New Rule Would Warn of Glutamate
A new labeling rule proposed by the Food and Drug Administration would require food producers to disclose whether their products contain free glutamate--the active ingredient in monosodium glutamate.
Currently, monosodium glutamate must be disclosed only if it is added to food in its pure, ingredient form. But free glutamate is present in many ingredients other than monosodium glutamate, including hydrolyzed protein, gelatin, plant protein extract, sodium caseinate, calcium caseinate, yeast extract, textured protein, yeast food and autolyzed yeast.
It can even be present in soy sauce, pectin and other ingredients commonly listed on the labels of processed foods. Some of these include malt extract or flavoring, barley malt, bouillon, stock, broth, carrageen, maltodextrin, whey protein, natural flavors and flavoring, soy protein, anything ultra-pasteurized, anything protein-fortified, anything enzyme-modified and anything fermented.
In fact, some foods that proudly advertise “No MSG” actually contain large amounts of free glutamate.
A stroll through your supermarket will show that these ingredients are more common than one might expect. Indeed, it is difficult to find a brand of canned tuna that does not include hydrolyzed soy protein--a particularly potent source of free glutamate.
Under the proposed rule, manufacturers of prepared foods made with additives that contain free glutamate would have to disclose its presence on the label. Further, foods that contain those additives would no longer be able to advertise themselves as MSG-free.
Glutamic acid is an amino acid, one of the building blocks of protein. It is most commonly found in food in its salt form, glutamate, which comes in two forms--that which is bound to protein and that which is free of protein.
Free glutamate is used as a flavoring, yet it has no flavor itself. Instead, it affects the way the brain senses flavors. Exactly how is not clearly understood. Many scientists believe that it stimulates receptors in the tongue to augment meat-like flavors. Other studies have shown that the body uses glutamate as a nerve impulse transmitter in the brain.
The exact chemical basis for some people’s reactions to free glutamate is still unclear. Some scientists say it only becomes a problem when it becomes unbound in the manufacturing process. Free glutamate that occurs naturally in vegetables like tomatoes, they say, isn’t harmful.
The FDA says there is no difference. And according to the agency’s Advanced Notice of Proposed Rule-Making, or ANPR, on MSG, the new regulation would “apply to foods that contain free glutamate from any source.”
MSG--the first product making use of free glutamate--was first isolated in Japan in 1908 by Kikunae Ikeda, who had noticed that the seaweed kombu was used as a flavor enhancer. It did not become popular in the United States until after World War II.
Then its popularity spread rapidly, especially with food manufacturers who found it to be an inexpensive way to develop better flavors. Today, estimates of the amount of pure MSG used in the United States range as high as 45 tons a year.
The issue of individual sensitivity to monosodium glutamate and similar products is highly controversial and has been the subject of books, newsletters, petitions and even lawsuits.
Critics say the presence of free glutamate can trigger reactions in people who are sensitive to it ranging from dizziness and shortness of breath to headaches and drowsiness.
But at least one neuroscientist, Washington University’s John W. Olney, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, claims free glutamate can cause brain damage--particularly in children.
The Glutamate Assn., the Institute of Food Technologists, the Meat Institute and other food industry groups, both in this country and abroad, say these claims are unfounded.
“While anecdotal reports of adverse reactions . . . exist,” representatives of the Meat Institute wrote to the FDA, “there [are] no verifiable scientific data establishing that the levels of these ingredients used in the food supply could cause adverse reactions in the general population.”
Moreover, the food industry says glutamate labeling would unfairly stigmatize products many consumers have been happily eating for a long time. “The proposed warning statement would carry with it the implication that the average consumer, who has been consuming free glutamate-containing products for years, should now, suddenly, be concerned,” wrote one.
The FDA’s proposal is based, in part, on a two-day panel by the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, or FASEB, that was called in 1993 to review the existing scientific literature on glutamate. It released its report in 1995, finding that, though MSG is safe at normally consumed levels for the public at large, there are people who are sensitive to it.
An ANPR is just the first step in a lengthy process that could result in a new regulation. After evaluating all comments, the FDA will either forget the whole thing or decide a new regulation is needed. After another comment period, a specific regulation will be proposed. After yet another comment period, the regulation will be announced. After still another, more limited, comment period, the regulation could become law.
In all, the process from ANPR to law takes at least two years. The first comment period closes today, but consumers interested in expressing themselves can still contact the FDA or their elected representatives.
“We are still very much in a listening mode, and if someone disagrees with us or if they have data contrary to what we have available to us, we want to hear it,” says Catherine Bailey, a science policy analyst for the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition who has been working with MSG for seven years.
While the new rule may seem like a victory for the anti-MSG forces, critics say it is too little, too late. In fact, the FDA had advanced to the proposed regulation stage--a step beyond ANPR--in 1993 with a rule that would have required labeling of all free glutamate in food. That rule, Bailey says, “is not being actively pursued at the moment.”
An important difference between the 1993 regulation and the regulation that is now proposed is that the new regulation is based on a minimum sensitivity dose of MSG of 3 grams, where the 1993 rule had no sensitivity dose at all.
What that means is that free glutamate below the threshold level (figured by an elaborate mathematical process that begins with the 3-gram assumption) need not be labeled.
But the way that figure was arrived at, say MSG critics, is flawed. It is based, they say, on only one experiment where subjects were fed only 3-gram doses. While that may establish that some people do react to 3 grams of MSG, they say, it does not prove that smaller amounts are safe, as the FASEB and the FDA seem to be interpreting it.
“I’ve heard some of that,” Bailey says. “But what we’re looking for is the best science available and what we got from the FASEB report points to 3 grams. If there is other data available, I’d like to know about it.”
In fact, another study reviewed in the FASEB report showed that some asthmatics are sensitive to doses of as little as one-half gram. But while the FASEB report found that this study was “reasonably well designed,” the FDA says that it was too flawed to establish a cause-and-effect relationship between reactions and such small amounts of glutamate, and that the agency is still looking for studies to support lower doses.
