MSG and aspartame – ‘friends’ on the top ten

MSG and aspartame have a lot in common. Both contain an essential ingredient that is an excitotoxic — brain damaging — amino acid. And you’ll find both on more and more “top ten” lists of food additives to avoid.

The editors of Prevention list MSG and aspartame on their 10 food additives to never ever eat, calling FDA loopholes for “testing and approval“just plain dangerous.”

https://www.prevention.com/food-nutrition/a20480944/worst-food-additives/

The website Food Matters includes MSG and aspartame on its Top ten food additives to avoid list, saying MSG is a “known excitotoxin, a substance which overexcites cells to the point of damage or death.”

https://www.foodmatters.com/article/top-10-food-additives-to-avoid

Dr. Sears says to avoid MSG and aspartame “for the brain health of your family,” also noting that “excitotoxins can alter the chemistry of the brain.”

And a blog done by The Underground Health Reporter also notes MSG and aspartame as number one and two on their list of The 10 worst food ingredients.  

http://undergroundhealthreporter.com/the-10-worst-food-ingredients/

It’s not just coincidental that they appear together, because the essential ingredient in each is an excitotoxic – brain damaging – amino acid.

Industry ‘safety’ propaganda on artificial sweeteners sounds very familiar

In mid-March, USA Today carried an article questioning the safety of increasingly popular sugar substitutes, which, according to author Karen Weintraub are being “added to everything from sodas to toothpaste, lip balm, to snack items.”

It’s a great article in which Weintraub tells it like it is, presenting industry’s claims of artificial sugar safety as well as noting that studies are now raising concerns about the health effects of these substitutes.  But as I read, my mind wandered, and it seemed as if I was reading about glutamic acid in flavor-enhancers, because the words that Weintraub quoted sounded just like the industry propaganda used by the Glutes to convince consumers that flavor-enhancers like MSG are harmless. Words such as:

“healthy alternatives…”

“one of the most thoroughly researched ingredients in the world…”

“have been proven safe by global regulatory bodies for decades.”

“also accepted as safe in Europe and by the World Health Organization…”

Do you think anyone could convince Weintraub to tell the story of excitotoxic – brain damaging – glutamic acid (in MSG) and aspartic acid (in aspartame).  She could go over the industry claims of safety as well as noting that for over 50 years independent researchers have raised concerns about the adverse reactions and the brain damage caused by MSG, and more recently about aspartame. 

I’ll bet that Weintraub could get her readers to realize that flavor-enhancers and protein substitutes, all loaded with brain-damaging free glutamate, will be found without limit in processed and ultra-processed foods.

There’s nothing in her article suggesting that she has even a clue to the fact that aspartic acid is an excitotoxic – brain damaging – amino acid that causes brain damage and adverse reactions identical to those caused by the manufactured free glutamic acid in flavor-enhancers and protein substitutes (which, by the way, the FDA also says is safe for use in food).

To date, the Glutes have managed to suppress any suggestion that free glutamate might be harmful.  What a breakthrough — an event — it would be if Weintraub found it in her heart to share the facts about the toxicity of manufactured free glutamate.  And greater yet if she could convince USA Today to carry her story.

Aspartame: the placebo used in ‘MSG-is-safe’ studies

To make sure the conclusion that MSG is harmless would be beyond reproach, glutamate-industry researchers guaranteed that subjects would react to placebos with the same reactions that are caused by MSG. They did that by using aspartame as the toxic ingredient in their placebos, which worked well for them because the aspartic acid in aspartame and the glutamic acid in MSG cause virtually identical reactions (as well as identical brain damage). Having set that up, glutamate-industry researchers (and the propaganda artists who quote them) will say “These people aren’t sensitive to MSG, they reacted to the ‘placebo’ too.”

Who is up to the challenge?

Wanted. One savvy person to orchestrate the removal of monosodium glutamate from the FDA’s GRAS (generally recognized as safe) list.

Article Nine of the Bill of Rights refers to the rights retained by the people — and that it is the right of the people to know everything going on in the government.  It is therefore unlawful for the FDA to fail to respond to a Freedom of Information request for copies of data used in granting GRAS status to free glutamic acid used in food.

It seems reasonable to conclude that in order to fill that request, the FDA would have to admit that 1) there are no data that demonstrate that free glutamate can be safely used in food, and 2) the only studies that claim to have demonstrated the safety of free glutamate have been double-blind studies that used excitotoxic aspartic acid (in aspartame) in placebos.

Both aspartic acid (found in aspartame) and glutamic acid (found in MSG) cause brain damage and identical adverse reactions.

