On Tuesday, September 6, 2016 at 9:10:12 AM UTC-10, tert in seattle wrote:
> notbob wrote:
> > On 2016-09-06, cshenk > wrote:
> >
> >> It became popular to blame MSG in the late 90's.....
> >
> > ?????
> >
> > The "Chinese restaurant syndrome" was around and common way back in
> > the 60s. By the 90s, MSG had been declared "generally recognized as
> > safe" (GRAS), much like GMOs are, today. (as if.....) 8|
> >
> > nb
>
> .That Won-Ton Soup Headache.: The Chinese Restaurant Syndrome, MSG and
> the Making of American Food, 1968.1980
>
> Ian Mosby*
>
> *Department of History, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada. E-mail:
>
>
> Soc Hist Med first published online February 2, 2009 doi:10.1093/shm/hkn098
>
> [Reprinted without permission (sue me!)]

Well okay - I sue thee!

All I know is that there's certain dishes that won't be right without MSG. Oddly enough, one of them is potato salad. Don't ask, don't tell, is my motto.

>
> In an interview published on 8 October 1972, Lorne Greene, the star of
> television's Bonanza, tried to set the record straight about his recent
> hospitalisation. .It was the Chinese restaurant syndrome; that's all I
> had., Greene told the New York Times. "I had had a light breakfast that
> day and practically nothing for lunch, and my wife and I went out to a
> Chinese restaurant for dinner and the food was de-goddamn-licious. Shrimp,
> beef, fried and sizzled, and like an idiot I put some more soy sauce
> on the rice, and that stuff is filled with monosodium glutamate. I
> kept talking and eating and talking and eating and suddenly I felt my
> stomach saying, .action stations., and I knew I was in for a siege of
> something.1" Greene fainted as he was leaving the restaurant, and was
> placed in the hospital under observation for four days. According to
> Greene, his doctor told him that it was .gastric distress with extra
> heartbeats., to which Greene added: .That's what happens when you have
> Chinese restaurant syndrome. But it was no heart attack!.2
>
> Greene's account of his experience with the Chinese restaurant syndrome
> is, in many ways, typical of the ambiguous popular and scientific
> understanding of this unique medical condition during the 1970s. It
> was at once understood as a condition specific to Chinese food but the
> widely accepted cause of which was the common food additive, monosodium
> glutamate (MSG). It was also a condition that was not considered serious,
> but the perceived effects of which could range from a mild headache to
> hospitalisation. In part, these often contradictory understandings of the
> Chinese restaurant syndrome were the result of a protracted scientific
> controversy over the health risks associated with MSG. Up to the present,
> fierce debates continue to rage over whether or not MSG is responsible
> for everything from mild post-dinner discomfort to brain damage and
> psychotic reactions.3 The 1968 .discovery. of the Chinese restaurant
> syndrome proved to be an important catalyst for these ongoing debates. In
> particular, public concern about the condition played a key role in the
> struggle by consumer advocates in their fight for stricter food labelling
> laws and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reforms. At the same time,
> however, Greene's association between the Chinese restaurant syndrome, his
> hospitalisation and a set of somewhat vaguely defined symptoms reflected
> the fact that, within a few years of its .discovery., the condition was
> also being increasingly associated with nearly any unpleasant symptoms
> experienced after consuming Chinese food. In large part this was because,
> by the late 1970s, the syndrome had become .Chinese. in more than name
> alone within both the medical and popular literature on the condition,
> despite the continued widespread use of MSG by major American food
> manufacturers.
>
> This paper seeks to situate Greene's experience of the Chinese restaurant
> syndrome within the context of the formative years of its existence as
> a recognised medical condition. While the important role that the 1968
> .discovery. of the syndrome played in the growth of public opposition
> to the use of food additives in the United States during this period has
> been well established by historians such as Jordan Sand, Warren Bellasco
> and Harvey Levenstein, the actual transformations that the medical and
> popular understanding of the syndrome underwent following its emergence
> have received little attention.4
>
> This paper attempts to fill this gap as well as to contribute to the
> growing literature on the social construction of medical knowledge by
> examining how, between 1968 and 1980, the syndrome came to be widely
> recognised as a legitimate medical condition by a range of doctors,
> scientists and sufferers, despite the best efforts of sceptics to
> discredit research into the condition.5 The following analysis therefore
> examines the Chinese restaurant syndrome and its close association with
> Chinese cooking practices by focusing specifically on the work of the
> mainly American doctors and scientists who published research on the
> condition in the decade following its discovery. In so doing, the paper
> argues that many of the basic assumptions about the Chinese restaurant
> syndrome were, at core, the product of a racialized discourse that framed
> much of the scientific, medical and popular discussion surrounding the
> condition. Debates over the syndrome's causes and existence brought to the
> surface and, in a way, granted a renewed medical legitimacy to a number
> of long-held assumptions about the strangely .exotic., .bizarre. and
> .excessive. practices associated with Chinese culture. This ultimately
> meant that few of those studying the Chinese restaurant syndrome would
> question the presumed .ethnic. character of the condition.
