Part Three: Critique
By the 80’s, MSG was caught in a vicious cycle of confirmation bias and irresponsible reporting, perpetuated by the medical and media communities. Chinese restaurants were empty, food manufacturers were hurting, and lawsuits were being filed.
Good God.
This is infinitely more embarrassing in light of the fact that MSG has since been repeatedly, unequivocally, and scientifically proven safe to eat. Ever since research began on the compound in 1908, no clinical study has ever been able to replicate the symptoms of this so-called “Chinese-Restaurant Syndrome.” Hundreds of well-blinded, long-term placebo experiments show that MSG does not cause discomfort. It does not cause cancer, or impact cognitive functioning in any way. Any and all evidence to the contrary was, ultimately, anecdotal.
In 1995, the Food and Drug Administration asked an independent scientific group, the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, to study MSG’s safety. It found that only a small number of people experienced any side effects, and that was only after consuming six times the normal serving of MSG, on an empty stomach.
So if you’ve been walking around, blaming that so-called “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome?” It’s all in your head. You know what actually causes it? Eating like a goddamn pig. If you’re not feeling so great after binging cheap takeout, tell me – what’s the more likely culprit? The superhuman portions of salt, grease, and starch you just gulped down at double-tempo? Or the ethnic background of the person who prepared your meal? Your response speaks volumes.
The incident offers a rare look at the strange way cultural prejudice can influence the way we talk about science. After all, it’s unlikely that all these doctors were overt racists. It’s improbable that they were knowingly researching in bad faith. At best, they were indulging a natural curiosity. At worst, they’d unconsciously picked up and amplified larger stereotypes of the time.
In the 60’s, the Asian American population was still largely seen as a group of exotic, strange outsiders. As good as their food was, assimilated Americans still held massive distrust towards unassimilated Asian people. Like all immigrants, they worked harder, for far less money, making the labor market more competitive. And animosity over Japan’s role in WWII was still roiling beneath the postwar façade of civility. While science’s focus was to medically determine MSG’s role in so-called Chinese-Restaurant Syndrome, the media’s focus subtly shifted towards who could most-creatively rag on Asian identities and stereotypically Asian foods. Before long, MSG became a scapegoat for everything that was silly, frivolous, and dangerous about Chinese identity.
But in this case, it represents an unacceptable lack of scientific literacy among people in Media, not to be savvy enough to know the difference between a prank letter, and a true scientific study. At the same time, it exposes how impossible it is to stop rolling stones. How primordial cultural forces predispose modern journalists and readers alike to widely accept science that isn’t necessarily true.
But the real irony was, once the media established this worldview, doctors set about to prove it true. Bringing us full circle from treating Chinese-restaurant syndrome like a joke, to studying it as a real phenomenon. This controversy over MSG points to a racism so deeply-engrained in our culture that we were willing to accept, at face value, such a bizarre and negative perception of another culture’s food. Hungry, not for noodles, but for another way to rationalize away our bias.
But no matter how many articles appear exposing the fallacy of Chinese Restaurant Syndrome, prejudice against MSG, itself, persists. And that’s the biggest casualty, here.
The people who lost their restaurants, their livelihoods, and reputations suffered greatly at the time. But Chinese food is still the number-one take out option in the United States. Chinese restaurants still outnumber McDonalds, KFCs, Pizza Huts, Taco Bells, and Wendy’s, combined. They’re doing OK now, to say the least. But only a precious few can still get away with using MSG. And the rest? They know about all the superstitious, pseudoscientific baggage associated with it. They know that it’s ingrediens non grata. That it’s not worth the complaints it will inevitably cause.
For years, people have missed out on an entire dimension of flavor.
And some people may never know. According to a survey by the International Food Information Council, 42% of the population still actively avoids MSG. That’s slightly less than the percentage who avoid artificial flavors and colors, but still more than those who avoid caffeine, GMOs, or gluten. Most major food brands have these weird, simpering information pages about the substance on their website, and prominently disclaim to consumers which of its products do and do not contain this chemical pariah.
Meanwhile, a class-action lawsuit filed against the Campbells soup company this year claims that, although the labels include a disclaimer stating that a “small amount of glutamate occurs naturally in yeast extract,” a reasonable consumer would not notice this qualifying language, and understands “no MSG added” to mean no glutamates are present in the food.
Meanwhile, reviewers of Chinese restaurants on Yelp still complain about racing hearts and tingling limbs after their meal.
Insanity. The placebo effect, run amok in the minds of the casually racist.
