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Do you buy chicken broth labeled “No MSG” on the tetrapak or can from the store thinking this is a safe and healthy option for homemade soups you make at home?
Maybe you even go to the trouble and expense of buying chicken broth from the healthfood store that is labeled free range and organic believing this is a quality choice for your family.
Let’s dig into the label of these supposedly “no MSG”, “100% Natural” products and see what the real story is.
Are you ready for another Food Label Smackdown like the recent article shredding commercial coconut milk and almond milk in cartons?
Why You Must Avoid MSG
First, let’s take a brief moment to explain to any new readers why you must avoid MSG when you shop.
MSG is a dangerous neurotoxin that must be avoided as much as possible in your food. It kills neurons in the hypothalamus part of the brain stem that most likely never recover and are lost forever. The hypothalamus is the Master Controller of your endocrine system, so if you would like to have a healthy, balanced hormonal system, you must avoid MSG just like you avoid soy and BPA in your foods.
This goes for your children as well.
Mice fed MSG get morbidly obese. I truly believe, although I have not seen any studies on this yet, that the rampant use of MSG in processed foods plays a big role in the epidemic of fat and obese children in our society today.
Food manufacturers insist that MSG is natural because it is found naturally occurring in small amounts in some foods. When MSG is found in whole foods, however, it is bound to another molecule, usually protein and is therefore not able to cause neurological damage like the MSG that is freed from these molecules and present in large amounts in processed foods.
Products Labeled “No MSG” Usually Have MSG in Them
Once you realize just how dangerous MSG is to your neurological system and have resolved to avoid it, the next thing you must get your head around is the incredibly misleading, downright deceptive labeling of monosodium glutamate (MSG) in the United States today and probably elsewhere in the world.
Just because a product is labeled “no MSG” and is certified organic does not mean there is no MSG in it.
Huh? Say what?
Let’s come at this from a different angle and more closely examine the organic chicken broth labeled “No MSG” pictured above. To the right is a picture of the ingredients label.
What is immediately apparent is that this product most definitely contains MSG due to the presence of Yeast Extract.
While the name “yeast extract” seems nonthreatening enough, it in fact always contains MSG and is a hidden source that very effectively fools consumers which is why it is a very popular label with manufacturers.
If you think about it, what in the world is “yeast extract” doing in chicken broth in the first place? Yeast is more used for baked goods, isn’t it? If you make chicken broth yourself at home, you don’t add any yeast. That would be completely ridiculous!
Why else would manufacturers be adding “yeast extract” to chicken broth except to synthetically enhance the flavor?
Another suspect ingredient in the label is “Organic Spices”. Another benign sounding name which most likely contains MSG.
If a spice mix is less than 50% MSG, food manufacturers don’t have to label the MSG at all!
Big Food is apparently allowed to pretend products they manufacture don’t contain any MSG when they very definitely do and even get away with trumpeting “NO MSG” on the front label of the product to catch the eye of wary consumers and fool them into purchasing their goods.
Since all chicken broth from the store, organic or not, contains MSG that I’ve ever seen, it is a MUST to learn how to make bone broth yourself at home. It is not hard to do and will do a world of good for the health of yourself and your family by introducing real nutrition to your homemade soups and sauces rather than synthetic and dangerous flavors and enhancers that will harm your brain and more than likely disrupt your hormones and metabolism.
In a report issued by General Foods in 1947, chemists predicted that the day would come when nearly all flavors, “natural” or not, would be chemically synthesized.
That day has long since arrived, so don’t be fooled by false and misleading advertising of broths, soups, and other goods labeled “No MSG” when the truth is, they are loaded with it.
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist
More Information
Healthy and Easy Bouillon Cubes Recipe
Bone Broth and MSG: What You Need to Know
Headaches? MSG the Likely Cause
Stock or Broth? Are You Confused?
Defeat deceit!
Does this include all yeast. I make my own bread but I buy a container of yeast and store it in the refrigerator. What should I be looking for or do you recommend?
Baking yeast is fine for home breadmaking. Use sprouted flour though 🙂
Soaked and sourdough breads rise without yeast.
wow.. knew about trans fat labels but didn’t know they could label msg free so long as it was less than 50%.. thankfully i couldn’t tell you the last time we ate something that we didn’t prepare ourselves.. literally its been years.. it does make traveling a bit interesting but we always seem to manage..
-jason and lisa-
Thank you!