>
> To a certain degree, the paper establishes the emergence and
> popularization of the Chinese restaurant syndrome in the late 1960s as
> simply another episode in a long history of American concerns over the
> safety of Chinese and other .oriental. foods.6 Food historian Harvey
> Levenstein has referred to these concerns as the .ever present fears of
> what was really taking place in the inscrutable Oriental kitchens., but
> they reflected a long-standing unease that white Americans had towards
> Chinese cultural practices more generally.7 These fears were at their
> peak during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when a whole
> host of .exotic., .deviant. and .unclean. practices such as the eating
> of dogs, cats, rats and snakes were commonly associated with Chinese
> cooking in the media as a means of reconfirming existing ideas about
> the unassimilability of Chinese immigrants.8 Such perceptions about
> Chinese cultural practices were also perpetuated by frequent journalistic
> exposés on questionable activities in American Chinatowns as well as
> the persistent targeting and surveillance of Chinese businesses by
> public health authorities. As Nyan Shah and Susan Craddock both show
> in their studies of San Francisco's Chinatown around the turn of the
> century, Chinese bodies and neighbourhoods were singled out as sources
> of disease and moral corruption and were, therefore, subject to a whole
> host of overtly racist laws and restrictions that were not applied to
> white neighbourhoods.9
>
> While the Chinese restaurant syndrome shares some common narrative
> themes with these earlier racially motivated health scares, an
> important difference is its significantly altered social context. By
> the 1970s, the kinds of explicitly racist laws that had all but barred
> Chinese immigration for much of the twentieth century had largely been
> removed. Moreover, as Asian immigration to the United States increased
> significantly, Chinese and other ethnic Asian restaurants were becoming
> more popular and numerous than ever.10 As this paper argues, however,
> the persisting strength of the association between Chinese cuisine
> and adverse reactions to the common additive MSG provides a lens into
> the ways in which, despite these larger changes in American society,
> certain fears of a Chinese-American .other. remained part of the popular
> imagination. Previous Section Next Section .Discovery. of the Chinese
> Restaurant Syndrome
>
> The term Chinese restaurant syndrome was first coined by Dr Robert Ho Man
> Kwok in a letter published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM)
> on 4 April 1968. Kwok, who was a senior research investigator at the
> National Biomedical Research Foundation as well as a Chinese immigrant
> living in the United States, described a syndrome which usually began
> 15 or 20 minutes after eating the first dish at a Chinese restaurant
> and lasted for about two hours. According to Kwok, the most prominent
> symptoms were .numbness at the back of the neck, gradually radiating
> to both arms and the back, general weakness and palpitation..11 While
> Kwok was himself of Cantonese descent, his letter also made it clear
> that he and many of his Chinese friends had only ever experienced the
> syndrome in an American context and, in particular, at restaurants
> serving .northern Chinese food.. He offered suggestions of a number
> of ingredients common to Chinese-American restaurants that might be
> responsible for his symptoms.including cooking wine, monosodium glutamate
> seasoning and the food's high sodium content.but ended his letter with
> a call for the journal's readers to begin their own investigations into
> this .peculiar syndrome..12
>
> Kwok's letter struck a chord with readers, who flooded the NEJM
> with personal accounts of the syndrome. While a few letter-writers
> claimed similar symptoms to those described by Kwok, most described
> significant variants. These included .a profuse, cold sweat. and .a most
> uncomfortable tightness on both sides of the head.; an intense .Chinese
> Headache., characterized by .a pounding, throbbing sensation in the head.;
> .palpitation and numbness above the diaphragm., as well as .weakness of
> the mouth.; .tightening of the face.; .dizziness.; and even a serious
> case of cerebrovascular thrombosis.13 Similarly, while Kwok singled out
> northern Chinese cuisine, few letter-writers made any distinction between
> the regional variant of Chinese food and their own experiences. Like
> Kwok's letter, however, none of the writers described experiencing the
