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.
It’s worth thinking about. There’s always been Alzheimer’s disease, but not in the numbers we’re seeing today. In fact, the same is true of every neurodegenerative disease. Prior to 1950, the incidence of neurodegenerative disease was unremarkable.
What happened to change that?
Research has demonstrated that excess glutamate accumulated in the human body is implicated in brain damage, kidney and liver disorders, obesity, reproductive disorders, neurodegenerative disease, and additional 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. A November 15, 2020 search of the National Library of Medicine using PubMed.gov returned 3872 citations for “glutamate-induced.
It has also been demonstrated that glutamate from exogenous (external) sources, often from ingestion of monosodium glutamate (MSG), produces brain lesions, reproductive disorders, gross obesity, and behavior disorders. A review of the literature has also demonstrated that studies concluding MSG is harmless, or finding no evidence that MSG is harmful, are seriously flawed, with double-blind studies using placebos containing excitotoxic amino acids that cause reactions identical to those caused by MSG.
So why aren’t researchers exploring the relationship between ingestion of glutamate-containing ingredients such as MSG and disease and disability?
As scientists struggle to find cures for autism, depression schizophrenia and neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and Huntington’s disease, Big Food continues to pour more and more excitotoxic – brain damaging — free glutamate into flavor enhancers, fake proteins, infant formula and processed food.
References
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37521872/
In the treatment of patients with Alzheimer’s disease, are there physicians who take into account the fact that free glutamate, which is known to be involved in neurodegenerative disease, is eaten on a daily basis by people who consume processed food?
Advisers to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommended, by voice vote of 10 to 4, that the agency approve Pfizer’s respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine for pregnant women, despite questions about the vaccine’s safety.
During Thursday’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee meeting, committee members and medical experts raised concerns about premature births identified during Pfizer’s clinical trials.
History tells us that when there’s Big Money involved, there’s nothing unique about the FDA allowing dangerous substances to be administered to adults, children, or even pregnant women. And that doesn’t just apply to drugs.
In 1957, virtually unlimited production of excitotoxic – brain damaging — free glutamate (as in MSG), began, and since that time, consumption of excitotoxic free glutamate in processed and ultra-processed foods has skyrocketed along with explosions in obesity, infertility, Alzheimer’s disease and more, without even a word of caution from the FDA.
We know that when pregnant women consume processed and ultra-processed food they pass brain-damaging ingredients to their fetuses, where it destroys areas of the brain that would have controlled obesity and infertility had they not been obliterated by excitotoxins.
That, however, isn’t something that BIG FOOD and their friends at the FDA will ever admit to.
Could it be that the addition of excitotoxic – brain damaging – amino acids to the daily diet of Americans has something to do with increases in autism, Alzheimer’s disease, macular degeneration and other glutamate-induced abnormalities that have mushroomed since 1957 when vast quantities of excitotoxic amino acids were first produced for use in processed food?
The concept of excitotoxic free glutamate is difficult to understand, but essential to our well-being.
Glutamate is a Jekyll and Hyde amino acid — on one hand a building block of protein and neurotransmitter essential to life itself. But when consumed in excess, in quantities greater than needed for normal body function, it becomes a brain-damaging excitotoxin firing repeatedly until its targeted glutamate receptors die.
Understanding excitotoxic — brain damaging — free glutamate is not easy. But until we recognize the role that glutamate plays not only in obesity and infertility, but in autism, macular degeneration, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis (all abnormalities of the central nervous system), there will be no way to avoid the damage that it does, and there will be no antidote. Adding to the challenge is the role that industry plays in suppressing information on the dangers of manufactured free glutamate while disseminating disinformation about its safety/toxicity.
Neurotransmitters
Concepts that today are commonplace, were unimagined 150-200 years ago. The first amino acid (named asparagine) was discovered in 1806 in France. Sixty years later, glutamate was identified by Karl Ritthausen. Then for years, despite its presence in every part of the body and the prominent role glutamate plays as a building block of protein, it went largely unnoticed by researchers.
