In August 1968, a rather innocuous letter to the editor was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Dr Ho Man Kwok had written in speculating on the reason he felt so ghastly after eating at a Chinese restaurant. Was it the soy sauce or the cooking wine? Or perhaps, he offered up, it was the monosodium glutamate seasoning - MSG. The prominent symptoms, as he described them, were numbness at the back of his neck, general weakness and heart palpitations. Surely Dr Kwok hadn’t just overeaten or sampled a few too many beverages during the evening. There must be another explanation and something else to blame. The New England Journal, which clearly did a lot of background checking, thorough research and fact-finding *ahem* decided to run with this madness and the term “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome” was coined. And so, the flurry of MSG bad-mouthing and hysteria took off. Now, more than five decades later surveys suggest that a whopping 43% of Americans believe that MSG is bad for you. And we wouldn’t be surprised if Australia fell in line with this statistic. The “syndrome” has exploded to encompass symptoms far beyond Dr Kwok’s initial complaint. People report muscle tightening, burning sensations, and almost fainting. And, most notably, an irresistible urge to take off all your clothes. We can certainly blame MSG for that... But is this all bollocks? Are there any real studies from the whole of science that prove or disprove these theories? After a few sprinkles of MSG in their beer, Will takes Rod on a journey through racism, hysteria and deliciousness all in the name of acquitting MSG in the court of public opinion. Previous Episodes Mentioned: Musical Maladies - And Fakes! Sources Jennifer LeMesurier’s Poroi (An Interdisciplinary Journal of Rhetorical Analysis and Invention) article: Uptaking Race: Genre, MSG, and Chinese Dinner Ian Mosby’s: ‘That Won-Ton Soup Headache’: The Chinese Restaurant Syndrome, MSG and the Making of American Food, 1968–1980 Michael Blanding’s article in Colgate Magazine: The Strange Case of Dr Ho Man Kwok Richard D Lyons article in the New York Times: ‘Chinese Restaurant Syndrome’ Puzzles Doctors. May 19 1968 Herbert Schaumburg and Robert Byck’s article in Science: Monosodium L-Glutamate: Its Pharmacology and Role in the Chinese Restaurant Syndrome This American Life’s The Long Fuse The Washington Post’s: Beware of musher's knee and hooker's elbow Umami Information Center: Kikunae Ikeda See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ask this episode

“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

Transcript

Related