> syndrome outside an American context. In fact, Kwok continued to stress
> this observation in later interviews, noting that he had never experienced
> the syndrome before his arrival in the United States.14
>
> In much the same way that Kwok's original observations regarding his own
> experiences with the syndrome were later interpreted to include a much
> broader range of post-eating experiences, many of those who responded
> to Kwok's letter also hypothesized about possible causes in a much
> more generalized way. Some attempted to interpret the causes in terms
> of common ingredients or practices in Chinese cooking, with suggestions
> including .duck sauce., .Chinese tea. or the .frozen food processing of
> Chinese vegetables.. An equal number of letters, however, interpreted the
> symptoms within a broader category of .oriental. eating practices. One,
> for instance, suggested that symptoms similar to those described by
> Kwok were experienced by more than 50 doctors' wives who attended a
> Polynesian luncheon and that it was later found that their illness
> may have been caused by the ingestion of imported mushrooms. Another
> letter pointed to the distinct possibility that the disorder described
> by Kwok should be called the .Japanese Restaurant Syndrome. because of
> the possibility that the symptoms were related to those experienced
> following the ingestion of puffer fish, which is known to contain a
> deadly toxin when prepared improperly.15
>
> In the face of these numerous personal anecdotes, the editors of the
> NEJM took a decidedly sceptical stance towards the syndrome. Tongues
> firmly in cheek, they offered the name .post-sino-cibal syndrome., or
> .sin-cib-syn., for the affliction which, they suggested, was finally
> brought to light by the .annals of anecdotal epidemiology..16 Despite
> the editors' joking scepticism, the New York Times was quick to pick
> up on the story. In an article published on 19 May, entitled ..Chinese
> Restaurant Syndrome. Puzzles Doctors., the Times not only introduced
> the syndrome and its symptoms to a broader audience, but also sought
> the reaction of New York's Chinese restaurateurs. While many wondered
> if alcohol consumed with the food might be the cause, others were more
> openly sceptical. One asked .Would our steady customers keep coming back
> if they got headaches?. Another noted that his own family ate Chinese
> food .three times a day all year and we never have headaches or numbness
> or anything else..17
>
> Despite the best efforts of New York's Chinese restaurateurs, the media
> coverage brought even more attention to Kwok's syndrome and, as a result,
> more letters to the NEJM. In the 11 July 1968 issue, the editors again
> jokingly pointed out the .legion of hitherto silent sufferers. that had
> now come out of the woodwork. Unlike the first batch of letters, however,
> some respondents were quite suspicious of the whole discussion. One, for
> instance, congratulated the journal for fooling its readers and requested
> that it disclose the real author of the article: .For certainly he is Dr
> Human Crock, and his .Chinese-Restaurant syndrome. is totally illusionary
> and nonexistent..18 Many of the new letters, however, continued to share
> experiences with the syndrome. The editors noted that among those received
> was an account of one individual having an attack .not only after taking
> Chinese soup or Japanese Teriyaki, but also, alas, after eating matzoh
> ball and split pea soups in a Kosher delicatessen..
>
> In addition, numerous suggestions of possible causes were offered,
> including mustard, bean sprouts, tea, mushrooms, fish, salt and .simple
> myopathy of the facial and neck muscles induced when Westerners try
> to eat with chopsticks..19 Joking aside, the NEJM did point to an
> emerging consensus that, in line with Kwok's original suggestions,
> the food additive MSG was the most probable cause of the syndrome. One
> letter published by the journal, for instance, was from a team of
> second-year students at New York University (NYU), who claimed to have
> shown significant reactions to MSG on 35 test subjects. Another was from
> neurologist Robert Byck and pharmacologist Herbert H. Schaumburg at the
> Albert Einstein College of Medicine in which they outlined the preliminary
> results of their own experiments which, like the NYU study, suggested a
> causative role for MSG in the Chinese restaurant syndrome. Unlike the NYU
> team, however, Byck and Schaumburg eventually published their results,
> marking the first in what would eventually be many scientific studies
> looking critically at the health effects of MSG over the next decade.
