Tag: truthinlabelingcampaign

Posted on

Anyone had experience with headaches from MSG as much as 48 hours after ingestion?

We posed that question to our Facebook readers in July, and despite the fact that it’s known beyond a shadow of a doubt that MSG is a migraine trigger, and migraines are the most commonly-reported reactions to MSG, we were surprised at the immediate response and lengthy bouts of suffering reported.

Perhaps reading these postings will help if you, also, are the victim of migraines, or suffer other reactions after consuming foods containing MSG… even days afterwards.

For more information on MSG and headaches, check out this page at the Truth in Labeling Campaign website.

Debbie: Yes, depending on the food source and digestion time- anywhere from a few hours later to 48 hours later- I can wake up with the headache after eating some the day before.

Michael: When I first started having problems and trying to figure out what was going on it would often be 48 hours. That’s why I had such trouble identifying the problem back then. Now that I know the advanced warning signs it’s usually more like 12.

Jennifer: My symptoms used to start within seconds and lasted up to 4 months. Often the reaction hot worse and worse as time went on. I’ve been able to find treatment that has made me react less severely and not nearly as long. I absolutely would believe 48 hours.

Gürsel: Reading the labels and never buy, never consume. As far as it is not hidden in another ingredient. After I ate a sausage at a coffee shop I could not sleep because of tachycardia. Did anyone experienced this?

Mike: Yes. I have had Chinese restaurant syndrome symptoms as long as four days. I have found that inorganic compounds, sodium acids such as preservatives like sodium acid pyrophosphate and sodium benzoate, really push me towards metabolic acidosis. The time symptoms lasted four days it was a food I had that contained multiple sources of MSG and multiple preservatives. I’m making an educated guess in saying that MSG is dose dependent.

Gaynor: Mike, same here. It’s MSG plus a combination of added chemicals and preservatives. Chinese restaurant food or any chemical laden processed food makes my body retain so much fluid that the swelling is very noticeable. Maybe this is also acidosis.

Laurie: For those like me who get migraines that can last up to 3 days… usually they hit me at 4am when the liver does its thing, while the night before I’ve ingested some form of a Freed glutamate which is what MSG is in FULL FORCE 100%… Many of you know that there exist several other ingredients in the food supply that contain freed glutamates… To avoid them and AVOID the side effects~~>migraines/headaches/gastro-intestinal distress download the NxtNutrio Healthy Pantry App, turn MSG to On in your profile… and go ahead and scan the barcode… You will learn of all of the ingredients that fall under the msg umbrella and so much more…, but more importantly be headache free for months… 😉

Cathy: Yes! About 48 hours after ingestion, then horrible migraines lasting up to 72 hours. Then feeling like I had been hit by a train for another couple of days.

Chettle: yes me … two or three day headaches are common for me when I eat garbage that’s full of msg 🙁 you’d think I’d learn hey … the worst part is feeling like a truck ran me over and that I’ve been poisoned during the night uughh

Judy: I do! They can start anywhere from when I’m eating up to 48 hrs later. I get a lot of symptoms/side effects.

Vee: I experience chronic sneezing like back to back sneezing within hours after eating a fake cheese brand years back. Didn’t know that was a symptom of MSG poisoning until looking it up.

Stacey: My symptoms usually become apparent around 48 hours.
Sarah: Mine are actually 72 hours later. That’s why it was hard to figure out. Once I did it was like clockwork.

Virginie: YES after 20 minutes after ingesting some in prepared food

Sho: YES!!! But no problems since I went all fresh, organic.

Cheryl: Yes! And I get racing heart rate too.

Kim: I thought I was the only one.

Carol: I have within hours. It’s poison to me.

Topaz: My symptoms can start up to 72 hours

Tina: Absolutely!!!

Richard: seizures for me

Ambar: Yup… aurora migraines.

Vince: Yes…. all the time

Andrea: Yes. Within hours

Jodi: YES.

Dee: Yep…..

Louise: Yes!

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.

Posted on

The tarnished ‘gold standard’ of peer-reviewed studies

“Why we shouldn’t take peer review as the ‘gold standard,’” (1) which appeared in the Washington Post on August 1st, should be read by everyone who values their health and well-being.

The authors, Paul Thacker and Jon Tennant, bring to light the fact that shoddy work often makes it past peer reviewers while excellent research gets shot down. They explain how peer reviewers “often fail to detect bad research, conflicts of interest and corporate ghostwriting,” and that the practice is “neither golden nor standardized.”

At the Truth in Labeling Campaign we have spent roughly 30 years monitoring badly flawed research published by glutamate-industry agents, and are very familiar with a wide variety of insidious journal/industry cooperation.

