Hey, they're listeners. This is producer DJ Daniel. The following episode was recorded before the horrible events in Monterey Park. The team will release an episode addressing the situation once more details have emerged. Thank you and enjoy. It's's aluter New Years. Yeah, happy New Years. It's it's it's it's the New Year's Special. It's me Mia, I've got I've got cherine with me. Yeah, how how are you doing?
I guess I guess it's I guess it's not the New Year yet when we're recording it, but it will be by the time you hear this. That counts. That counts. I'm good. I'm I got a cat recently and I called it funny. And then I learned later that this year is the year of the Rabbit. So yeah, I feel really happy about that. It's for this year. Yeah, exactly. So I'm good. I'm good. That's the that's that's Having new cat is an amazing way to start any year. Yes, yes,
I agree, it was very exciting that. Do you know what else is very exciting? Transitions? They paid me to do this for some reason. All right, this this this year, we're going to talk about Chinese restaurant syndrome and the whole sort of anti MSG craze. So that was I've always been so big. I don't know. I grew up in like, uh, I don't know, a diverse area in San Diego, but we would always go to fun like regularly, and the no MSG was like all over the menu
and everything. It's like this thing that I mean, every restaurant I went to basically was just like come to us, there's no MSG. So I'm really curious how it started because growing up I was like, Okay, MSG is bad. I guess you know what I mean to So, yeah, I feel like it wasn't It wasn't really, it wasn't as intense where I was growing up, but that was like, I don't know, it was it was a very white suburb but and people people were still freaked out about MSG.
But it wasn't but like the the the Asian restaurants didn't like talk about it ever, I don't know, but it was still it was still very sort of like like I remember I would go like eat dinner with like white families and they're talking about MSG, and I was like what for a good amount of time, Yeah, having now talked about MSG for a bit. We should we should ask like what what is MSG? And the
answer okay. So MSG stands from mono sodium glutamate, which is it's just a salt, basically salt with like glutamate, and it has a bunch of a mommy in it. I'm gonna read this thing from Kenji from Serious Eats because every every every single article started that starts about this has like this exact paragraph in it. So I'm just gonna read it instead of trying to rewrite this paragraph that I want to. MSG is a sodium salt
of glutamic acid and a amino acid. It was first isolated in ninety eight by Japanese biochemist Takua Ikeda, who was trying to discover what exactly gave dashi, the Japanese flavor broth with Comba, Japanese giant sea kelp. It's strong savory character. Turns out that comba is packed with clutamic acid. It was a Kita who coined the term mummmi, which roughly translates a savory to describe to glutamic acid and
other seminar similar amino acids. Until that point, scientists had only discovered the other four flavors sensed by the tongue and the soft palate, salty, sweet, sour, and bitter. By nine pure crystallite MSG, extracted from the abundant kelp in the c around Japan, was being sold under the brand name a Gi No Moto roughly Element of Flavor. The company exists to this day. Now keep that in mind. That's going to be important to the last part of
the story. But you know, in the meantime, you know, around around around nineteen noweight, once this is discovered, that it turns into this sort of enormous industry. Um here's from a pretty good Men's Health article about it. By the nineteen forties, number of American companies were producing MSG domestically for the consumer, the most famous being accents. Okay, there,
there's like it's spelled acts. It's it's accent, but it's spelled a c apostrophe C E N T. That's not Yeah, no, that's I lost me, Yeah said, which was it's it's advertising is a bleak place. Yeah, that's that's a different episode, I think partially, yes, also partially this episode. But yeah, the thost famous one being Accent, which was advertised as pure mono sodium glutimate that quote makes food flavors sing.
Various food magazines and community cookbooks featured the additive as an ingredient and the likes of fried chicken wings and
barbecue sauce recipes. By nineteen sixty nine, fifty eight million pounds of MSG were being produced in the US per year, says food a story in Ian Moseby PhD. For an entire generation, the ingredient was presented in a dizzying array of food products breakfast cereals, TV dinners, frozen vegetables, baby food, and soup produced by beloved brands such as Campbell's and Swanson,
which today offer foods products free of MSG additives. And Okay, if you think about this for a second, it's actually really weird that MSG s thought it as a Chinese thing, because like, okay, MSG all told has only been around for like a hundred years, right, It's heavily used in the US for like thirty or forty years, Like it's not in it's not really in China for that much longer for this in the US, and it's used in just like a bunch of American food. How did that start.
