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The Strange Case of Dr. Ho Man Kwok (2019)

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Re: The Strange Case of Dr. Ho Man Kwok (2019)

#221

Post by CivBase »

louisvgchi wrote: post #10

Dave Chang has a small scene in one of his Ugly Delicious (great show, by the way) episodes where he gets a group of non-Asian Americans, who claim to be MSG-allergic, to come and share their stories of MSG-related symptoms after eating at Chinese restaurants. He then hands out Doritos and American products that the participants claim they love and can eat all day. Hard to see where this is going... he says, all thes…

I was following until the racism question. People misattribute sources of illness and subsequent recovery all the time. There are still people out there who believe wifi gives them headaches. Why should racism have anything to do with it?

Re: The Strange Case of Dr. Ho Man Kwok (2019)

#222

Post by nether »

louisvgchi wrote: post #10

Dave Chang has a small scene in one of his Ugly Delicious (great show, by the way) episodes where he gets a group of non-Asian Americans, who claim to be MSG-allergic, to come and share their stories of MSG-related symptoms after eating at Chinese restaurants. He then hands out Doritos and American products that the participants claim they love and can eat all day. Hard to see where this is going... he says, all thes…

What did the people say?

Re: The Strange Case of Dr. Ho Man Kwok (2019)

#223

Post by criley2 »

yongjik wrote: post #26
louisvgchi wrote: post #10

Dave Chang has a small scene in one of his Ugly Delicious (great show, by the way) episodes where he gets a group of non-Asian Americans, who claim to be MSG-allergic, to come and share their stories of MSG-related symptoms after eating at Chinese restaurants. He then hands out Doritos and American products that the participants claim they love and can eat all day. Hard to see where this is going... he says, all thes…

I wish people stopped invoking racism everywhere, when plain "being misinformed" explains things just fine. Millions of Koreans swear up and down that MSG is bad for health. Are we also being racist? (Against whom?)

Ironically, many asians know that over-consumption of MSG leads to the symptoms that are now "racist" to discuss.

Here's popular chef (and half-Japanese) J Kenji Lopez-Alt discussing how he experiences "MSG Symptom Complex" rarely, and that his Japanese grandmother was intimately familiar with the idea that msg overconsumption could those symptoms

https://twitter.com/kenjilopezalt/status/1291880511577546753

https://twitter.com/kenjilopezalt/status/1291882403506475008

The racism angle totally takes over people's minds and this has quickly become a "taboo" subject where any questioning of the new order makes you a villainous racist, even though the science very clearly does not rule out msg causing these symptoms and concludes "more research is needed".

Is what it is, I'm pretty left-leaning in most ways, marched with BLM, and aggressively vote for racial equality: but I guess I'm a racist for not believing that this is settled science. And, as you mention, many east asians must also apparently be racist against themselves.

Re: The Strange Case of Dr. Ho Man Kwok (2019)

#224

Post by ubercow13 »

dotancohen wrote: post #58
louisvgchi wrote: post #10

Dave Chang has a small scene in one of his Ugly Delicious (great show, by the way) episodes where he gets a group of non-Asian Americans, who claim to be MSG-allergic, to come and share their stories of MSG-related symptoms after eating at Chinese restaurants. He then hands out Doritos and American products that the participants claim they love and can eat all day. Hard to see where this is going... he says, all thes…

There are also many non-celiacs who would swear that they cannot eat glutten. That does not discredit the actual existence of celiacs. When I was younger, I would sometimes discover that certain foods contain MSG by identifying what I had eaten before the onset of symptoms. Now I've learned to check everything beforehand. And the one time that the mother-in-law used her neighbour's soup mix instead of the soup mix th…

But coeliacs disease is a real thing, whereas there is no evidence that MSG sensitivity is, so they are not comparable.

Re: The Strange Case of Dr. Ho Man Kwok (2019)

#225

Post by aksss »

thereare5lights wrote: post #43
fraudsyndrome wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they for different reasons? What is the reason Koreans think it's bad for health? As I haven't read about that. Given that in the west it was also dubbed "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome" I would think some form of prejudice played a part.

