The growing belief among consumers that nutritious foods are only those made with minimal, easy-to-pronounce ingredients presents a new challenge and educational opportunity for retail professionals: demonstrate that all of our food is chemically composed and ingredients like monosodium glutamate (MSG) – unfamiliar as they may sound – can be safe and offer real health and flavor benefits. This episode takes a deep dive into MSG's history, science, and benefits (like sodium reduction) as a way to equip retail professionals with the facts and support educated food decisions.
References
The growing belief among consumers that nutritious foods are only those made with minimal, easy-to-pronounce ingredients presents a new challenge and educational opportunity for retail professionals: demonstrate that all of our food is chemically composed and ingredients like monosodium glutamate (MSG) – unfamiliar as they may sound – can be safe and offer real health and flavor benefits. This episode takes a deep dive into MSG's history, science, and benefits (like sodium reduction) as a way to equip retail professionals with the facts and support educated food decisions.
References
Welcome to Lost in the Supermarket. I'm your host, Phil Lempert. There's probably no part of the supermarket that's more confusing to shoppers than that. The food ingredients so much misinformation through social media and misreporting makes it so much more difficult for our shoppers to make the best food choices that they can. Today. We're going to clear that all up with two longtime friends and experts to arrange PhD is VP of consumer engagement and strategic development at Ajinomoto health and nutrition, a global company that provides innovative solutions to meet various needs of north American consumers with better tastes, nutrition, health, and wellness. Tia serves as a health and nutrition advocate within the food and nutrition industry, and is focused on the design and implementation of nutrition, research and subsequent translation of new findings into accurate communications that advances human health, Ellie Wilson, Ms RDN and CDN is manager of lifestyles and wellness of price chopper market 32 located in Schenectady New York. She develops and manages nutrition, data and food and health resources for the chain of 130 stores and supports pharmacy quality assurance, private label, public relations, human resources, and sales and marketing teams. She also facilitates public private partnerships focusing on population health, business, and nutrition, linkages, Tia, Ellie, welcome to Lost in the Supermarket. So my first question is what do you both see as the most confusing issues for consumers when reading food labels Tia, why don't you go first?
Tia:Well, first off you alluded to this when you started that, I think there is a lot of misinformation out there. That's being driven by non-experts and food and nutrition propagating their opinions, as well as maybe other opinions that they've heard that they are amplifying out there. And I think it leads to a lot of confusion with people in terms of what's fact and what's myth or, or an extension of, of misinformation. So I think that is what's driving a lot of this confusion. And unfortunately I think that spills over into responses by whether it's the mainstream media, but also retailers. Uh, and even the food industry has a role to play here. For example, the whole clean label movement, I think, is a response to misinformation where the industry has reacted by defining what should be on a food label when science should be what's what's on that food label. And unfortunately we're at a place where science isn't leading the narrative right now. It's, uh, it's in the backseat. And I hope to change that,
Phil:Which is why we have a scientist here to explain it before I get to Ellie. Um, so what can a consumer do when, when they're researching an ingredient or an ingredient statement or a clean label or an ingredient that they've never heard of, or a claim, um, in today's environment, what they're going to do is they're going to go on Google. And as you know, the three of us know, uh, 50% of what you find on Google is true. 50% is either paid for or not true. Um, how, how can the consumer navigate this?
Tia:I think it's similar to navigating medical information. You have to go to a source that is reliable, that is backed by experts and has some sort of not policing, but guidance behind it. So for example, government sites are always good places to go. They are putting forth facts and they are ensuring that scientific consensus is what's being represented. There certainly registered dieticians are the authority on food and health, and always seem to be a good place to go. I say, almost always, because they are like with any profession, you, you may get some people that are on the fringes that are, are taking factual information and maybe extrapolating to a place that isn't in line with scientific consensus, but certainly registered dieticians are a good place to go. And then I know people cringe at this, but food companies, they are required by FDA FTC guidance to be putting facts out there on their websites or with their information. So if you're looking for information on an ingredient, that's not a food package, I would go to that company's website and try to find out what, what is that ingredient and why, why it is there.
Phil:I want to go back to one, one thing that you mentioned as far as going to reputable sources. One of the things that I come across a lot and only, and I have actually communicated about this is there studies that come out that have very small samples. I'm talking about like 40 people and the headlines in major media, you know, take that and extrapolate it to the, the general population. But, you know, it's 40 people. I, we just reported on a study the other day, um, that showed that, uh, a certain ingredient, um, could help, you know, people's health. And then when you looked at well dietary fat, and then when you looked at the people that they studied, and it was a huge study, it was, I think, like 30,000 people over a 10 or 15 year period, what they found is there a claim that increasing the amount of dietary fat would actually reduce heart disease? Well, you look at the people, they were had a BMI, a very low BMI. They exercise daily, they were on the Mediterranean diet. I mean, you looked at all the factors and of course these people are going to have, you know, uh, have had healthy lives, Ellie, you know, what do you see as the major consumer confusion these days?