For years the International Glutamate Technical Committee (IGTC) was the primary front organization responsible for production and publication of research for Ajinomoto (principal producer of MSG in the US). During that time the IGTC amassed a number of double-blind studies concluding — but not demonstrating — that MSG is safe. The fact that these studies were often done at generally respected universities or medical schools, all of which required that the research be approved by medical research review committees, had, and still has, public relations value. Subsequently, those studies were published in peer reviewed journals — accepted by editors who, themselves, often had ties to the food and/or drug industries.

If the “peers” who review the work of glutamate-industry representatives are themselves glutamate-industry representatives (or very close friends), that work is very likely to be published. Also consider the fact that the journals may have close ties to industry.  For example, the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology accepts advertising, and The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, acknowledges the generous support of members of the food and/or drug industries. Both of those journals publish glutamate-industry sponsored studies. 

When professional peer review journals hesitated to take articles from glutamate industry researchers because the flaws in their badly designed studies – such as lacing their placebos with excitotoxic aspartic acid (in aspartame) — had been pointed out to journal editors, those researchers held seminars and/or presented their papers at professional meetings with abstracts printed in appropriate journals. Studies reported in abstract form are not peer reviewed, and letters to the editor criticizing abstracts are not generally published. In the 1990s, the principal forum for such papers was the American Academy of Asthma, Allergy, and Immunology. In addition, there were journals that, by policy, do not accept critical letters. Food Additives and Contaminants is one. 

Not to be overlooked is suppression of information. When contradictory or embarrassing information has been published, those in positions of power block dissemination of that information. When critiques of deceptive and misleading research reports are offered for publication, those in positions of power refuse to publish them. When, prior to publication, criticism of deceptive and misleading research reports are anticipated, researchers publish their questionable research in journals that do not accept comment following publication, present their findings orally at industry-sponsored or professional meetings, or publish their findings in abstract form only. Neither oral presentations nor published abstracts are subject to peer review or to published criticism. In no case is it immediately obvious that the data or criticism of that data have been suppressed.

References and additional information can be found in The toxicity/safety of processed free glutamic acid (MSG): a study in suppression of information, by A. Samuels.  Account Res.1999;6:259-310.

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.

Reference


  1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/why-we-shouldnt-take-peer-review-as-the-gold-standard/2019/08/01/fd90749a-b229-11e9-8949-5f36ff92706e_story.html
Posted on

Ultra-processed foods: Little nourishment, lots of toxic amino acids

Although the typical U.S. supermarket contains a wide variety of packaged foods, that assortment emanates from 10 giant conglomerates.

These multinationals, such as Unilever, Coca-Cola and Mondelez, have their imprints on practically everything you eat. And more and more of these products are “ultra-processed.”

It used to be that food technologists designed processed foods.  Those would be whole foods that were canned, freeze-dried, or fermented, for example.  But in the 1980s ultra-processed food — products manufactured with substances extracted from foods or synthesized in laboratories — started to line supermarket shelves.

Ultra-processed foods are fractionated-recombined foods consisting of an extensive number of additives and ingredients, but little actual whole food.  They can be identified by the remarkably long list of ingredients – including many unpronounceable ones — found on their labels. According to a recent study, Canadians are taking in practically half of their daily calories from ultra-processed foods.

Not mentioned in any study of ultra-processed foods, however, are the toxic ingredients added for color, flavor, shelf life (preservatives), and protein, along with low-calorie sweeteners. Manufactured free glutamate (MfG), the toxic component of monosodium glutamate, and all of the ingredients in the following list are found in both flavor enhancers and protein enhancers. And some say because they mask the taste of old or rancid food, MfGs are used as preservatives as well. 

Names of ingredients that always contain MfG:

  • Glutamic acid (E 620)
  • Glutamate (E 620)
  • Monosodium glutamate (E 621)
  • Monopotassium glutamate (E 622)
  • Calcium glutamate (E 623)
  • Monoammonium glutamate (E 624)
  • Magnesium glutamate (E 625)
  • Natrium glutamate
  • Anything “hydrolyzed”
  • Any “hydrolyzed protein”
  • Calcium caseinate, Sodium caseinate
  • Yeast extract, Torula yeast
  • Yeast food, Yeast nutrient
  • Autolyzed yeast
  • Gelatin
  • Textured protein
  • Whey protein
  • Whey protein concentrate
  • Whey protein isolate
  • Soy protein
  • Soy protein concentrate
  • Soy protein isolate
  • Anything “protein”
  • Anything “protein fortified”
  • Soy sauce
  • Soy sauce extract
  • Protease
  • Anything “enzyme modified”
  • Anything containing “enzymes”
  • Anything “fermented”
  • Vetsin
  • Ajinomoto
  • Umami
  • Zinc proteninate