Something to think about: Industry’s FDA

Article Nine of the Bill of Rights refers to the rights retained by the people — and that it is the right of the people to know everything going on in the government.  It is therefore unlawful for the FDA to fail to respond to a Freedom of Information request for copies of data used by the FDA for determining to give GRAS (generally recognized as safe) status to free glutamic acid used in food.

It seems reasonable to conclude that in filling the request for data, the FDA would have to admit that 1) there are no data that demonstrate that free glutamate can be safely used in food, and 2) that the only studies that claim to have demonstrated the safety of free glutamate have been double-blind studies where excitotoxic aspartic acid (in aspartame) has been used in placebos.

Aspartic acid (in aspartame) and glutamic acid (in MSG) both cause brain damage and identical adverse reactions.

Something to think about: The IGTC

History tells us that in 1969, the International Glutamate Technical Committee (IGTC) was founded as an association of companies engaged in the manufacture, sale and commercial use of glutamates. It sponsored, gathered, and disseminated research on the use and safety of monosodium glutamate; designed and implemented research protocols and provided financial assistance to researchers; promoted acceptance of monosodium glutamate as a food ingredient and represented members’ collective interests. Those collective interests were to sell monosodium glutamate.  It would appear that the IGTC was the brainchild of Ajinomoto Co., a leading manufacturer of monosodium glutamate. Or possibly Andrew Ebert, long time chairman of the IGTC, thought up the whole thing.  Ebert had been with Minnesota Mining and Minerals when they were producing MSG.

It was reported in 1994 that the IGTC was an association composed of physicians and/or scientists either employed by producers or users of glutamic acid and its salts, or doing research on it in university laboratories. Its annual budget was $250,000. Membership was $2,000/year, with Ajinomoto making up any shortfall between member-provided funds and that quarter-million.

In 1977, the IGTC spun off The Glutamate Association, with both organizations having close ties to the Robert H. Kellen Company of Atlanta, Ga. and Washington, DC.  Kellen is a trade organization and association management firm that specializes in the food, pharmaceutical, and healthcare industries. In 1992, Andrew (Andy) Ebert, Ph.D., chairman of the IGTC, was also senior vice president of The Kellen Company.

Once established, the IGTC assembled a cadre of scientists and others who conducted research for them and/or spoke publicly about the safety of monosodium glutamate. In the 1970s and 1980s, research sponsors were acknowledged.

The names of researchers Altman, Anantharaman, Auer, Bunyan, Ebert, Fernstrom, Filer, Garattini, Geha, Germano, Giacometti, Goldschmiedt, Heywood, Iwata, Kelly, Kenney, Kerr, Matsuzawa, Morselli, Newman, Owen, Patterson, Pulce, Reynolds, Saxon, Schiffman, Simon, Stegink, Stevenson, Takasaki, Tarasoff, Williams, Woessner, and Yang were notable, although there were others. In the late 1990s the names Torii, Shi, Jinap and Hajeb were added to the roster.

Steve Taylor deserves special mention. Although a prominent representative of the glutamate industry, he’s not included with the others because his ties to the IGTC have not openly been acknowledged. Although Taylor has repeatedly spoken out about the safety of MSG, only once to our knowledge has he acknowledged his ties to the IGTC.

When he introduces himself, he typically refers to his University of Nebraska affiliation, but not to the fact that he’s an agent of the IGTC.

Until he was mentioned to the FDA as having been responsible for supplying placebos containing excitotoxic aspartic acid (in aspartame) to the researchers conducting glutamate-safety double-blind studies for him, Ebert had been key to the research operations of the IGTC. This professionally respected pharmacologist and toxicologist had been with the IGTC from the beginning, recruiting researchers to carry out the research designed for them. In each case, that research has enabled Ebert’s people to proclaim (without justification) that a new study has demonstrated that monosodium glutamate is a harmless food additive.

Ebert was the face of the IGTC, and his influence can still be felt at every level. He’s served on the FDA Food Advisory Committee; the Grocery Manufacturers of America (Technical Committee on Food Protection, the Codex Subcommittee on Food Additives and the GRAS-FASEB Monograph Committee); the National Food Processors Association; the Institute of Food Technology (Technology Toxicology and Safety Evaluation Division, and Scientific Lecturer); the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences Assembly of Life Sciences (Food and Nutrition Board: the Committee on Food Protection, and the GRAS List Survey); the AMA (Industry Liaison Panel); the FAO/WHO Codex Alimentarius Food Standards Program as an industry observer; and the International Food Additives Council as executive director.

As a food industry pharmacologist and toxicologist, Ebert has provided scientific and technical expertise for programs of many associations managed by The Kellen Company.