Elliie:Uh, I have to agree with Tia about, you know, how we are communicating, how, what creates a healthful food, right. Um, but there's that, that actually opens a door for us to help people with, um, discussions about ingredients, especially ingredients like MSG that have been around for such a long time. Um, I'll use one that we're all very familiar with eat what your grandmother ate. Okay. Right. Uh, MSG is discovery as a, as a unique substance is over 100 years old. So I'm pretty sure my grandmother was there. And at that time, she also really embraced it as a way to help her family enjoy what was a much less robust, robust, and culinary oriented, um, food supply and grocery store at the time. Right. So, um, there's an opportunity to help people see, reframe this a little bit, because it is true. It is true. We're getting this information positioned as a negative, um, that in truth is positive. And we know that we have a lot of situations like that right now. We're, we're in polarizing conversations. We need a nudge, not a push.
Phil:So Ellie, you, you brought up a great example with MSG. Um, you know, for decades now, you know, there have been a lot of people and a lot of, um, uh, whether it's on social media or other channels that say, oh, keep away from MSG. You know, it it's horrible. It shouldn't be in products, a Tia put on your food scientist hat, what is MSG? Exactly.
Tia:MSG is simply the sodium salt of the amino acid glutamate. So there are 20 amino acids that make up protein. There are the building blocks of protein. Glutamate is one of those 20. And in fact, it's the most predominant amino acid in nature sitting here today, four pounds roughly of our body weight is made up of glutamate. It's in plants, it's in other animals. It's very, very prevalent. It's the predominant amino acid in breast milk. No one has an issue with glutamate is an amino acid until you attach that one sodium ion and use that chemical sounding name, monosodium glutamate, which is I think really what is the challenge with that ingredient? You know, we're using salt to refer to sodium chloride, but we don't really have a name to refer to monosodium glutamate. Um, which is unfortunate because what it is is umami alongside of the other four basic tastes. And it is that sensation that we taste on our tongue when we're eating anything savory inside.
Phil:So I'm going to ask what might sound like a silly question to both of you, um, being, you know, the scientist in your organization. So what's the big controversy. If as if, as you've explained it it's that simple, is it what you said to you? It's just, you know, somebody picked the wrong name a hundred years ago and it's caught a lot of flack as a result of that, or is there something more, is there any research that sows that MSG shouldn't be part of our profile?
Tia:There's actually a lot of research that shows that MSG is perfectly safe to eat and can be enjoyed as a seasoning like it is around the world. And it's unfortunate that there was a point in history where the perception of MSG radically shift from being positive. It was discovered in 1908, came to market in 1909 in Japan as a seasoning because it makes food taste delicious. It came to the U S in 1917, it was used without issue in the food supply for many decades. And what changed things was a 1968 letter to the editor of the new England journal of medicine. And it was a Chinese American physician that had written in saying that he noticed when he ate Chinese food in the United States, that sometimes he would experience symptoms after the meal, such as numbness pressure in the chest, headaches, et cetera. And in that letter, he says it could be the cooking wine. It could be excessive sodium. That's used in Chinese food restaurants here, or it could be the monosodium glutamate. And at the end of the letter, he has a call to action to anyone in the metal community, asking them if they've noticed any similar symptoms or if they could follow up on this research wise. And a couple of scientists did. And instead of taking a, an approach, looking at human consumption of this ingredient and looking at symptoms, they started injecting large doses directly into the abdomens or the brains of mice and rats, which makes them very, very ill. It's the same effect you would note if you were injecting a large dose of any substance into a rat or mouse, it tends to produce ill effects that would include water as well as air. And that really is what cemented that negativity around MSG, not research, not anything around a clinical finding. Uh, it was just this letter coupled with a couple of animal experience experiments, which is not how you would be testing the safety of a dietary ingredient.
Phil:Well, it's very similar when I think about saccharin, you know, when, um, when saccharin first came out, everybody was using it. Then I think there's one study in Canada, very similar, where they injected some mice with, you know, a thousand times the dose of saccharin and low and hold. Um, it, it produced problems and saccharin. The last time I looked had less issues than a lot of the other artificial sweeteners that are out there, but in consumers' minds, they still say, oh, sacrum, it's not good for us.
Tia:That's unfortunate when animal research can, can determine the safety of an ingredient exclusively when we have lots of ways to be able to test the impact of dietary ingredients on human health.
Phil:So Ellie, besides the MSG benefits, as it relates to flavor you, mommy, does it have any other value in the food supply?