> Previous Section Next Section MSG and the Making of American Food
>
> While Kwok is generally credited with the .discovery. of the Chinese
> restaurant syndrome, it was first legitimised as a .real. medical
> condition largely after Schaumburg, Byck and two colleagues first
> published their findings in an article in Science on 21 February 1969. The
> researchers initially identified MSG as a potential causative agent
> by isolating individual components of won-ton soup from a restaurant
> where two individuals were known to have had a reaction. Using enzymatic
> analysis, they recorded concentrations of 3 gm of MSG per 200 ml of a
> particular sample of soup. The research team then conducted two tests:
> one in which MSG was administered intravenously to 13 subjects, and
> another in which MSG was administered orally to 56 subjects. All of
> the test subjects experienced at least one of the common components of
> the syndrome, identified as burning, facial pressure, chest pain and
> headache. However, it was also found that different individual thresholds
> were required to elicit known symptoms and these ranged from between 2
> and 12 gms, with higher doses generally producing more intense symptoms
> and with prior ingestion of food having a noticeable impact on individual
> susceptibility.20
>
> Schaumburg et al. drew two important conclusions from their research. The
> first was that MSG was the cause of the Chinese restaurant syndrome first
> described by Kwok, particularly in that it consistently produced burning,
> facial pressure and chest pressure among susceptible individuals. The
> second, and perhaps more important conclusion, was that the MSG could
> .produce undesirable effects in the amounts used in the preparation
> of widely consumed foods..21 MSG, they pointed out, was not limited
> to Chinese restaurants at all and was, in fact, used extensively by
> American food producers in amounts they interpreted to be sufficient
> to produce a reaction. As an example of this, they pointed to the fact
> that popular brands of MSG suggested one gram per serving as the minimum
> amount required for effectiveness. Given that susceptible individuals
> experienced reactions with dosages as low as two gms, it did not seem
> unreasonable to assume that other foods seasoned with MSG could also
> produce a reaction. However, this raised one important question that the
> study was not able to answer: if a food product already in common use
> could quite easily trigger such a recognisable physiological reaction,
> why had the syndrome not been identified earlier?
>
> Although it emerged as a potential health threat in the aftermath of
> Kwok's 1968 letter, MSG had actually been present in far more than Chinese
> food for more than 20 years in the United States and for more than half
> a century throughout much of Asia. The additive was first discovered
> by Japanese biochemist Kikunae Ikeda after he recognised that one of
> the major building blocks of protein, glutamic acid (or glutamate),
> played a major role in the human sense of taste. In particular, he
> found that when glutamate was added to many savoury foods, including
> meat, soups or certain vegetables, they would taste much more pleasing
> and savoury than before. After developing a process to stabilize pure
> glutamate using ordinary salt, Ikeda patented the process and, in 1909,
> began to manufacture MSG under the name Ajinomoto, or .the essence of
> taste.. MSG quickly became an extremely popular condiment in Japan and,
> by the 1920s, the product began to see widespread distribution in China
> and other Asian countries despite some initial opposition to the product's
> associations with Japanese imperialism.22
>
> By the 1930s, American food processors had also begun to awaken to the
> multiple industrial uses of MSG, particularly its ability to enhance,
> blend and round out pleasant flavours while, at the same time, suppressing
> undesirable ones and limiting the effects of long-term storage,
> canning and freezing.23 Although there were initially some regulatory
> barriers to the large-scale introduction of MSG into the American food
> supply, these had been largely removed by the late 1940s and a number
> of companies started manufacturing MSG in the United States, the most
> prominent being the brand Accent, which was created in 1947.24 As just
> one of thousands of new food additives introduced into the American food
> supply in the post-war period, MSG was representative of what historian
> Harvey Levenstein refers to as the .Golden Age of Food Processing..25
> Additives like MSG were an inexpensive solution to the kinds of problems
> inherent in the increasingly popular processed and standardized foods
> being marketed to post-war consumers: poor and unappealing colour,
> texture, consistency and, perhaps most importantly, flavour. Thus,
> as early as 1969, 58 million pounds of MSG were being produced per
> year in the United States and products as diverse as breakfast cereal,
> TV dinners, frozen vegetables, condiments, baby food and canned soup
> included MSG among their ingredients.26 By 1980, the United States was
> responsible for 10 per cent of the world's MSG production and it had
> become one of the country's most widely used additives.27
>
> It was in this context of widespread MSG use in the United States, then,
> that Schaumburg et al. published their 1969 study. Although its larger
> significance was not immediately recognised, it was not long before the
> more serious implications of the study received greater scrutiny. In May
> 1969, psychiatrist John W. Olney reconfirmed the potential dangers of MSG
> with the publication of his own research on the additive in Science. Less
> concerned with the Chinese restaurant syndrome than with the long-term
> physiological impacts of MSG, the study primarily examined the effects
> of large doses of MSG injected into pregnant mice and their offspring,
> and it included some troubling findings.