Do we know how that association started and continued? Yeah, well we'll get it. Most it mostly has to do with like it has to do with restaurants, and it specifically has to do with the part that we're getting to about this letter, which is weird. And I will say like that there are a lot of Chinese families
that like just use MSG for like they're cooking. My my house never did it because we're lazy and most of our cooking involves like as few ingredients and prep as possible, so we just like it's also really in uh Beingnameese food. I feel like uses it a lot too.
That that was my first association with it. So I just know, say because I'm I was don't all fourteen, I just said, okay, this is Vietnamese, but that's really interesting to just know, like, well it's Japanese too, like yeah, I mean it's Asian, It's yeah, yeah, I don't know, but like it is just it is just it's just interesting, like the like people in the U s were just like, I don't know, it's like it's it was in everything. People in the US were also just using it to
cook food. This is also a thing that like people in China use a lot too, So it's not that like Chinese people don't do. It's just like everybody. Like the moment everyone got it, they were like, oh my god, this makes our food tastes better. She's more of it, of course, I mean, I'm assuming. Once it got demonized, it was like, oh, this is a Chinese thing, but I don't know for sure. Yeah, I will be patient. Yeah, so this is this is in fact the next thing.
So nobody really cared about it until nineteen sixty eight rolled around. Well, so for those sixty years, MSG was like, yeah, just use it. Yeah, yeah, Um, I'm forgetting where I'm going to read apart from this journal article, and I've forgotten to put in what journal is from because I'm a hack and a fraud. I think it's a general Natural health sure about that, right, Yeah, sure, it's it's from It's from some journal sub doctors wrote it quote.
In the spring of nineteen, Dr Robert Homemana wrote to the New England Journal of Medicine asking the assistance of the journal's readership and invite identifying the source of phenomenon that Dr Goa labeled the Chinese restaurant syndrome CRS, numbness of his back and neck, palpitations, and general weakness after
he consumed meals in Chinese restaurants. Dr Gua hypothesize that the source of his syndrome might be a reaction to the soy sauce, the cooking wine, the high sodium content of the food, or to the flavor enhancing mono sodium glutamate m s G. Within two months, the journal received a flurry of letters from readers who had noticed a similar phenomenon after eating restaurant prepared Chinese food. So this
is the start of this whole thing. And there's one thing I need to point out right away that is in almost every single article about this that is wrong, which is that this this this, this article says that he's talking about Chinese food, which is true, but very specifically and this and this is this is going to be very important in about ten minutes. Well, I don't know, Tennis, it's gonna be important soon, which is he specifically has a thing about how this is about northern Chinese food mhm.