In the mid 1950s, the high concentration of free glutamate in the brain had caused scientists to speculate about its role in brain function. There had been claims in the 1940s that it could improve cognitive acuity and raise the IQs of patients with mental impairment. And in the 1950s Hayashi had found that glutamate could cause convulsions and proposed that glutamate might be a central synaptic transmitter.
In 1959, Curtis, Phillis and Watkins demonstrated that glutamate depolarized and excited neurons in the central nervous system, however, various aspects of the action of glutamate seemed to argue strongly against a transmitter function. Neurotransmitters are chemical messengers that carry chemical signals (“messages”) from one neuron (nerve cell) to another brain cell identified as a receptor.
The following major neurotransmitters are frequently discussed in scientific journals: Dopamine, Serotonin, Gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), Glutamate (glutamic acid), Norepinephrine, and Acetylcholine. Of these, glutamate is the only excitotoxic neurotransmitter.
Glutamate: an excitotoxic — brain-damaging — neurotransmitter
Over the course of the next ten years, glutamate was confirmed as a brain damaging neurotransmitter.
In 1969, Dr. John Olney actually coined the term “excitotoxin” to describe the brain-damaging actions of glutamic acid. Olney had been using Accent brand monosodium glutamate (MSG) in research as his source of free glutamate because Accent brand MSG (which is 100 percent MSG) was as effective for inflicting brain damage as more expensive pharmaceutical grade L-glutamate.
Olney’s identification of glutamate as an excitotoxic neurotransmitter triggered two initiatives.
The first came from researchers who wanted to understand the science of excitotoxicity. That included study of obesity, behavior disorders, reproductive dysfunction (including infertility), macular degeneration, autism, neurodegenerative diseases and more. And they explored remedies that might be used to ameliorate those conditions.
The second was introduced by a company that produced monosodium glutamate in the United States — a Japanese firm that set out to discredit the work of those who had exposed the fact that monosodium glutamate causes brain damage. In 1968 they launched an initiative to do whatever was necessary to keep the truth about monosodium glutamate’s toxicity from having a negative effect on their profits.
As a courtesy prior to publication, Olney had shared the results of research confirming that MSG causes brain lesions with its producer. In response, glutamate industry researchers produced studies that they claimed were replications of Olney’s work. But their procedures were different enough to guarantee that toxic doses had not been administered, or that all evidence that nerve cells had died would be obscured. Industry-sponsored researchers said they were replicating studies, but did not do so. Instead, discussion was phrased to suggest that studies were “replications,” and the conclusions were based on what was said, not on what was actually done.
By 1980, the evidence for MSG-induced brain damage and subsequent obesity was irrefutable, and glutamate industry interests moved from attempts to refute the work of Olney and others to simply asserting that Olney’s work was invalid because animal studies do not represent the human condition. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the agency charged with protecting consumers against impure, unsafe, and fraudulently labeled products, did not comment.
From that point forward, the defense against MSG-induced brain damage turned into a series of propaganda campaigns making the case that MSG did not cause adverse reactions such as numbness of the neck, arms, and back with headache, dizziness, and palpitations — or anything else MSG was accused of causing.
At the heart of this endeavor were a series of seriously flawed studies that each violated the assumptions their statistical analyses were built on. Publication of those studies ceased after Jack and Adrienne Samuels discovered and pointed out to the FDA that placebos used in glutamate-industry studies, each approved by the FDA, all contained excitotoxic aspartic acid known to cause reactions identical to reactions caused by MSG test material. The FDA did not comment.
Science vs. special interests
The science is clear:
Suppression of information about glutamate-induced toxicity is less obvious:
Prior to 1957, the first year that virtually unlimited (and therefore potentially brain damaging) amounts of free glutamate were produced for use in food, if there was new information about any amino acid, it was devoured by medical journals and sent in a press release to the media. But since the 1957 explosion in production of free glutamate, information about glutamic acid has been hidden from public view.
The Citizen Petitions filed in January and March of 2021 asking the Commissioner of Food and Drugs to:
have not been answered.
Freedom of Information Act requests asking for copies of studies or other evidence used by the FDA in coming to the conclusion that MSG is “safe” have been ignored.
