May is Asian heritage month in the U.S. and Canada, but most of us probably celebrate the Asian diaspora year-round by enjoying one of the greatest gifts from the other edge of the Pacific Rim: Asian food. But sometimes, in our uncommon hurry to enjoy the ramen or the curry, we may find ourselves slurping up all kinds of bad takes along with our good takeout. Ken Jennings, of Jeopardy! fame is obviously not Asian, but (fun fact!) he grew up in Asia, which sort of qualifies him to set us straight on some of the biggest culinary misconceptions about the world's biggest continent. Check, please!
The Debunker: Does MSG Cause "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome"?
In 1968, a Chinese-American doctor named Robert Ho Man Kwok wrote a light-hearted letter to the New England Journal of Medicine, wondering about a strange health complaint he noticed after eating in American Chinese restaurants: numbness in the back, heart palpitations, and general weakness. Dr. Kwok wondered what to blame this on. Chinese cooking wine? Foods high in sodium? Dozens of readers eagerly responded that they had noticed "Chinese restaurant syndrome" as well, and the conversation began to center around the food additive MSG.
Monosodium glutamate, or MSG, is a flavor enhancer commonly used in Asian food. China eats almost two tons of weijing ("flavor essence," they call it) every year. But the additive with the opaque abbreviation must have sounded suspect to western ears, because here MSG became a scapegoat. A high-profile study linked large dosages of MSG to neurological problems in lab mice, and Chinese restaurants were forced to put reassuring "NO MSG!" notices in their windows and on menus. In 1986, an FDA committee refused to ban or put a warning on MSG, but they allowed that it might cause short-term reactions in some sensitive people.
But decades of research has now been done on the link between MSG and MSC ("MSG Symptom Complex," the less racist way to say "Chinese restaurant syndrome"). Not a single rigorous test has ever linked glutamates to any ill effects in humans whatsoever, even among people who believe they have an MSG sensitivity. Give them monosodium glutamate in the form of a pill rather than in a dish of moo shu pork, and their reaction is the same as to a placebo. This makes sense, because MSG isn't some scary laboratory product. In fact, glutamates are found naturally in foods ranging from mushrooms to Parmesan cheese, providing the rich, savory taste that foodies now call umami. In other words, "Chinese restaurant syndrome" is bogus—or at least, it had more to do with Cold War-era suspicions about foreigners than it ever did with food chemistry.
Quick Quiz: What TV show aired its breakthrough episode, "The Chinese Restaurant," on May 23, 1991, over the objections of NBC?
Ken Jennings is the author of eleven books, most recently his Junior Genius Guides, Because I Said So!, and Maphead. He's also the proud owner of an underwhelming Bag o' Crap. Follow him at ken-jennings.com or on Twitter as @KenJennings.