Elliie:It has a tremendous value in food supply, especially in light of our opportunities to improve sodium profile of foods. Um, we are, we know last week, uh, the FDA released new sodium voluntary sodium targets. And one of the things that that I have encountered, and I know some of my peers have encountered in food. Retail is, you know, as we, as our companies develop products, sometimes we are actually combining ingredients from different companies and on their own, they look great or they have an okay profile. But then when we start to layer them in a product, we start to see real challenges with things like sodium. Now, we look at the fact that we are serving our communities, including our employees, right, our, our whole community, um, with these foods and with our own label or our private labels, et cetera, there's a really unique opportunity to bring benefit and flavor into these products and lower sodium at the same time, you know, to Tia's point about, you know, the end years about how a product is named in a way that the clean label type of, of discussion has with MSG has kind of thrown the baby out with the bath water, right. Simply because it's a chemical sounding name. So that is our opportunity again, is to reframe and reframe the company. It keeps even internally. I mean, we have internal customers to speak to as well, dieticians working in food retail. And as we even marched further into a food as medicine opportunity, we really have to change some of the, uh, the profiles of foods. I mean, we have a hundred something like 115 million Americans have high blood pressure. That is a lot of our customers. 25% of Americans have, are one in four dies of heart disease. That's 25% of our customer base. So this is a real opportunity to shift perception and create opportunity value in lowering sodium enhancing flavor. What a great opportunity to enhance the flavor of vegetables so that we can move people towards that five servings per day, that only one in 12 or close to now, you know, so there's real opportunities here.
Phil:Let me, let me feel back the curtain a little bit. Um, you have a conversation you're heavily involved in, in the development of store brands. Um, you have a conversation you're trying to make your store brands healthier, meeting, more consumer needs. Um, you're, you're that voice of reason. Um, and you go to your buyer, uh, or product developer and say, you know, MSG should be in this product. Talk to me about that conversation.
Elliie:I think it depends on the group of products that we're discussing and how that plays out is an education moment, right? And it is an opportunity to use research such as the consumer, um, research showing that this is less concerning than other types of issues in food ingredients. Um, so it's really an education moment. And as far as my role, my role is part of the team. Um, and we all bring our information to the table and say, how will we best serve the customer? How will we best serve business? And that is an opportunity. This is really an opportunity to bring those two together.
Phil:So Tia, I'm going to put you on the spot here for a minute. Um, there are retailers around the country who have banned MSG, who have said, you know, um, our consumers just don't want ingredients, um, that have MSG in them. What do you have to say about that? And what do you say to them? Hmm.
Tia:I think it's unfortunate for two main reasons. One Ellie just alluded to, it's a tool that's very effective at being able to reduce the sodium anywhere from 25 to 60%, depending on what the formula is. So we are in a place right now where nine out of 10 Americans are consuming too much. Sodium MSG alone is not going to solve for that. But it's another tool that's not currently being used because of this perception issue that is reinforced with these retailers and these no-no lists. So that's that's point number one point number two is that MSG is a part of food culture around the world. It is an important ingredient in Asian food culture it's used in, uh, uh, different Latin countries. It's an important ingredient that is inherent to those foods and dishes that the people in those regions enjoy. And so by putting an ingredient like that on this no-no list, you are, you are compromising the integrity of, of those different food cultures. How can you bring a Asian, traditional, Asian food product into a retailer and ban MSG? I mean, that's just, I think it's being culturally insensitive when you're not using science to, to make these decisions. And instead you're responding to what you think your consumer is looking for.
Phil:And also let's not forget survey after survey. I don't care who does it always says that number one is tastes for the shoppers as it relates to food. Um, so I mean, if it doesn't taste good and we've got an ingredient that helps something tastes good, there there's this fighting going on. So Ellie, um, as an RD, what recommendations do you have for other RDS and other health experts and retail professionals on how they can educate consumers about MSG? So we can start to shift the narrative. So it moves away from this no-no list to a yes, yes. Less
Elliie:So there's, I think some really great opportunities. Communication is key, right? So going back to my statement about your grandmother ate it, let's leverage some of the ways that we communicate, um, benefit and, and also talk about ingredients that are bringing benefits. So in a way, it's the company you keep, right? So, um, Tia mentioned potassium chloride earlier. Well, we're now reframing that as potassium salt, as a way to help consumers see that this is an ingredient that is okay in food, because we need more potassium in our food supply. That's also part of helping us control some of these population health, heart concerns. Um, think about, you know, the evolution of how different foods have moved into our culture. Remember when Greek yogurt was new, you know, I mean, we have, um, we have really powerful capacity in our marketing and our storytelling, um, MSG again, having that history and that length of time. And, you know, in a way it's a little bit of an underdog story, right? So he was Clark Kent. And, but all the time he's been Superman, there's an opportunity here. This is a, I love the toolkit approach. My son is, uh, has a, this scout tool and it's, uh, it's, appliers, it's a screwdriver, it's a solar panel. It can walk your cat. You know, this thing is just amazing, but MSG has a lot of those same kind of characteristics in that it helps us include sodium, which absolutely has functional quality in our food products without having it be an excessive. It is a simple substitute it's accessible. Um, it is a, you know, there's, uh, uh, Dorothy in her red shoes, you said, pull back the curtain. So it made me think of the wizard of Oz and Dorothy, and had those red shoes on. She had the solution to some of these problems the whole time. So it's just a reframing, I think.