>
> In one part of the study, post-mortem examinations of mice injected with
> large doses of MSG showed serious brain lesions in all of the experimental
> animals. Another part of the study compared the long-term effects of mice
> injected with MSG and a control group over a period of approximately five
> months. Olney found that the MSG group suffered from stunted skeletal
> development, obesity and female sterility.28 In an interview with the New
> York Times, Olney drew a direct link between his study and humans. While
> he did not think that humans were likely to develop the same kinds of
> serious side-effects as the mice, Olney pointed out that the discovery
> of the Chinese restaurant syndrome .raises questions about the use of MSG
> by pregnant women..29 Previous Section Next Section Generally Recognised
> As Safe?
>
> The cumulative effect of the Olney and Schaumburg et al. studies was that
> MSG's significance had become firmly established beyond the confines
> of the nation's Chinese restaurants. This was made clear in July 1969
> when Olney, Schaumburg and Byck joined consumer activist Ralph Nader in
> urging a Senate committee to ban the use of MSG in baby foods, virtually
> all of which contained the ingredient at the time. They argued that the
> seasoning was added, .solely to please the taste of the mothers. and was,
> therefore, not worth the potential health risks.30 Byck even suggested
> the possibility that .babies get the Chinese restaurant syndrome and
> don't know what hit them..31 The scientists, along with Nader, urged
> that MSG be removed from the Food and Drug Administration's Generally
> Recognized As Safe (GRAS) list until it could be proven conclusively to be
> safe. The MSG industry and those who were sceptical of the two studies,
> on the other hand, defended the additive by arguing that there needed to
> be more conclusive proof that MSG consumed orally by humans caused the
> specific negative health outcomes described by Olney's animal studies.32
>
> The campaign by Nader and his allies had some early success when,
> in October 1969, leading baby food manufacturers Gerber, Heinz and
> Squibb-Beech Nut bowed to public pressure and voluntarily discontinued
> the use of MSG in their products.33 The attempt to have MSG removed from
> the GRAS list, however, proved to be less successful. In a ruling on 4
> April 1970 that seemed to please no one, a National Research Council
> panel made the somewhat ambiguous ruling that MSG was .fit for human
> consumption but not necessarily by infants..34 In part, this seemingly
> contradictory ruling reflected the tenuous middle-ground that regulatory
> agencies and other oversight bodies would continue to walk throughout the
> 1970s between the interests of consumers and the food industry when it
> came to MSG and other food additives.35 To a certain extent, however,
> the vague early pronouncements by the FDA also seemed to reflect the
> fact that, by 1970, there had been a number of conflicting reports on the
> long-term health impacts of the additive. Olney's study, in particular,
> came under fierce criticism shortly after its publication for a number
> of perceived methodological and procedural flaws, particularly after
> two 1970 studies failed to reproduce his results.36 In that same year,
> however, two additional studies were also published showing brain damage
> in both mice fed large oral doses of MSG and in monkeys that had been
> given subcutaneous injections of the additive.37
>
> Neither these early studies nor the National Research Council
> ruling in 1970 on MSG seemed to settle the debate over the long-term
> physiological impacts of the additive. Throughout the 1970s, literally
> dozens of articles were published either contesting or confirming
> Olney's findings.38 Olney himself led the charge, publishing more than 25
> articles examining the controversy during this period.39 While his critics
> continued to accuse Olney of fear-mongering and exaggerating findings
> from studies that bore little resemblance to the ways in which humans
> consumed MSG, Olney and his consumer activist allies in return accused
> them of colluding with the food industry to protect their financial
> interests in dangerous food additives.40 In particular, they pointed to
> the fact that five of the seven scientists who conducted the FDA review
> of MSG's safety were directly employed by, had recently worked for or had
> lobbied on behalf of major manufacturers and industrial users of MSG.41
> Despite the explosion in research and mutual accusations of bias coming
> from both sides of the debate, however, the question remained largely
> unresolved by the early 1980s.42
>
> One of the early effects of this debate between Olney and his detractors
> was that it marked a split in MSG related research during the 1970s. On
> the one side were the studies by Olney and others that looked primarily at
> the long-term impacts of MSG exposure on growth, reproduction and brain
> functions in experimental animals. On the other side, was research that
> examined the more short-term effects of MSG consumption, particularly
> as it related to Schaumburg et al.'s research on the Chinese restaurant
> syndrome. While Olney pointed to the existence of the Chinese restaurant
> syndrome as a possible link between his animal studies and effects on
> humans, research on the toxic effects of MSG was generally less concerned
> with the more immediate physiological effects associated with the symptoms
> of the syndrome.
