Kellogg's join forces with creator of MSG
The news today has reported on a new merger between cereal giant Kellogg's and the Ajinomoto company of Japan, the inventor of the world's most widespread flavour enhancer.
The companies initially plan to focus on developing products that deliver weight-management, sugar-reduction and sodium-reduction benefits.
“The potential for synergy between Kellogg’s strong marketing and product development capabilities combined with Ajinomoto’s excellence in basic and applied research is unique and exciting,” said Masatoshi Ito Ajinomoto, the company’s president and chief executive officer.
There is no doubt that these two giants of the processed food industry can indeed create foods that are lower in sugar and lower in salt, especially as the Ajinomoto produces exactly the ingredients needed to accomplish such a challenge - Aspartame and Monosodium Glutamate (MSG)! Both, by the way which have been shown in numerous instances to be neurotoxic. Dr Russell Blaylock refers to both of these ingredients as excitotoxins because they literally over excite our brain cells, once they pass the blood-brain barrier, to the point of cell death. These compounds have been found to damage the arcuate nucleus of the brain, the region that monitors and manages our appetite. It is also the same region of the brain that responds to addictive substances creating pleasure and satisfaction. That sounds like a recipe for greater sales to me. Create new products to target the health conscious markets like weight loss, sugar free and low sodium by using aspartame to sweeten and MSG to flavour, then these ingredients will fire up the pleasure centres in the brain, damage the appetite sensors that stop over-eating and finally addict the user in the process!
MSG has also been found in the only human trial to study it's effect on obesity to cause an increase in body weight even when excess calories and physical activity are factored out. That means if two identical people ate exactly the same diet and performed exactly the same exercise, but one consumed MSG and the other didn't, the individual consuming MSG would gain the most weight. Although not proven, because aspartame works in a very similar way it is highly likely that aspartame would bring about the same effects.
Why would people do this? Why is Kellogg's now in an alliance with Ajinomoto when they are meant to be a health food company - they produce highly refined, extruded breakfast cereals and try to pass that off as nutritious too, don't they? With MSG being sold to the tune of 1.5 million tonnes and sales growing at a rate of 6% a year it is clear the demand from processed food manufacturers is nothing short of phenomenal. Both Kellogg's and Ajinomoto are leaders in their respective markets with net sales of $13 billion in sales during 2009. They obviously feel they can continue to dominate their industries with a combined effort to develop new ways of adding these highly processed foods into our food chain.
Yet another reason to eat according to Mother Nature and stay away from the foods that man believes will make us healthy.