> Chinese Restaurant Syndrome you'd think the name would give it away, but people are so quick to dismiss racism that this blaring red flag is just glossed over

Yeah I never heard that term before reading these comments. I remember back in the late eighties the jokes about MSG were like (and about as lame as) the jokes about tryptophan in turkey. I don’t recall it ever being a critique of Chinese people, but of the Americanized Chinese junk food (e.g General Tzo’s chicken), very much so. The same way people criticize(d) chicken McNuggets. Nobody ever spoke down about expertly done Peking duck that I recall.

Re: The Strange Case of Dr. Ho Man Kwok (2019)

#226

Post by hellodang »

reitzensteinm wrote: post #193
wwweston wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone who swears that MSG is bad for health do so because they personally hold anti-chinese racist views? Probably not. Is it possible that: * the MSG mythology in some Western nation was proposed by those with some degree of bias against foreign things or chinese cuisine or people specifically * it caught on and was repeated by people who were enthusiastic about it because of some degree of that bias * MSG was…

It totally is systemic racism. But I wish there was another word for it, or that racism were not used interchangeably with systemic racism. There's a hell of a difference between "you're racist" and "you're spreading misinformation that only exists because your grandparents were racist". The latter will get a reaction from the vast majority of people like "oh shit, I had no idea, that's awful". The former will cause…

Chinese food prominently features MSG. Chinese food is served in Chinese restaurants. MSG (and most foods containing natural glutamate) has been identified as a common migraine trigger in individuals sensitive to them, and this is just one symptom among many grouped under the term.

“Chinese Restaurant Syndrome” is the end result of this chain of logic, grounded not in racism, but in fact.

Re: The Strange Case of Dr. Ho Man Kwok (2019)

#228

Post by suryabeep »

I cannot comment about MSG in Chinese food but I can provide my own experience with MSG. As a kid in Bangalore I used to eat a lot of instant noodles that had MSG in the seasoning packets. One time I got a very bad case of food poisoning and ended up in the hospital for 5 days. At the time, the doctors said the food poisoning was due to MSG. The circumstances being what they were, I doubt the doctors were influenced by American systemic racism or racism exported from America. (They could well be just plain home-grown racist against the Chinese since Indians are generally not very friendly towards Chinese, but again, I didn't eat at a Chinese restaurant and the instant noodles were an Indian brand so...)

All in all, I am inclined to believe that MSG does actually have negative effects. However, I think one can build a tolerance to it, because I regularly eat it at restaurants and I haven't had any problems with it since that time as a kid.

Re: The Strange Case of Dr. Ho Man Kwok (2019)

#229

Post by thaumasiotes »

suryabeep wrote: post #228

I cannot comment about MSG in Chinese food but I can provide my own experience with MSG. As a kid in Bangalore I used to eat a lot of instant noodles that had MSG in the seasoning packets. One time I got a very bad case of food poisoning and ended up in the hospital for 5 days. At the time, the doctors said the food poisoning was due to MSG. The circumstances being what they were, I doubt the doctors were influenced…

> However, I think one can build a tolerance to it, because I regularly eat it at restaurants and I haven't had any problems with it since that time as a kid.

It is much more likely that:

1. You haven't had any problems with MSG ever, including that time as a kid, just as every experiment ever done on MSG would suggest;

2. Your doctors were influenced by coverage of MSG in the medical press outside India.

Stupidity doesn't have to originate in racism.

Re: The Strange Case of Dr. Ho Man Kwok (2019)

#230

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

yongjik wrote: post #26
louisvgchi wrote: post #10

Dave Chang has a small scene in one of his Ugly Delicious (great show, by the way) episodes where he gets a group of non-Asian Americans, who claim to be MSG-allergic, to come and share their stories of MSG-related symptoms after eating at Chinese restaurants. He then hands out Doritos and American products that the participants claim they love and can eat all day. Hard to see where this is going... he says, all thes…

I wish people stopped invoking racism everywhere, when plain "being misinformed" explains things just fine. Millions of Koreans swear up and down that MSG is bad for health. Are we also being racist? (Against whom?)

Do you ever use the phrase "long time no see"? It is treated as innocuous today but it is rooted in a mocking jest at broken English spoken by Chinese immigrants. The funny part is that I know Asian Americans who say it without knowing where it came from. You can be misinformed about something that is fundamentally racist.

The twisted MSG belief system is just a less overtly racist version of "Chinese restaurants serve cat and dog". i.e. This ethnic food is not trustworthy and worthy of derision, as are the people by extension.

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