The Racist Origins of the Fear of MSG

What is MSG?
Ken Lee, a professor and the director of food innovation at Ohio State University says
“MSG stands for monosodium glutamate. So sodium — everybody knows what that is — [is] the first ingredient in common table salt.” (Natural salt found in foods accounts for about 10 percent of a person’s total daily intake, according to the Food and Drug Administration.) Meanwhile, glutamate, the basic component of MSG, “is a synonym for glutamic acid [and] is a naturally occurring amino acid. It’s one of the building blocks of protein,” says Lee. In aqueous solutions, MSG breaks down to sodium and glutamate.

The taste receptor for umami was discovered by Chaudhari et al. (2000) which firmly established umami as the fifth basic taste. The umami taste receptor is specific for glutamate and it has been shown that shown that the taste of glutamate (and thus MSG) – cannot be reduced to any of the other four basic tastes.

How was it discovered?
Kikunae Ikeda was a Japanese chemist who was interested in the chemistry of taste. He was particularly keen to understand the particular taste of a broth called ‘dashi’. Dashi’s main ingredient is a variety of kelp called kombu and he decided to break kombu down to its compounds and isolate the dashi taste. He started in 1907 by boiling down 90 pounds of kelp into a tarry resin. He then stripped out various salts and organic compounds over the next few months until he’d harvested a single ounce of brown crystals. When he tasted the crystals, he recognized the distinct savory taste that dashi lent to other foods, a taste that he termed ‘umami’, from the Japanese ‘umai’ (meaning ‘delicious’). Ikeda eventually produce and market the seasoning under the product name “Ajinomoto” — literally, “quintessence of flavor”.

Chinese Restaurant Syndrome
​In 1968, Robert Ho Man Kwok, a Chinese-American doctor from Maryland wrote a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine which claimed that after eating at Chinese restaurants, he experience unpleasant symptoms, namely “numbness at the back of the neck, gradually radiating to both arms and the back” and “general weakness and palpitation.” While Kwok was himself of Cantonese descent, he made it clear that he had only ever experienced this in America with ‘northern Chinese food’. He did not specify a particular ingredient but made a few suggestions (including MSG) as a possible cause for his ‘peculiar syndrome’

The response to Kwok’s letter was large and extensive with readers claiming to suffer from the same affliction, termed “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome” . Some readers experienced same symptoms as Kwok, but most were extremely varied, ranging from cold sweats to extreme dizziness. In response, the Journal offered up MSG as the likely culprit for their reader’s unpleasant symptoms.

Racism and MSG
However what is little reported in the many articles on MSG is that the letters section of the NEJM is known for tongue-in-cheek discussions in the medical community. The majority of responses to Kwok were laced with exaggeration, hyperbole and also sarcasm with relation to racist stereotypes. Much of the humour was derived from the ‘fears of what was really taking place in the inscrutable Oriental kitchens’

The NEJM suggested MSG as the likely culprit for their reader’s unpleasant symptoms. and (although the response was clearly satirical) news articles began to present the satire as accepted scientific fact. The New York Times was quick to pick up on the story in an article published on 19 May, ‘“Chinese Restaurant Syndrome” Puzzles Doctors’.
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More articles followed with headlines focusing on harmful effects of Chinese Food  “Relief May be in Sight for Those Who Suffer From Chinese Cooking,” ,“Whatever It Is or Isn’t – Please Pass the Chop Suey,” “Four Scientists Find Chinese Food Fans Can Avoid Suffering,” , “Chinese Food Make you Crazy? MSG is No. 1 Suspect,”.

The racist view that Chinese kitchens employed underhanded and deviant practices was typified in a 1969 New York Times Article entitled“In Hong Kong it’s Dog or Snake at Lunch Now,”. The article detailed the consumption of illegal meats in Hong Kong, which were being hidden on menus under ‘deceitful code names’ and concluded with restaurateurs voicing their concern over the ‘MSG problem’.

In November 1969 the New York City Health Department sent out an order demanding that MSG be used ‘sparingly when preparing food’ was sent out in English and Chinese to both manufacturers and vendors of Chinese food. They felt sufficiently confident that amounts of MSG used in Chinese restaurants were excessive despite a complete lack of scientific studies. The order was not sent to non-Chinese restaurants, nor was it sent to American food manufacturers. Chinese restaurants began to place ubiquitous ‘NO MSG’ signs on their menus and windows at this time, while MSG continued to be used widely by American food manufacturers such as Campbell’s, Kraft, Lipton, Knorr and Lawry’s, and fast food restaurants including Wendy’s, Burger King, McDonalds and Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Though MSG was widely used, the “MSG problem” was strictly Chinese.

A great episode of food podcast the Sporkful also explores the science, and as well as role that race and class have played in spreading misconceptions about MSG.