Names of ingredients that often contain or produce MfG during processing:

  • Carrageenan (E 407)
  • Bouillon and broth
  • Stock
  • Any “flavors” or “flavoring”
  • Natural flavor
  • Maltodextrin
  • Oligodextrin
  • Citric acid, Citrate (E 330)
  • Anything “ultra-pasteurized”
  • Barley malt
  • Malted barley
  • Brewer’s yeast
  • Pectin (E 440)
  • Malt extract
  • Seasonings

The following are ingredients suspected of containing or creating sufficient processed free glutamic acid to serve as MfG-reaction triggers in HIGHLY SENSITIVE people:

  • Corn starch
  • Corn syrup
  • Modified food starch
  • Lipolyzed butter fat
  • Dextrose
  • Rice syrup
  • Brown rice syrup
  • Milk powder
  • Reduced fat milk (skim; 1%; 2%)
  • most things “low fat” or “no fat”
  • anything “enriched”
  • anything “vitamin enriched”
  • anything “pasteurized”
  • Annatto
  • Vinegar
  • Balsamic vinegar
  • certain amino acid chelates (Citrate, aspartate, and glutamate are used as chelating agents with mineral supplements.)

Convenient, relatively inexpensive and heavily advertised, the future of ultra-processed foods seems to be assured (1).  And why not?  The FDA lets the people who manufacture ultra-processed foods declare that they are GRAS (generally recognized as safe), and the general public seems unaware that the fox is guarding the hen house.

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.

Reference

1. Open PR Worldwide Public Relations.  Press release. 7/3/2019. “What’s driving the Flavor Enhancers Market Growth?  Cargill, Synergy Flavors, Tate & Lyle, Associated British Foods pic, Corbion …”  https://www.openpr.com/news/1794737/what-s-driving-the-flavor-enhancers-market-growth-cargill.  Accessed 7/31/2019.

Posted on

The Real Food Recipe-less Cookbook is back by popular request!

The Real Food Recipe-less Cookbook is back! More than a cookbook, it’s a treasure of information for people who realize that their bodies rebel against the ingestion of excitotoxins.  And it’s an unparalleled resource for those who simply want to avoid excitotoxins – amino acids that run amuck when ingested in quantity, killing brain cells and causing endocrine disorders which include obesity and infertility.

Find it at the Truth in Labeling website here.

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.

Posted on

Pick your poison

The Glutamate Association recommends that using monosodium glutamate “can help to reduce the sodium content of recipes.” There’s even a “review paper” by the International Glutamate Technical Committee called “Glutamate Contributes to the Reduction of Dietary Sodium Intake.” Certainly reducing salt in food has become very popular. But since there’s a great similarity between arsenic and MSG, and arsenic doesn’t contain any sodium, perhaps arsenic would be a better choice.

Both arsenic and monosodium glutamate can be toxic when taken in large doses, or when taken in small does over long periods of time. Arsenic can also have the appearance of a white powder. Like MSG (before a big PR campaign rebranded it as umami), arsenic is tasteless, odorless, and ingesting it can cause damage throughout the body along with a wide variety of symptoms.

Pick your poison.

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.

#truthinlabelingcampaign #MSG #MfG #excitotoxins #umami #MSGdanger #MSGreactions #salt #arsenic #lowsodium

Posted on

MSG reactions aren’t allergies!

Reactions to MSG and other sources of manufactured free glutamate (MfG) are reactions to poison. They’re not allergic reactions, and the rules for allergies don’t apply.

You may hear people refer to an “MSG allergy,” but that’s incorrect. And allergists aren’t the ones to ask about your reactions 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.

Posted on

Cutting through industry’s maze of lies about monosodium glutamate (MSG): Seven essential truths

1: MSG is manufactured. It isn’t found naturally in anything. https://bit.ly/31Euddc

2: The toxic ingredient contained in MSG is manufactured glutamic acid — glutamic acid that is mass-produced in chemical plants. https://bit.ly/2VBV0mZ

3: The same toxic free glutamic acid found in MSG is also found in some 40-plus other ingredients. https://bit.ly/2U0gkAU

4: Glutamic acid becomes excitotoxic (killing cells throughout the body) when present in amounts that exceed what’s needed for normal body function. https://bit.ly/2VoGZwN

5: The average American diet of processed food (all kinds, not just “junk food”), contains more than enough free glutamic acid to cause glutamate to become excitotoxic. https://bit.ly/2U0gkAU / https://bit.ly/2iGqNli

6: When glutamate becomes excitotoxic, four types of abnormalities can follow:

7: The dose needed to cause these reactions varies widely from person to person. https://bit.ly/2UXwR9i

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.