It looks like since he was exposed for supplying excitotoxin-containing placebos to his researchers, Ebert no longer sits as chairman of the IGTC. 

In 2009, his name appeared as being on the IGTC Executive Committee. His move from the glutamate industry limelight coincided with the posting of information on the Truth in Labeling Campaign website about his role in designing the IGTC’s “scientific” studies and supplying aspartame-laced placebos (placebos that cause reactions similar, if not identical, to those caused by MSG) to his researchers. Toward the end of the 1990s, we began to see the names of Takeshi Kimura and Yoshi-hisa Sugita, Ph.D., associated with the IGTC. Both Kimura and Sugita came from Ajinomoto. 

Jumping ahead to 2022, it looked like the IGTC had moved its offices to Brussels, with Michael Rogers, IGTC chairman, leaving The Glutamate Association and its International Glutamate Information Service (IGIS) to run Ajinomoto’s U.S. operation while the IGTC continues to focus on whatever it will take (no holds barred) to keep MSG profitable. According to the Global Civil Society Database the IGTC’s aims are to “study, assemble and disseminate scientific data and information related to all aspects of the safety, quality and use of glutamate and its salts, particularly monosodium glutamate with a particular emphasis on their use in foods for human beings; promote the uses of glutamates as food ingredients especially on an international level.”  The six organizations that carry out its work are:

EUROPE – PARIS
European Committee for Umami (ECU)

JAPAN – TOKYO
SOUTH KOREA-SEOUL
Amino Acids Seasoning Alliance of Northeast Asia (ASANA)

REPUBLIC OF CHINA – TAIPEI

Taiwan Amino Acid Manufacturers Association ROC (TAAMA)

SOUTH AMERICA – SAO PAULO

Institute for Glutamate Sciences in South America (IGSSA)

SOUTHEAST ASIA – BANGKOK

Regional Committee for Glutamate Sciences (RCGS)

U.S.A. – WASHINGTON, DC

The Glutamate Association United States (TGA)

The IGTC no longer sponsors studies alleging to demonstrate the safety of MSG.  Instead, they sponsor consensus meetings to which they send delegates who discuss the safety of MSG and submit reports of their meetings to any media that will take them.

In memory of Jim Turner, attorney, consumer advocate and champion in the fight against chemical sweeteners

A crusader in the war against aspartame, Jim passed away at his home in Washington, DC on January 25. Below is a tribute to Jim published by the Children’s Health Defense Team at its website the Defender.
****************

The Children’s Health Defense team was deeply saddened to learn of the death of attorney James Turner on Jan. 25.

Turner, 81, was a consumer crusader and champion in the fight against chemical sweeteners who began his public advocacy career as one of Ralph Nader’s Raiders.

In 1970, Turner wrote “The Chemical Feast, a best-seller that exposed the food industry’s failure to protect the food supply. His fight to remove cyclamate from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Generally Recognized as Safe list led to the book being removed from the market, but it was republished in 1976 by Penguin Books.

A graduate of The Ohio State University (OSU) on a U.S. Navy scholarship, Turner served in the OSU student senate for three years. He received his law degree from The Ohio State University College of Law (now Moritz College of Law) where he served as Chief Justice of the Moot Court.

Between undergraduate and law school, Turner was a lieutenant on active duty in the U.S. Navy. He graduated with distinction from the Naval Justice School and served as a nuclear weapons handling officer and gunnery officer aboard the U.S.S. Purdy and the U.S.S. Austin.

Turner played a major role in the fight against the artificial sweetener aspartame. He also worked with Dr. John Olney in the late 1960s during the Senate hearings about monosodium glutamate (MSG) in baby foods.

Turner was concerned about Olney’s research proving aspartame caused brain lesions in baby rats and he fought to make sure it would not get approved as an artificial sweetener. He discovered that the aspartic acid in aspartame had similar properties to glutamate — an ingredient in MSG.

Representing a Washington, D.C. public interest group, Consumer Nutrition Institute, Turner and Olney filed formal objections with the FDA and challenged the validity of some of the key aspartame safety tests that the manufacturer, Searle, had submitted to the FDA.

Turner and Olney highlighted evidence that aspartame was causing brain damage, brain tumors, seizures and changes in animal brain chemistry and therefore it may have the potential to affect pregnant women and young children.

Turner and Olney were worried there was no way to control how much NutraSweet (aspartame) children were ingesting. Searle had not tested aspartame on humans and safe dosage data for children was not available. Turner and Olney insisted if children ate too many products containing NutraSweet they could easily cross the threshold that could trigger seizures.