>
> Yet, although the debate over the short-term impacts of MSG and its
> relationship with the Chinese restaurant syndrome was concerned with
> different issues, it was not immune to the same kinds of contradictions
> and ambiguities that coloured these debates about the long-term health
> effects of MSG. As the main controversy between Olney and his detractors
> was at its fiercest during the early 1970s, a number of studies also began
> to question Schaumburg et al.'s methods and conclusions. A study published
> in Nature on 8 August 1970, for instance, used a double-blind experimental
> technique on 24 volunteers and found no differences in symptoms observed
> between the group consuming a soup with 3 gm of MSG and a control group
> given a placebo soup broth.43 Another study published in Science in 1970,
> found that, even after feeding as much as 137 gm per day of glutamic acid
> to 14 adult male subjects for 42 days, there was not only an absence
> of changes in the brain chemistry in any subjects, but also that none
> of the subjects experienced Chinese restaurant syndrome.44 And while
> a study published in Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology in 1971 did
> record increased frequency of some complaints in the MSG group over
> the control group, they found that none of the subjects were observed
> to have experienced .the triad of symptoms described as the Chinese
> Restaurant Syndrome. which they identified as burning, chest pain and
> facial pressure.45
>
> Close on the heels of these three studies, however, were others that
> supported Shaumburg et al.'s initial findings. A 1971 study published in
> Biochemical Medicine, for instance, was able not only to produce symptoms
> of the Chinese restaurant syndrome (described as .an uncomfortable feeling
> of pressure, burning, numbness or mild pain.) in all of the subjects using
> large doses of orally administered MSG, but they also found evidence that
> reactions were dose-dependent.46 A placebo-controlled study appearing in
> The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in February 1972 by researchers
> R. A. Kenney and C. S. Tidball at George Washington University Medical
> Center produced similar results. The study found that, out of the 77
> volunteers, 25 experienced .one or more. of the symptoms associated
> with MSG (which they listed as .warmth/burning., .stiffness/tightness.,
> .weakness., .pressure., .tingling., .heartburn/gastric discomfort.,
> .light-headedness. and .headache.) after consuming quantities of 2 gm
> or more of MSG with reactions varying between individuals and also being
> decidedly dose-dependent.47
>
> Both sides of the debate about the Chinese restaurant syndrome found
> grounds for scepticism regarding one another's studies. Those arguing
> for a link between MSG and the syndrome suggested that many of the
> studies accepted too narrow a range of symptoms as the Chinese restaurant
> syndrome, frequently failed to sample individuals who were known reactors
> and often failed to study a truly representative population sample.48
> Their critics, on the other hand, argued that too many symptoms were being
> accepted as part of the Chinese restaurant syndrome, results failed to
> find a correlation between symptoms and blood glutamate levels, and that
> many of the experiments were not placebo-controlled or double-blind.49
> To the chagrin of its sceptics, however, the Chinese restaurant syndrome
> proved to be quite resilient and, through the rest of the 1970s, continued
> to be the focus of serious investigations by scientific researchers,
> doctors and the media. Previous Section Next Section .Appropriate. and
> .Bizarre. in a Culinary Setting
>
> While it would be fair to characterize the early years of debate
> over the Chinese restaurant syndrome as being inconclusive, a number
> of patterns emerged that would come to dominate discourse about the
> condition, particularly within studies showing a positive connection
> between MSG and the expanding list of symptoms associated with it. The
> most noticeable pattern was the widespread acceptance of the assumption
> that people were getting sick more often after eating Chinese food than
> from other .American. foods containing MSG. While Schaumburg et al. drew
> direct parallels between their findings and its implications for more
> widely consumed foods, later researchers proved to be less inclined
> to do the same. One of the more obvious examples of this was the fact
> that reactions to MSG continued to be called the .Chinese restaurant
> syndrome. in medical and scientific journals. Although one letter to