Phil:Yeah. So, so T you mentioned research before there's scientific research and there's behavioral research. Um, is there any research that talks about the behavior side of MSG?
Tia:We've done one study with a researcher named Jason Reese, trying to peel the onion and find out sort of what's at the root of some of the negativity with MSG. And it's, I guess it's this, as you would expect, very few people, if any, have personally had a reaction to MSG, but they have a negative emotion towards it because of something that they read or that they heard. And, and I think that's probably true of a number of different food substances that experiences that we've had either through others or, or ourselves kind of reinforce, uh, a perception that despite actual biological research showing there is no impact. It's hard to overcome that emotional aspect.
Phil:So Ella, you're talking to consumers Dan, and day out, how do we build on findings like this, to change the behavior, to inform consumers, to empower consumers about these attitudes, that they've got knowledge, not only about MSG, but many foods, different beverages, ingredients, um, issues that matter in our food supply, um, how, how does an RD do this and how do you do this?
Elliie:Oh, again, you know, helping people understand. I mean, one of the biggest surprises that, um, that is for people is to find out that glutamate is already in their body, that this is already part of their biology already part of our foods. So that does tend to lower some of the, you know, kind of opens the door to a, okay, look, I can learn more about this makes, let me understand this better people also like me. And again, we can use some of the tools that we use, or that are used in social media secret. Everybody likes to know the secret, right? So this is a way that we can educate through some of that, um, that negative and that stigma situation. We also can even look at this from a segmentation point of view, which is a lot of how retailers communicate and food companies communicate. So going back to that health, um, and, and grouping, you know, really frighteningly and sadly the number one killer of young mothers is heart disease. What's an opportunity here to these are the customers we're focusing on, especially in those digital channels, what an education opportunity that we can help them, you know, dispel that myth. And we've certainly had our share of myths in food. So we can, again, we can use these channels and, and even probiotics who knew what they were back then. Now everybody knows what they are. I mean, we've actually been able to create markets for sour beverages with some really gnarly looking floaty stuff. So I think that we have an opportunity to turn this, to get an attitude and information adjustment, again, that nudge behavioral economics opportunity and ensure that we can, you know, not throw the baby out with the bath water. We can reposition something like MSG with other substances that we're counting on. Um, what flavors, cheese, you know, uh, penicillium Roque 40, right? Uh, with blue cheese or, um, our probiotics, you know, everyone touts their actual species. They right there, the species are in the ingredient lists on yogurt. You know, these are, these are the, this is the company that we want MSG to keep. And we want people to understand that this is the group it's in. So I think that there's some real opportunities to educate through that. And as we look at now, there's 163 food categories in that, um, FDA guidance that was released last week, but there's definitely some, um, some bigger players when it comes to sodium content in the food supply that should probably be looked at first. And that may be that, that nudging everything just a little bit is why they're trying to do that. Because when we just have one deli meat item that is low sodium, and it's a roasted Turkey, and we call it low sodium roasted Turkey can wait for that. So there's an opportunity here, again, to reframe with flavor and benefit. This is, you know, a really great example of where the rubber meets the road of how do we use science, culinary science to move us and continue look at how retailers have taken care of their communities over the last couple of years, as we've gone through this unprecedented time, they applied science to make sure that their employees were safe and their shoppers were safe. This is culinary science and a multifaceted, multifaceted culinary tool. We can use to keep that type of commitment to our shoppers in our communities moving forward.
Phil:Well, it's been a great discussion. I want to thank you both so much for joining us today. Um, Tia, if people want to know more information about MSG, is there a website that they should go to?
Tia:Yes. We created a website called knowmsg.com, K N O w MSG, the plan where it's there. This is just an educational site where we've got all of the research that's been done on the safety of MSG, as well as the sodium reduction studies recipes, and then kind of what we've been doing from a company standpoint to try to get out there and help people understand the facts about the ingredient.
Phil:Thank you both. And thank you for joining us today on lost in the supermarket. Be sure to check out our archives and future episodes at retail, dietitians.com.