After the Ramazzini Institute studies in Italy demonstrated for the second time that aspartame was a multipotential carcinogen, Turner wrote:

“When I testified before Congress in 1987 … I stated that just because a substance reaches the market it should not be treated as sacrosanct. It must be recognized that over time a substance that we know harms people will continue to harm people… If the standard of food safety is that a substance that only harms some people, but not all people is going to be allowed on the market, then special policies should be adopted to protect those at risk.

“This was never done… victims of aspartame continue to develop neurodegenerative disease, suffer diabetes, drug interactions, obesity, heart disease and loss of vision. Never has the public been warned that it triggers birth defects, a catastrophe the eminent Dr. Louis Elsas warned Congress about.

“In fact the average consumer of aspartame is not aware that the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) says that an acceptable daily intake (ADI) of aspartame is 40 milligrams/kilogram of body weight ­— about the amount in a six-pack of diet soda for a 10-year-old boy. Nor do they now know how to tell if that amount is being exceeded by intake of the more than 5000 food and drug products currently sweetened with aspartame.”

Turner worked fiercely to get aspartame banned — especially after Sen. Gerald Ortiz y Pino wrote a bill to ban it in 2007 with the help of Stephen Fox of Mission Possible NM in Santa Fe.

In a documentary on aspartame, “Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World,” Turner definitively points out that Donald Rumsfeld had total complicity in the forced approval of the toxin.

In 2021, Turner was instrumental in forcing the FDA to release its documents on aspartame.

At the time of his death, Turner had been preparing a lawsuit to get aspartame banned, using the Delaney Clause, incorporated into the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act by the Food Additives Amendment of 1958. The clause requires the FDA to ban food additives found to cause or induce cancer in humans or animals as indicated by testing.

He wrote:

“The only responsible thing to do is ban the sweetener. And if they refuse to ban it then it should carry heavy warnings… To loose upon an entire unwarned continent a chemical that destroys the fetus, triggers mental illness and cancer, and sickens millions without a word of warning is corrupt and depraved. EFSA is responsible to prevent such depredations, not simply protect the greedy pockets of the poison producers.”

Turner’s longtime friend and associate, Dr. Betty Martini, stated:

“I’ve known Jim for decades. Never once has he deterred from his passion to get this toxin removed. He told me the FDA told Dr. Olney and him that they would never allow children to ever get aspartame because it causes birth defects and mental retardation, yet it’s in countless children’s products, and many have perished.”

Martini said she was exhilarated about Turner’s upcoming bombshell suit against the FDA — a gigantic step in finally removing aspartame from the marketplace.

Unfortunately, Turner became ill, robbing him of the chance to complete his last courageous act to free people from the dreadful addictive excitoneurotoxic, carcinogenic drug masquerading as an additive, she said.

Dr. Ralph Walton said of Turner: “The world has lost a powerful, courageous and consistent voice in the decades-long effort to demonstrate the hazards of aspartame.”

We, at the Children’s Health Defense Team, salute a great man who spent decades working to remove deadly toxins like aspartame from the market making the food and drug supply a safer place for the public.

Many more of his accomplishments could be listed but this is what he should most be remembered for.

Watch this podcast in which Turner discussed the horrors of aspartame.

Note from the Truth in Labeling Campaign: Aspartame is what the FDA approves for use in glutamate-industry double blind study placebos, having the nerve to claim that they have demonstrated that MSG is “safe.”

Saturday’s secrets — Best kept secrets of the glutamate industry

It’s not a secret anymore

If your mother was pregnant with you after 1960 and she ate a fair amount of processed food and drank diet soda, chances are that today you’re overweight, and have found that diet and exercise don’t help. That’s because the flavor enhancers in processed food and the aspartic acid in aspartame are excitotoxins that kill/destroy the brain cells that would have controlled satiety, appetite, and food intake had they not been obliterated by flavor-enhancers like MSG, and aspartic acid-containing sweeteners such as aspartame, equal, and others found in low-cal and diet foods and beverages.

Yes, there’s science that says so:

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:

and

Without pregnant women passing excitotoxic – brain damaging – free glutamic acid to fetuses and neonates, there would be no obesity epidemic. https://7lines.org/obesity-and-mfg/

So now that you understand that you’re not lazy, unmotivated or whatever else people are blaming you for, stand tall and be proud of the person you are.  Once you’ve accepted the fact that you have a disability and are not to blame for being overweight, you can work to minimize your disability without beating yourself up for something over which you had no control. Whatever you and your doctors or counselors design for your future can now be based on realistic expectations. Yes, if you choose to modify your weight, there will be limits imposed on you by the brain damage done to you in utero. So, make sure the doctors and counselors you choose are tuned in to help you.