> American Heart suggested the syndrome be renamed .MSG atopy. because
> the term Chinese restaurant syndrome, .is too narrow considering the
> tons of MSG used in less exotic foods., such suggestions were ultimately
> ignored and the vast majority of studies continued to refer to MSG related
> reactions as the Chinese restaurant syndrome (or CRS) well into 1980s.50
>
> The retention of the name Chinese restaurant syndrome is perhaps even
> more surprising when one considers the syndrome's decidedly American
> character. Just as Kwok had stressed that he had only ever experienced
> the Chinese restaurant syndrome in the American context, the syndrome was
> largely unknown in countries like Japan and China, both of whom had been
> using MSG for much longer than in the United States.51 Yet, during the
> 1970s at least, American researchers conducted no comparative studies
> of MSG research in either country and the syndrome's uniquely American
> origins went largely unexplored. Instead, most American research into
> the Chinese restaurant syndrome appears to have been constrained by two
> assumptions. First, that the syndrome was unique to Chinese restaurants,
> despite the widespread use of MSG elsewhere; and, second, that this
> was the case because of .excessive. and .bizarre. cooking practices in
> these restaurants.
>
> An example of how these assumptions operated can be seen in a critical
> response by food researchers Frank Blood, Bernard Oser and Philip
> White to Olney's first MSG study which was published on 5 September
> 1969 in Science. Although these critics of Olney's study disputed its
> basic findings and methodological assumptions in detail, they did not
> question the notion that MSG was the cause of the Chinese restaurant
> syndrome. Rather, they wrote (without a citation) that it was .quite
> another story and appears to have resulted from the addition of as much as
> 5 gm per portion of soup. and further added that .it may be an allergic
> reaction, and it has not been studied by an adequately controlled
> double-blind procedure..52 The latter point was surprisingly never
> followed up on in any meaningful way by MSG researchers during the 1970s,
> despite the fact that research done during the 1950s had shown allergic
> reactions to MSG in some individuals.53 However, the idea that the Chinese
> restaurant syndrome was the result of seemingly .excessive. amounts
> of MSG quickly became a common justification for the lack of evidence
> showing cases of Kwok's syndrome outside of Chinese restaurants. Take,
> for example, the study published in 1972 by Kenney and Tidball.
>
> As mentioned earlier, the study found that reactions to MSG generally
> required doses of two grams or more, symptoms appeared be more
> pronounced when larger quantities were consumed, and also that there was
> significant variation between individuals in terms of their reaction
> to the substance. Given these findings, Kenney and Tidball went on
> to postulate as to why the Chinese restaurant syndrome appeared to be
> directly associated with Chinese food rather than other products also
> containing MSG. As in other studies, they pegged Chinese cooking practices
> as the main culprit and suggested that few experienced symptoms of the
> Chinese restaurant syndrome when MSG was used .in appropriate culinary
> quantities. but that .the exhibition of quantities that might properly be
> regarded as bizarre in the culinary setting increases the possibility of
> symptom occurrence..54 These ideas about .appropriate. and .bizarre. MSG
> use in Chinese restaurants became common throughout the 1970s and terms
> like .abundant amounts. and .appreciable quantities. were commonly used
> by researchers to differentiate between the use of MSG in Chinese and
> in other kinds of foods.55 Media reports on the syndrome picked up on
> these trends within the scientific literature and frequently adopted
> a range of colourful descriptors to explain why Chinese food was more
> likely to cause an adverse reaction than other foods containing MSG. Not
> only were .large. or .generous. amounts said to have been used in Chinese
> restaurants, for instance, but MSG was supposedly being employed .freely.,
> .liberally. or .lavishly. by Chinese cooks.56 One article even went so
> far as to suggest that won-ton soup .often floats in MSG..57
>
> Kenney and Tidball's conclusions raise a number of important
> questions. Were Chinese restaurants really using excessive quantities
> of MSG? Was three grams of MSG consumed during a meal really a
> .bizarre. portion? And what were the .appropriate. quantities of MSG being
