Latest from Food Politics: Industry-funded study of the week: MSG of all things

The study: Maher, C. , Alcorn M. , Childress A. , Dawson J. A. , and Galyean S. 2025. “Increasing Vegetable Intake Using Monosodium Glutamate in a Randomized Controlled Trial: A Culinary Medicine Intervention. ” Food Science & Nutrition 13, no. 6: ...

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by Marion Nestle   June 30 2025 Industry-funded study of the week: MSG of all things The study: Maher, C. , Alcorn M., Childress A., Dawson J. A., and Galyean S.. 2025. “Increasing Vegetable Intake Using Monosodium Glutamate in a Randomized Controlled Trial: A Culinary Medicine Intervention.” Food Science & Nutrition 13, no. 6: e70441. 10.1002/fsn3.70441. Purpose: “This study aimed to explore the effectiveness of monosodium glutamate (MSG) as a flavor enhancer in increasing vegetable intake compared to sodium chloride (NaCl) alone combined with a digital culinary medicine education program.” Results: “The 50/50 NaCl/MSG group showed a mean increase in vegetable intake from 1.46 to 1.55 cups/day, while the NaCl group showed a decrease from 1.33 to 0.95 cups/day.” Conclusion: “Although the differences in vegetable intake were not statistically significant, the findings suggest that MSG could enhance vegetable palatability and intake, aligning with the principles of culinary medicine.” Conflicts of Interest: “The authors declare a conflict of interest due to Ajinomoto’s involvement in the funding and design of this study. Ajinomoto is a company that manufactures and sells MSG products. Their contribution included financial support and assistance in the study design, which could be perceived as influencing the outcomes of the research.” Funding: “This study was funded by the American Society for Nutrition and its Foundation, grant number 1195905, and the APC [article processing charge] was funded by Ajinomoto. Health & Nutrition North America Inc.” Comment: The idea here is that if you sprinkle MSG rather than salt (NaCl) on your vegetables, they will taste better and you will eat more of them.  The study produced a non-significant result but is given a positive spin (“MSG could enhance…”).  The shocker here is the funding.  The authors say Ajinomoto funded it, but the funding statement mentions the American Society for Nutrition, an organization of nutrition researchers and clinicians to which I belong.  I had no idea ASN was funding research, let alone industry-funded research.  I have long been concerned about ASN’s industry partnerships, which I believe compromise the ability of the organization to issue advice on nutrition.  This is an old issue, but one that it seems time to bring up again. The post Industry-funded study of the week: MSG of all things appeared first on Food Politics by Marion Nestle       Related Stories Industry-funded study of the week: soy   More Recent Articles Weekend Reading: Planetary Eating Annals of Innovative Food Marketing: Snacks to Stoners What the USDA is up to these days MAHA: Let the lobbying begin Industry-funded study of the week: soy This message was sent to edwardlorilla2123.tower@blogger.com. Manage your subscription here. Marion Nestle, Department of Nutrition and Food Studies, NYU, 411 Lafayette, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10003-7035, United States marion.nestle@nyu.edu Safely Unsubscribe • Archives • Preferences • Contact • Subscribe • Privacy

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Latest from Food Politics: Weekend Reading: Planetary Eating

Gidon Eshel.   Planetary Eating: The Hidden Links between Your Plate and Our Cosmic Neighborhood.   MIT Press, 2025. I did a blurb for this book: Planetary Eating gives us a geophysicist’s deep analysis of the environmental cost of beef production ...

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by Marion Nestle   June 27 2025 Weekend Reading: Planetary Eating Gidon Eshel.  Planetary Eating: The Hidden Links between Your Plate and Our Cosmic Neighborhood.  MIT Press, 2025. I did a blurb for this book: Planetary Eating gives us a geophysicist’s deep analysis of the environmental cost of beef production and the benefits of replacing meat with plants.  Salads, he argues, are a blueprint for rebellion against corporate-run agricultural systems. This book is divided into two parts. The first is a deep dive into calculating the environmental cost of eating beef. The second is how climate affects agriculture. Eshel has fun with this.  He notes that his comments on meat-eating typically get responses: roughly evenly split between the blindingly enlightened, zero doubt vegan activists, and angry self-appointed beef and big ag defenders.  And when I publish papers that suggest that in some circumstances beef may have some productive roles to play (it does), the tenor of the comments remains unchanged, but the camps neatly reverse, like Prussian troops in formation. His main argument: “you cannot understand food and agriculture without invoking basic physics, thermodynamics, biology, and other pertinent sciences.” He’s not kidding.  There’s a lot of all of that in this book and math calculations and formulas as well.  But what he’s trying to say makes sense. I loved his analysis of why dairy farms do better in Texas and Arizona, states that would seem to be Inhospitable to moist- and cool-loving cattle.  To combat cattle’s exceptional heat burden due to their large size, high performance, and large metabolic health output, migrating to where sweat dries fast, thus dripping minimally, is essential.  This requires near-surface air characteristics that strongly favor rapid evaporation.  Because few processes promote these conditions more than subsidence, which outside of the tropics is maximized downstream of mountain ranges that vigorous prevailing winds pass over, modern dairy migrate to those areas…Far from perplexing, locating dairy operations just east of the Rockies or the Coast Range now makes perfect sense, because that is the location of maximum effect of planetary waves the interactions of the prevailing westerly winds with the mountains excite.  And in that most coherent downstream node, the main effect for our purposes is subsidence; more subsidence, more comfortable and productive dairy cows. The post Weekend Reading: Planetary Eating appeared first on Food Politics by Marion Nestle        More Recent Articles Annals of Innovative Food Marketing: Snacks to Stoners What the USDA is up to these days MAHA: Let the lobbying begin Industry-funded study of the week: soy Weekend viewing: My Hopkins' Graduation Address This message was sent to edwardlorilla2123.tower@blogger.com. Manage your subscription here. Marion Nestle, Department of Nutrition and Food Studies, NYU, 411 Lafayette, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10003-7035, United States marion.nestle@nyu.edu Safely Unsubscribe • Archives • Preferences • Contact • Subscribe • Privacy

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