Hi Sarah! I’m reading about Weston Price foundation, Sally fallon and so on, but here in Italy it’s all unknown. Do you know if there is someone here in italy who talk about it, a chapter leader…sorry for may bad english…i’m italian! ps. I love your website and your videos! THANKS FOR ALL YOU ARE DOING TO HELP US TO UNDERSTAND!
Does nutritional yeast also contain MSG, or is it different?
Nutritional yeast will contain MSG if it is processed at high temperatures. Frontier brand nutritional yeast is the best one as it is low temperature processed from what I remember.
Thank you for the brand recommendation.
Wow! I think it’s better to make it at home!
You know, I used to make my own broth. Then my world was turned upside-down, the kids started public school (formerly homeschooled), I started working. I didn’t have the time (or so I thought) to make my own. My health has declined steadily since then, to the point where I now feel I need to do GAPS. I used to be healthy. Everyone else was getting the stomach bug, but not my family. Now, we’re the family that gets it first. I fell for the “No MSG” label on the organic broth. Silly me. I knew it wasn’t bone broth, but figured it wouldn’t hurt even if it wasn’t helping.
Anyway, right now I have a big stock pot bubbling with healthy goodness. Thank you for this post, Sarah!
Health is such a precious gift .. it is so easy to let it slip away with how busy everyone is and allowing the devil of convenience to slip into our food preparation one small decision at a time. Good for you for recognizing where you need to make changes and following through with determination and tenacity.
We just cannot trust processed foods. And we cannot trust the government to protect us. Cooking from scratch is the only solution I have found.
What I’ve discovered is that many people think making soup at home with these MSG store broths is actually cooking from scratch! People don’t even understand what cooking from scratch really means anymore.
I was guilty of this years ago when I first got married and couldn’t cook a thing (I’m not kidding – I knew NOTHING) and my husband laughed at me because I thought making a pan of brownies from a box at the store and mixing in an egg and some oil was cooking them from scratch.
Sarah,
I would love to hear how you got into traditional foods? I think we all were like you –our moms went to work and the art of cooking from scratch went out the window.. It has been short cuts and our health is definitely paying for it. I would love to see change in this country but I don’t think it is going to happen. Most people I know, don’t even eat at home anymore – definitely don’t cook at all. So sad,
Just as a silly aside; my Dad used to say “Of course I made it from scratch! I scratched open the box!” 🙂
Great article Sarah – thanks!!
I never realized that. But of course it is true. People have become so dependent on processed foods. I have received emails from people whose total prior cooking experience was heating up packages in a microwave. Cooking is one of the most valuable skills anyone can have.
One of the big pluses when my husband and I were dating was that he was such an amazing cook. He taught me the basics and then I got motivated to get really good at it when we started thinking about kids (like … a full 8 years into our marriage). We definitely weren’t in a hurry for whatever reason. I wasn’t really ready to be a Mom in my 20’s anyway. Coming from a big family, kids were not a priority as I had already done the 24/7 chaos thing.
That is sad, I thought that at least it was “More Homemade” than a can of soup. I grew up on canned soups, veggies, everything came from a can or a box, then the freezer. Some nights a tv dinner was like a special treat, yes, they came in aluminum trays back then too. I have come a long, long way since then, but still a long way to go. It sucks that we can’t trust organic labels!
So when they say “natural flavors” that is probably MSG? Wow! How deceptive is that! The Costco brand just says “natural flavor” and not yeast extract but I did actually wonder about it. I only keep it so if I run out of my homemade. Better take out my chicken right now to do more broth… Thanks Sarah!
I would bet the farm that it has MSG in it. “Natural flavors” is a smoke screen for bad stuff in the processed food and it really really works in fooling consumers.
Making broth yourself is one of the top 3 things that you must master yourself in your kitchen. It is a critical skill for maintaining your health. I would even go so far as to say that if you don’t make your own homemade broth or get it from someone who does, you will not be healthy. Period. Pretty extreme I know, but homemade broth is such an essential food to health. It’s importance cannot be overemphasized.
Amen! I make stock of some sort, beef, fish, chicken, mostly chicken our favorite, weekly. My hubby calls it our “Joint Broth.”
“Making broth yourself is one of the top 3 things that you must master yourself in your kitchen” What would you say is the other two? Just wondering, because I am slowing trying to change my families diet. So far we have switched to raw milk only and I started making homemade broth from organic/free range chickens…. Trying to change everything at once is overwhelming…