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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)

#231

Post by thaumasiotes »

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?)

> Are we also being racist? (Against whom?)

I mean, it wouldn't be at all surprising for Koreans to be racist against Chinese, unless you take a specific American perspective in which Koreans and Chinese are the same thing.

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

#232

Post by mechnesium »

wpietri wrote: post #154
aaron695 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your mistake is to think being racist is bad. We are all racist. It's part of being human, we form groups, it's how we invent vaccines and go to the moon. I see MSG as Japanese, since the purified process was invented there. I have no idea if Koreans in general consider it a Japanese invention? Equally it could be the power of Hollywood. It changes culture. But it's not "being misinformed". It's well know MSG…

Humans are also naturally violent, but me saying "Hey, I'm going to stab you because I'm just human" is probably not something you'd shrug off. In particular, what you're indulging here is the naturalistic fallacy, or the is/ought fallacy. What's natural tells us nothing about what's good. Tooth decay is natural and your toothbrush is artificial. But I'd bet you're not going to stop brushing your teeth just to stay p…

Yeah, but you can’t put an end to violence, and violence serves an incredible biological purpose. Racism will never cease to exist, nor should society try to force it away, since that will only make things worse. Perhaps racism even serves some meritable biological purpose.

Come to think of it, racism is like a social heuristic. Antivirus software uses heuristic analysis to quickly group certain classes of malware based on code similarity. In the same vein, humans do it to categorize people, based on slightly fuzzier logic.

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

#233

Post by mmanfrin »

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…

I'm a little astounded that on an article talking about the hoax pejoration of MSG, you describe a lifetime of eating MSG that includes a single instance of getting food poisoning and therefore promote the notion that 'MSG actually does have negative effects'.

We wonder why it's so hard to counter the anti-vaxxer movement despite the initial studies that started them being disproven; this is such a perfect parallel.

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

#234

Post by [deleted] »

wwweston wrote: post #116
yongjik wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?)

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…

[deleted]

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

#235

Post by [deleted] »

wwweston wrote: post #116
yongjik wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?)

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…

[deleted]

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

#236

Post by cnst »

starkd wrote: post #71
cube2222 wrote: post #2

This article is very long and having skimmed it I'm still not entirely sure: is monosodium glutamate unhealthy or not after all?

I don't think the point was whether or not it is unhealthy. It asserts most definitely that it is not. The story was about how the claim went viral. The story was introduced in 1968 by the New York Times picking up on the NEJM article. It's an amusing tale, but rather unsettling how easily fooled we can be. I remember (growing up as late as the '80s) people legitimately wondering whether an MSG allergy was responsibl…

> The story was introduced in 1968 by the New York Times picking up on the NEJM article.

And I think that's ultimately the culprit for this hoax.

Just because a reporter at a NYTimes lacks the most basic scientific knowledge to understand that this "letter to the editor" was merely a joke, doesn't mean that it's the fault of the scientific/medical journal -- with a very specific audience, mind you -- for taking a comedy minute.

What's next? We're not allowed to talk in our professional roles and circles using the long established terms for technical concepts, just because the jargon could be misinterpreted by people unfamiliar with the field and the subject matter? Oh... Nevermind...

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

#237

Post by jonathanyc »

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?)

As a half-Korean, I can personally attest that Koreans are unfortunately (and kind of surreally) quite racist. Koreans also tend to hold quite naive views about racism encountered by Asian Americans.

I'm not taking a position on whether "MSG is bad" is purely due to racism, but I can't really buy "I'm Korean and I don't like MSG" as evidence against that claim.

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

#238

Post by cnst »

martey wrote: post #134
matsemann wrote: post #101

> Since the initial reporting of this story, information has come to light calling into question Howard Steel’s role in the MSG controversy. For more on this fascinating story, listen to This American Life episode #668. Does anybody know the conclusion? Was the part about a joke letter because of a bet real or not?

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/668/transcript > So it seems like Howard didn't write the fake prank letter that caused decades of chaos. His prank was that he said he had written the letter. He was claiming credit for chaos he didn't create. It was complicated to even think about.

Wow, that makes it even more hilarious! :-)

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

#239

Post by avs733 »

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…

When I tell people “you’re on fire” They do just fine differentiating when I’m complementing their golf game and when I’m literally telling them they are aflame.

On the surface your suggestion of a different word seems reasonable but it’s not.

People are perfectly capable of choosing to seek understanding of nuanced use of words and phrases. The fact that they disengage rather than doing so is not the responsibility of the speaker.

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

#240

Post by pessimizer »

hellodang wrote: post #226
reitzensteinm wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No Chinese restaurants add MSG in the US. Doritos are pretty much solely an MSG delivery system, and I've watched the person who I know who claims a bad reaction to MSG shovel them down.
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