting, reaction-causing food additives. It’s just MSG that’s being publicly exposed for being toxic.

Guilty as MSG is for causing disease and disability, there are numerous other ingredients that should be sharing MSG’s negative notoriety. Those are the MfG-containing ingredients you’ll find in most processed foods claiming “No MSG Added” or “No added MSG.”

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.

How MSG got a ‘bad rap.’ A tale told by the Glutes, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.


Ajinomoto began its challenge to MSG toxicity in 1968, following the revelation that MSG killed brain cells in laboratory animals.

Contrary to the myths circulated by the Glutes, the first hint that MSG might be toxic came from studies of the retina done by Lucas and Newhouse back in 1957. That was followed by a study titled “Brain lesions, obesity, and other disturbances in mice treated with monosodium glutamate” done by Olney and published in 1969 after having been shared with Ajinomoto in 1968.

The take-away from that research would have been that MSG causes brain damage and, possibly independently, also damages the retina.

Ajinomoto began its challenge to MSG toxicity in 1968 after learning of Olney’s work, by pretending to replicate Olney’s studies. They set up studies that couldn’t possibly demonstrate brain damage. Not by falsifying data, because that would have been deemed fraudulent. Instead, they rigged their studies by using methodology that would guarantee their results would come out as desired – techniques that would make it impossible to conclude “with certainty” that MSG caused brain damage.

As time went on and reports of reactions to MSG increased, Ajinomoto moved to human double-blind studies that were also rigged to guarantee that researchers could claim to find no evidence of MSG toxicity. In those studies, as many people would react to placebos as reacted to MSG because the placebos contained an excitotoxin (the aspartic acid in aspartame) that was so similar to the excitotoxic glutamic acid in MSG that it would cause the exact same reactions as would be caused by MSG.

When the Glutes talk about MSG getting a bad rap, they don’t talk about brain damage or retinal degeneration, both of which are caused by ingestion of MSG. They don’t mention MSG-induced obesity or infertility, also caused by MSG. And they’re not very specific about MSG-reactions like migraine headache either. Our research suggests that this “bad rap” they’re so fond of talking about is just another attempt to hide the truth about toxic MSG and clean up MSG’s bad name.

Out of curiosity we searched for examples of “bad raps” — statements made about MSG that industry claims are simply not true. But we couldn’t find any. We found only fallacious statements made by the Glutes about the safety of MSG.

Doesn’t look like MSG got a bad rap at all.

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.

References

  1. https://www.discussionist.com/10219099 (accessed 11/10/2019)
  2. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-msg-got-a-bad-rap-flawed-science-and-xenophobia/ (accessed 1/0/2019)

‘If MSG is so bad for you, why doesn’t everyone in Asia have a headache?’

This question has been a favorite of the Glutes, one you’re bound to see every so often.

And the answer is ….

1) Not everyone in Asia (or anywhere else, for that matter) will get an MSG-headache because while MSG triggers glutamate receptors related to headache in some people, others react to too much MSG with pain, asthma, fibromyalgia, a-fib, tachycardia, skin rash, seizures and more.

2) In Asia, at least until recently, the large amounts of MSG needed to trigger headaches and other reactions following ingestion of MSG were not available. Manufactured free glutamate (MfG), the toxic ingredient in MSG, was found only in MSG, and MSG was typically used sparingly. When used in Asia, small amounts of MSG are traditionally added to food at the end of cooking.

3) In contrast, in the U.S., and to a lesser degree in Europe, MfG is used in great quantity in processed and ultra-processed foods, snacks, protein-fortified foods, protein drinks, shakes, and protein bars. It’s found in flavor enhancers, protein substitutes, ingredients such as hydrolyzed proteins, yeast extracts, maltodextrin, and soy protein isolate, all in addition to MSG.

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.