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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?
Good topic Sarah. I just read an entire book on this topic, called Excitotoxins, which gets into the biology of exactly how MSG kills brain cells, not only in the hypothalamus, but for babies, elderly and others with compromised blood-brain barriers, elsewhere in the brain. I also learned from this book and from other sources that some of the alternate names for MSG, in addition to the ones you listed, are: Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein (HVP), Hydrolyzed Plant Protein (HPP), Autolyzed Plant Protein, Sodium Caseinate, Calcium Caseinate and Textured Protein. At least those are the ones with a very HIGH percentage of MSG. There are TONS more, like Brown Rice Syrup, Milk Powder, Natural Flavors (also listed on your package above) and others that contain a bit less, but still some glutamate.
Thank you for posting this! I’ve been making my own broth for a year now, but still know a lot of people who think they are having something healthy when they use this product. In the stores near me, this stuff can be up to $4 a pop – those manufacturers must be laughing all the way to the bank! I’ve also wondered how they make it, like if they use mechanically separated chicken or do something to homogenize the broth and give it its taste/texture. It’s certainly not made by simmering bones and vegetables for 8 hours, and it doesn’t have any gelatin!
at present we are condemning the use of non veges and the manufacturers are misleading the eaters/users and adding more dangerous preservatives and unwanted contents in the products.i am not worried for my self but worried who are real users. they are be fooling to the users. so for health building purposes they are using and indirectly inviting many incurable diseases.
Sarah, Is there any additional assurance if it is labeled. “No MSG, No MSG added” ? Not for broth, but other products?
Email me a picture of the label and I will look. I doubt it though. The No MSG thing is such a scam. I don’t know how they get away with it. If they go to the trouble to say “NO MSG” and “NO MSG Added” it seems that they “doth protesteth too much” if you know what I mean.
I know what you mean. I read somewhere before that the scam was in “No MSG added” only. Which means it may have it… they just didn’t intentionally put it in. Applegate bacon claims they are MSG Free…. do you buy it?
Beware all food manufacturers! If you lie on your ingredients label, you may find yourself “outed” on my blog complete with revealing and embarrassing photos!
You go girl!
Thank you so much Sarah!
@Gege, check westonaprice.org and click on local chapters to see if there are any in your area or at least somewhere in your country. If not, you can consider me your virtual Chapter Leader 🙂
I consider you my virtual chapter leader and I live in a city with 2 actual leaders. Sadly they are more concerned with making money on their websites then contributing anything to our community. I thank you for all the FREE information you provide on your site!!!
Viva Las Vegas!
Michelle – Ann Marie (aka Cheeseslave) lives in Las Vegas now and she kicks butt when it comes to Nourishing Traditions. She’s on Facebook and has her own blog (Cheeseslave) and I bet she could be very helpful!
Tina,
Thanks for looking out, that is kind of you. Yes she is one of our two “leaders.” She would be very helpful to me if I wanted to pay almost two hundred dollars (per category) to watch her videos. I agree with Teresa’s comments. Why even bother being a leader if you aren’t going to lead? Oh well. Enough said.
PS. Sarah, I am sorry I posted this on your site. Just VERY annoyed at certain “leadership,” feel free to delete my comments if you want. But THANK YOU, for your work- either way!
Same here Michelle! Mine never even has responded to me :/
Same thing here. Why be the chapter leader if you are not going to respond to people needing help. Sarah has helped me through her videos and blog more than anyone. I do appeciate you very much Sarah! Send one out to the chapter leaders who really care. Thank you Guys!
I am a third person who never got a response from the chapter leader for my area when I was trying to start a traditional diet and had joined the WAPF. Thank God for Sarah and her videos! Nourishing Traditions has great recipes and so does the GAPS book, but when you have never cooked a thing from scratch it is exceptionally overwhelming to even know how to make the basic ingredients in those recipes. I had only contacted the chapter leaders here to see if they knew of a responsible farmer. Thank goodness I discovered the Eat Wild site to answer that question.
There actually has been a study, published in the journal “Obesity” that did link human obesity with MSG intake. MSG damages the leptin receptors in the hypothalamus and even when the study was controlled for caloric intake, the more MSG you eat, the higher your BMI.
Great article!
i buy organic beef broth just to have on hand when i run out of homemade – ingredients: organic beef broth (water, organic beef) organic onions, organic celery, organic carrots, organic beef flavor, organic garlic, natural flavors, sea salt, organic spice. — so this probably contains MSG too then?!
Its in the “natural flavor”!
Once again, thanks for this important reminder to READ LABELS !
Here is our rule of thumb when shopping at the grocery store:
If the ingredients on the label list something we don’t already have in our kitchen, we do not buy that product.
Last time I checked, we didn’t have a container of “organic chicken flavor” or “natural flavor” (yeast extract or no yeast extract!) in our cupboard, so product would not even make it into our basket.