Is It News or Is It Propaganda? Part Two

When it comes to MSG, the food-additive cabal appears to have gotten the entire mainstream-media realm under its direction.

This past spring, I received an email from a writer by the name of Clarissa Wei.

She wrote: “I’m a freelance journalist currently working on a story about the history of MSG for National Geographic, with a focus on how public narratives have shifted over the past decade. I found your Substack piece Is it News or is it Propaganda? to be a valuable counterpoint.

“While many recent stories emphasize the science clearing MSG’s name, your piece raises important questions about how that message is packaged, funded, and disseminated. and who ultimately benefits.

“I’d love to include your voice in my piece.”

Clarissa even provided links to past articles she had done for big-name media outlets, such as The New York Times, BBC, and The New Yorker.

“I appreciate the chance to be included,” I unsuspectingly wrote back, adding, “Thanks for tracking me down.”

The ‘Big Fat Lies’

In the mid-1990s, I was introduced to Adrienne Samuels and her husband, Jack.

The ultimate accidental consumer advocates, Jack and Adrienne spent the second half of their lives informing regulators and warning the public about the dangers of free glutamic acid, which is the active ingredient in monosodium glutamate and a long list of other food additives.

I worked with Adrienne (who held a Ph.D.) until her passing at the age of 89 in 2024. And over those many years, I learned a lot from her, especially what she liked to call the “Big Fat Lies” on the subject.

But her most important lesson, something she would tell me again and again, is that no mainstream media organization would EVER include information in an article that goes against the official propaganda line bought and paid for by the glutamate industry. You’re apt to come across its misinformation/lies online, in print, or on TV, Adrienne wrote, in what appear to be “legit” articles, and in cutesy video presentations that pop up on Facebook. All that propaganda – that hype -- is constructed on six falsehoods…

Based on what I learned, I even wrote extensively about the Ajinomoto/Edelman PR World Umami Forum in 2018, which, in truth, turned out to be nothing more than a boot camp for journalists and bloggers to help them effectively spread the messaging of Ajinomoto, the world’s largest producer of monosodium glutamate.

But somehow, when Clarissa contacted me, I thought perhaps times had changed. After all, National Geographic is all sciency, a supposed pillar of scholarly information since 1888. Never mind that it somehow seemed an odd venue for an article on MSG.

Clarissa sent me her questions, which I promptly answered.

Enter Edelman

The piece that caught Clarissa’s eye, titled “Is it news or is it propaganda?” appeared on this Substack almost two years ago.

It revealed a spate of CBS programming that was straight out of the Ajinomoto playbook and that of its PR agency, Edelman Public Relations. The messaging I described that appears in all MSG programming and articles, not just those from CBS, always follows the same predictable path—namely, that MSG is “making a comeback” (a term used so often that it must be a mandatory line).

Invariably included in such messaging is a letter sent over 55 years ago to the New England Journal of Medicine that started the entire “controversy.” In addition, there has since been “decades of research;” bevies of chefs making appearances to discuss what a wonderful addition MSG is to culinary creativity, and for the grand finale, the xenophobic zinger – that avoidance of MSG is somehow “anti-Asian.”

Clarissa’s article in National Geographic came out in June without including either my “voice” or that of anyone else with a “valuable counterpoint.”

In fact, the article followed the blueprint of hundreds of others that preceded it so perfectly, it even included “making a comeback” in the headline and ended by touching on “decades of racialized fear.”

The brain-cell threat that disappeared from the dialogue

The concept of MSG’s “making a comeback” after a ruinous blow from that aforementioned doctor’s 1968 letter to the New England Journal of Medicine, describing his reactions after eating in Chinese restaurants, is a rather interesting marketing device.

As it happened, a much bigger and well-publicized event occurred the very next year. Never mentioned in one of these almost certainly “placed” articles are the 1969 findings by Dr. John Olney, a top researcher at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, who had recently published data showing that when newborn mice were exposed to the additive, they suffered extensive brain damage and endocrine disorders. Olney coined the term “excitotoxin” at the time to describe those reactions caused by monosodium glutamate. Shortly afterwards, Olney found the same brain-damaging effects could be duplicated in infant rhesus monkeys.

Certainly, fessing up to “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome” is a lot more palatable to industry than debating whether or not MSG kills brain cells in baby monkeys.

And keep in mind that back then, MSG was actually being added as a flavor enhancer to baby food, making the resulting publicity and backlash immediate, and causing three major companies to remove MSG from their baby-food jars.

Over the years, the glutamate industry has worked hard to rearrange or obliterate such inconvenient facts whenever possible, using clever PR techniques and well-placed articles promoted by extensive contacts with legitimate journalists who have access to top-tier outlets, along with social media “influencers.”

Some of the most long-lived lies include the repetitive refrain that the glutamate in MSG is “identical” to what’s found in the human body*, and that the additive occurs “naturally” in food**.

The dissemination of this type of disinformation, no doubt, won’t stop anytime soon. It is, after all, extremely well-funded, and the continued, unabated use of MSG and other similar flavor-enhancing additives will go on being regarded as a necessary ingredient in cheap, ultra-processed foods.

But I’m thinking that perhaps I did have a small but significant effect on Clarissa’s story after all.

Mentioning a “corporate narrative” at the end, she also says, “When identity, science, and branding align, it can be hard to tell who’s leading the conversation.”

Considering the formidable food-industry forces she was up against, I guess that counts for something.

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For more information on additives that contain free glutamate, see this page at the Truth in Labeling Campaign.

*The glutamate in the human body is L-glutamate. L-glutamate, only. The glutamate of any manufactured glutamate (found in monosodium glutamate and pea protein isolate, for example) is made up of both L-glutamate and D-glutamate, plus numerous toxic impurities created during the manufacturing process that the industry has been unable to eliminate.

**MSG is manufactured using genetically modified bacteria that excrete glutamic acid through their cell walls. In the United States, monosodium glutamate is produced in Ajinomoto’s plant in Eddyville, Iowa. Over the decades, there have been numerous patents filed for various methods of producing monosodium glutamate, which is most definitely not naturally occurring.