And legislators who are charged with the oversight of the FDA? They’re not in the majority party or they’re on the wrong committees – or they’re just too busy to see to eliminating brain-damaging amino acids from food.
Despite clear evidence that manufactured free glutamate causes brain damage, and that the people who manufactured it are suppressing that information, unlimited amounts of excitotoxic free glutamate are being used in processed and ultra-processed food, promoting obesity, infertility and behavior dysfunction, autism, macular degeneration, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis, and a host of other abnormalities of the central nervous system.
Postscript
In 1957, the major U.S. producer of MSG and the free glutamate contained in it had started producing free glutamate in virtually unlimited amounts — amounts sufficient to cause that free glutamate to become excitotoxic — brain damaging.
Prior to 1957, excitotoxicity had been unknown.
Adrienne Samuels, Ph.D.
April, 2023
It looks like Ajinomoto is fighting tooth and nail, pulling out all the stops to convince the public that their brain damaging (excitotoxic) monosodium glutamate (MSG) is harmless. They’re pouring millions of dollars into buying advertising space in newspapers throughout the world, issuing press releases, covertly publishing YouTube commercials dressed up as news, buying testimonials from celebrity chef, sports personalities, and good-looking young women who call themselves “sci moms.” They’ve mastered brainwashing on social media. Yet people keep getting sick after eating MSG. Not everyone, of course, just lots of people. And Ajinomoto’s MSG sales have been slipping.
There’s something else, too. Scientists are beginning to realize that somehow glutamate has something to do with increases in Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis, stroke, ALS, autism, schizophrenia, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), epilepsy, ischemic stroke, seizures, Huntington’s disease, addiction, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), frontotemporal dementia, and autism. No one has yet identified a cause and effect relationship, but the scientific community now recognizes that glutamate is associated with each of them. Data? A January 18, 2020 Medine search (www.pubmed.gov) for “glutamate-induced,” returned 3742 references.
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.
Is there a connection between MSG and Alzheimer’s? Author and MSG survivor Adrienne Samuels, Ph.D. traces the link in the study “Dose dependent toxicity of glutamic acid: A review.”
While a little bit of MSG may not obviously hurt you, remember, you can’t see the brain damage caused by eating MSG or the 40+ other food ingredients that contain MSG’s brain-damaging manufactured free glutamic acid (MfG). You won’t read about this in the New York Times or hear it from the FDA because the glutamate industry wouldn’t allow that, but you can read the open access study published online by the International Journal of Food Properties . (Clicking on the green PDF button at the journal page will make it easier to read.) And if the glutamate industry manages to have it taken down, we’ll put it back up.
It’s a simple story. L-glutamate in food, which is essential to normal body function and is the major neurotransmitter in humans, becomes excitotoxic – brain damaging — when present outside of whole protein, in excess of what a healthy human can accommodate. Put another way, if a protein is broken into individual amino acids before it is ingested, those free amino acids take on a toxic potential that they wouldn’t have if consumed in unprocessed, unadulterated protein.
As far as the excess of these free amino acids goes, there is quite enough MfG readily available in processed and ultra-processed foods, snacks and drinks to prove excitotoxic.
The fact of MSG-induced toxicity has been revisited in “Dose dependent toxicity of glutamic acid: A review.” This study also confirms the fact that excitotoxins such as MSG ingested by a mother will pass to the fetus across the placenta and be passed to the newborn through mothers’ milk.
The take-away is that food additives containing MfG, such as MSG, on one hand clearly cause human brain damage, and on the other may very well contribute to the myriad of abnormalities now recognized as being associated with glutamate, including: Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, stroke, ALS, autism, schizophrenia, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), epilepsy, ischemic stroke, seizures, Huntington’s disease, addiction, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), frontotemporal dementia, headaches, asthma, diabetes, muscle pain, atrial fibrillation, ischemia, trauma and autism.
MSG does more than cause migraine headache and Chinese Restaurant Syndrome. MSG destroys brain cells.
Click here to read this eye-opening study.
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.