Posted on

They’re screwing around with your brain

Psychologists call it “conditioning.” Pair two items time and time again and it won’t be long before you think they’re one and the same thing. For centuries, “Umami” was a word that meant flavorful and glutamate was an amino acid. Now, because consumers are catching on to the fact that monosodium glutamate can be toxic, Ajinomoto is putting millions of dollars into transforming umami into a synonym for monosodium glutamate. And if they have their way, the brain will have umami receptors instead of glutamate receptors.

Back in the old days when cigarette advertising was allowed, Big Tobacco specialized in a type of manipulation called the “association principle.” Show smokers engaged in fun, wholesome, pleasurable activities again and again and soon you’ll equate lighting up with romance, outdoor fun, and family milestones.

It’s that kind of thing that the Glutes are doing to you – to all of us. Over and over again you see “monosodium glutamate” and “umami” and “taste good” in the same paragraph or even the same sentence. And you see celebrity chefs eulogizing the virtues of umami.

While psychologists call this “conditioning,” interrogation specialists call it “brainwashing.”

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.

Posted on

How does the FDA know MSG is safe? The Glutes tell them so!

The first record of FDA collusion with industry that we have is from September, 1969. At that time, then-FDA Commissioner Herbert Ley presented evidence to the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Health, that, he alleged, demonstrated MSG was safe.  Of the four studies presented, two were incomplete and two did not even exist.

Before that time there had been no need for the FDA to have such a cozy relationship with industry in regard to MSG. It was not until 1969 (12 years after the method for MSG manufacture had changed to one of bacterial fermentation), that the first evidence showing monosodium glutamate caused brain lesions and endocrine disorders in experimental animals was published in the journal Science (1).

History buffs can read the sordid history of FDA/industry cooperation here. There are many similar accounts of FDA collusion involving Monsanto (glyphosate and GMOs), the artificial sweetener aspartame, cigarettes, and vaccines.

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.

1 Olney JW. Brain lesions, obesity, and other disturbances in mice treated with monosodium glutamate. Science. 1969;164:719-721.

Posted on

A snake in the GRAS

When you hear that the FDA considers monosodium glutamate GRAS – or, generally recognized as safe – what does that mean? It’s certainly one of the “selling points” that industry likes to toss around a lot as evidence that monosodium glutamate is harmless.

But that GRAS designation is inherently deceiving.

Sixty-one years ago, following passage of the Food Additives Amendment of 1958, the FDA grandfathered monosodium glutamate into a category of additives called GRAS. There was no testing done or even reviewed by the FDA to determine if monosodium glutamate was indeed safe. The GRAS classification was solely based on monosodium glutamate having been in use without objection prior to 1958. The actual safety of pre-1958 monosodium glutamate was not then, and never has been, established.

But to make using a GRAS label for monosodium glutamate even more farfetched, is the fact that the monosodium glutamate in use in the U.S. today is not even the same as the monosodium glutamate that was grandfathered as GRAS in 1958. From 1920 until 1956, the process underlying production of glutamic acid and monosodium glutamate in Japan had been one of extraction, a slow and costly method (1). Then, around 1956, Ajinomoto Co., Inc. succeeded in producing glutamic acid and monosodium glutamate using genetically modified bacteria to secrete the glutamic acid used in monosodium glutamate through their cell walls, and cost saving, large-scale production of glutamic acid and monosodium glutamate through fermentation began (2,3).

Approximately 10 years later, the first published report of an adverse reaction to monosodium glutamate appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine (4), and a study demonstrating that monosodium glutamate was excitotoxic, causing brain damage, endocrine disorders and behavior disorders, was published in the journal Science in 1969 (5). Of interest to note is the fact that by the time 10 years had gone by, grocery shelves were overflowing with processed foods loaded with monosodium glutamate, hydrolyzed protein products, autolyzed yeasts and lots of other ingredients that contained the same toxic free glutamic acid found in monosodium 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.

REFERENCES

  1. Van Nostrand’s Scientific Encyclopedia. 6th ed. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1983:1211-2.
  2. Kirk-Othmer Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology. 3rd ed. Vol 2. New York: Wiley, 1978:410-21.
  3. Kirk-Othmer Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology. 4th ed. New York: Wiley, 1992:571-9.
  4. Kwok RHM. The Chinese restaurant syndrome. Letter to the editor. N Engl J Med. 1968;278(14):796.
  5. Olney JW. Brain lesions, obesity, and other disturbances in mice treated with monosodium glutamate. Science. 1969;164:719-721.