The Bizarre Truth About “Natural Flavors”

They suck the “natural flavors” out of butter these days. Go ahead, try to find US-made butter without natural flavors in it.

FUD about food. I'm not an expert in food safety, but this article is not trustworthy. It throws many scary words around, often implying that something is "bad", but never cares to explain or elaborate.

Also, the author is too eager to connect the dots, and is taking too many liberties.

Let's look at just few statements:

> "One of the worst types of “natural flavors” on the market are naturally-occurring glutamate by-products—which is just another way of saying MSG."

My understanding of English is that byproducts are the secondary products of the same process. So by definition, glutamate byproducts are NOT glutamate.

What's true though, that natural fermentation is the most common way to produce MSG. And glutamate, as a glutamic acid anion, is a naturally occurring chemical. And we consume it with meats, peas, and tomatoes, but no, it's not "another way of saying MSG" (which stays for _monosodium_ glutamate, a salt) ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Also, "the worst type" is not exactly what would be "generally recognized as safe" [1]. The author's opinion goes against the evidence that billions of people consume MSG and glutamate-rich products daily. Without major issues.

Another statement:

> "These chemical by-products are excitotoxins, a type of harmful chemical which tricks our brain into overeating while creating addiction."

Causing disbalance to any metabolite in our body is never a good idea. Is salt safe? It depends. 1 g per kg of body weight is lethal. Is it safe to eat too much sugar? Not a good idea on so m any levels. And it also can be lethal. If something can be lethal in excessive quantities does not mean it should be avoided altogether.

As for excitotoxicity, this is the name of the effect caused by an abnormal, pathalogically high levels of neurotransmitters, which glutamate happens to be one of.

And no, natural and additive glutamate consumption is nowhere near the levels of the lethal dose. "An average adult consumes approximately 13 grams of glutamate each day from the protein in food, while intake of added MSG is estimates at around 0.55 grams per day. [1]". The LD is 15-18 g per kg of weight [2].

[1]: https://www.fda.gov/food/food-additives-petitions/questions-... [2]: https://doi.org/10.1093/jn/130.4.1049S

P.S. There must be an empirical law that articles with "Truth About" in their title are not likely to be true.