> used by American food manufacturers? As discussed earlier, Schaumburg
> et al. had reached the conclusion that, based on the recommendations
> given by MSG manufacturers for minimum use, it was entirely likely
> that a number of widely consumed foods could trigger a reaction.58 This
> interpretation was further supported by a later study which found that,
> if one were to follow the instructions on a popular commercial brand
> of MSG that it would be .possible to envision a meal . . . in which an
> individual could consume 4.6 gm of MSG..59
>
> Surprisingly, however, few studies thought it necessary to expand upon
> these largely anecdotal figures. In fact, none of the major studies
> of the Chinese restaurant syndrome published in peer reviewed journals
> between 1970 and 1980 examined the MSG content of any common foods known
> to contain the additive. The only study to have done so was the 1969
> Schaumburg et al. study. While that study's figure of 3 gm of MSG per
> serving of won-ton soup was used in subsequent studies as proof of the
> .excessive. use of MSG in Chinese restaurants, no studies attempted to
> repeat this test or to compare such figures to amounts commonly used in
> widely consumed products like canned soup.60
>
> These assumptions about .appropriate. and .bizarre. MSG use
> had consequences beyond the confines of scientific and medical
> journals. While one 1969 letter to the NEJM jokingly anticipated
> federal legislation demanding that cans of Chinese food be labelled,
> .Caution: Chinese food. May be hazardous to your health., perceptions
> of Chinese restaurants as particularly dangerous remained.61 This new
> double standard became especially apparent in a campaign in November
> 1969 by the New York City Health Department. 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, purportedly
> in response to six .outbreaks. over a four year period. The Department
> reported that, in one restaurant they investigated, two pounds of MSG
> had been added to 1,500 egg rolls. They also found that .a teaspoonful
> and even tablespoonful were being added routinely to wonton soup in some
> restaurants.. Although the Health Department admitted that it had .never
> had two groups ill in the same restaurant at the same time. they felt
> sufficiently confident that these amounts of MSG were excessive.even
> in the absence of comparative studies.and that immediate action was
> necessary.62
>
> That these warnings were not directed at other restaurants or at
> non-Chinese food manufacturers is illustrative of the strength of the
> association between Chinese food and the additive's use (and abuse)
> that would colour studies throughout the 1970s. As already suggested,
> these notions of .bizarre. and .deviant. practices among Chinese cooks
> was part of a much longer history of American fears and fascination
> with Chinese food. The Chinese restaurant syndrome's place in this
> lineage is particularly apparent in a 1969 New York Times article
> with the provocative title, .In Hong Kong it's Dog or Snake at
> Lunch Now.. Ostensibly a tourist guide for connoisseurs looking for
> .exotic. eating experiences, much of the article focuses primarily on
> the practices among Chinese cultures of eating animals such as dogs
> and snakes that had so fascinated and repulsed nineteenth- and early
> twentieth-century American observers.63 Yet, reminiscent of these early
> voyeuristic accounts, it is the illegality of dog consumption that is
> the major concern of the article, which focuses specifically on how
> such foods are often hidden on menus using codes such as .goat meat. or
> .special beef.. Quite tellingly, the same article then goes on to discuss
> how Hong Kong restaurateurs had become very concerned with the steps
> taken by the New York Health Department to limit MSG use. It notes that
> chefs argued that they had little to fear from an investigation from
> health authorities because .they had always used monosodium glutamate
> or derivatives in small quantities..64
>
> This juxtaposition of the consumption of .deviant. (illegal) and
> .exotic. meats with the use of MSG in Hong Kong restaurants was no
> coincidence. Rather, it suggests that there was an assumed equivalence
> between the two culinary practices in that both were understood to
> be cloaked within a language and culture of concealment: just as the
> illegal dog meat could be hidden as .special beef..potentially consumed
> without the restaurant patron even knowing it.MSG was thought to conceal
> inferior foods and to trick the consumer. That the .exces