And you know, this is something that is something that everyone everyone sort of misses. The other thing that's interesting about this is that you know, he says it could be MSG, but you know, she he's treating MSG exactly like all of the rest of the other stuff that's in this that's in the food, right, he lists soy sauce, he lists cooking wine. Maybe he's like, okay, maybe there's too much salt, right, Like he's not really doing an MSG thing. But everyone who reads this immediately focuses on
the M s G. Okay. So before I started researching this, I had heard that this whole letter was actually fake. It was actually a prank. And you know, this is this is a thing that's like, it's kind of like okay. So the story behind this was that it was supposed to have been a prank by a white guy named Dr Steele who made it up as a joke. And this is a sort of like a folk like okay, So this story is not true. The story I am about to say is not true. It turns out this
letter is actually real. But there was there was basically a story that went around that it was this guy named Dr Steele who had made it up as a way to get published in a journal for like a bet, because like Dr Steele like claimed responsibility for it, and that got out to researchers. But it turns yeah, and so for a bit everyone was like, oh my god, this whole thing was started by a prank. But it turns out that's also not true. So this American Life
figured out that Dr Robert is a real guy. Uh dcr Steele had pretended that he said that he made it up the name. It's not true. This a real guy. They talked to his family and his colleagues and all of them were like, oh no, guad like wrote this thing. And interestingly, there's a lot of racism here too, because Dr Steele had claimed that home Man, which is okay. So this is where things get weird. Um I'm saying
good because that's how you actually pronounce it. Um. It's spelled h O m A n k w okay whoa yeah, okay, so this this is this is some Yeah. So this is a wad Giles bullshit, the previous attempt to sort of romanize Chinese. But just think of way Giles and it is the band of my existence. It's dogshit. Hi, this is mea and post I made a mistake here. K w okay is actually the standard Cantonese spelling of good. Sorry about that. I am a dipshit who does not
speak Cantonese. Yeah, and enjoy the rest of the show. They heard someone say ga and we're like this is k w It's like no, no, it's not. Please, So that's bad. It's literally the worst. Like if you if you ever you know, so sometimes if you if you're if you're looking at anything something that's just spelled really weirdly, like or for example, like the way that schenkai check is spelled is actually like like it's actually a way Giles thing like that. There's there's a whole bunch of
like like that. Yeah, yeah you can find um, I don't know that that's I mean, that explains a lot, but yeah, it's what and part part of everything that's happening to you here is that like so and then this is also gonna be important later. KOs is a
is a Cantonese last name. Um, but it's it's it gets really really confusing really quickly if you don't know what's going on, because if if if you're reading, if you're reading a word that's in Chinese in the US, it could either be in Mandarin or in Cantonese, and it also could be either written with the terrible way Giles one, or it could be in opinion, which is
like the one that's actually sort of usable. Um but Dr Steele because again the way it's written is h O m A and k w o kay and Dr Steele claims that he wrote it to be like human croc of shit like how man kruk. Yeah, excuse me, people like people believe, yeah, well he's dead, so yeah,
that's that's so disgusting. Yeah, like this is this is so racist, and it's like, you know, but this like people people believe this for a while because yeah, I don't know, but okay, so eventually people figure out that it's not true. And I'm going to read something from from this American Life piece where they talk about how they figured out that it was actually like that Homenko
was like actually a real guy. And when you read the original letter, there are details that seem more likely to come from her father was just a close father than from Howard. How Howard steels the doctor, like when he said he booved to the US, which the real doctor Good did, and how he's very specific the syndrome happens with Northern Chinese food in the sixties. How many white guys in Philadelphia could have made that distinction? Also,
oh man cool is an actual Cantonese name. What are the odds that dr steel through together random sounding Chinese syllables to arrive at that? So, okay, I read that, and I had a revelation. I I cracked this case. Why the funk open? I figured it out. I figured out what was going on with this letter. Okay, I'm so excited for this. I'm cold hypen this up for like hours, I'm so excited. So I'm bts of this. We have like a group chat essentially, and I didn't.
I wasn't sure if I can make this recording. But then Mia dropped that that bomb, being like I have this big break breakthrough, and I was like, I gotta be there. I just gotta be there. And so I kicked James out because James couldn't make me time I could make. And so here I have I have. I have not told Sharine what the breakthrough this is? Same time. Okay, So is Cantonese right? And she specifies in this letter
that this is about Northern Chinese food. My thesis right here right now is that this whole letter it's actually about. It's actually about Cantonese anti Northerlan sentiments. This is a whole last thing in China. Canton or like the region that was called Canton on the west is like where Cantonese people aren't. This is like this is the very south of China, right there is a whole last thing in China. Let like, people from the North people from
the South hate each other. Um, it's actually very weird. So my my family is like half from the north, half from the South, and like when my mom was growing up, she like she would like get made fun of for how she like rolled dumplings because people were like, oh, you rolled dumplings like a Southerner And She's like, what it is a whole fucking thing. It's like people hate each other, yea, how else how would you know those intricracies, you know what I mean, unless you were from there,
like had history there. Yeah, well I mean I was just this is the thing that that that's persisted in the U s too. You you still you still run into this stuff like they're they're they're like there are definitely like candidese restaurants were like you probably shouldn't speak Mandarin. They're like, there's there's like this is this is still a thing. It's not really talked about very much because it's like it's it's kind of an internal Chinese thing.
But you know, the one place you actually really gotta see this, you gotta see this from the Hong during the Hong Kong protests in both sides, because like, okay, so there there there's a strain of the sort of like like there there's a strain of Chinese nationalism that's very sort of like it was doing this like really very sort of like anti southern racism from you know, you get this from a lot of the Chinese nationalist on the CCP side, there's another faction of like the
Hong Kong protesters who's like, thing was like, we're not actually Chinese because we're not like the Northerners. You're a communist and like evil, which which is really funny because like you know, like okay, the if if you if you run through the actual history of communism in China, it's like, okay, like like one of one of the one of the largest communists like strikes that ever happened
was in Hong Kong. Like sure, fine, but you know, but obviously, like I'm simplifying all of this enormously because it's very complicated. There's a lot of regional ship that's going on here. Yeah, but so your your thesis is that the person that started all of this was like maybe like from the South or like just like yeah, I mean that is that is definite, Like that is that is like the like that is the most Cantonese asked name I've ever heard, like that that that guy,
that guy, that guy is definitely from southern China. And yeah, my my thesis is specifically it's this Cantonese guy going a funk. Those nerds that there's I hate their I hate their asses, I hate their food, their food at ship eating it makes me sick. But because because it's the US that the subtlety of this gets lost and everyone just runs with it is like Chinese restaurant syndrome.
Even though this is the this is this is my theories, this is this is like this is like kind of semi obscured, like Chenny's like internal grudge v point, Like like knowing the origin point makes a lot more sense now to be honest, like, why would this be some random like why would he specify a region, like a very specific region that that's just I don't I don't know that that that that that's my theory. I could be wrong about this, but all it fits with all
of the details, so it checks out. It checks out, I think. Yeah, So okay, alright, so so this this letter happens and there's like a flurry of letters rather people talking about this, and okay, I want to talk about why this got picked up the way it does. Um, I'm gonna still yeah, this is this is I'm going to read from every single article in this also goes exactly the same way. So I'm gonna read from Mens
Health version. So you get this section of it before I talked about why it's I think like not sufficient to capture what was happening. Mostly describes the late fift is a time of heightened anti Chinese sentiment. By the nineteen sixties, domestic and international politics had shifted towards a fairly clear anti communist agenda. In fact, he says during this time, anti Chinese sentiments were so widespread and accepted
that most Americans didn't consider their apprehension to be racial bias. Now, this is true as far as it goes. But we need to go to ADS and we'll come back from ADS. I will tell em what else was going on in that week? Hell yeah, all right, and we're back. We're back. We're talking about how this like letter to like a journal in New England suddenly became an entire like national American thing. Okay, So the way this happened is that
this got picked up by the news. Now there's a huge New York Times article about this, and that article is published on May nineteenth, nineteen. Now, Sharine, do you know what else was going on in May? I've heard a lot of ship went down in the sixties. Yeah, so this is this is right, This is like smack dab in the middle of May sixty eight in France. This is this is like one week after the Night of the Barricades UM. Three days before this was published.
The situationists who are like these, this like ultra left student organization who who who at this point are occupying the Sorbonne like they have fully taken control of their campus. They have run the cops out, they have run the
administration out. UM. Three days before this is published. The students at the Sorbond, reacting to a factory occupation that they heard about, send out this famous communicate calling for the occupation of all factories in France, and like it fucking happens, Like the workers in France take control of like a huge portion of Francis factories, like the brain factories are under control of the workers um like by by by this time, like this is happening, right, the
police have like the police are fighting them, but they're losing um. Two days before this article is published, uh, the sorband sends this to the Chinese consulate quote, shaken your boots, bureaucrats, The international power of the workers councils will soon wipe you out. Humanity won't be happy until the last bureaucrat is hung with the guts of the last capitalists. Long live the factory occupations, Long live the great Charitese proletarian revolution elected twenties seven, betrayed by the
Stalinist bureaucrats. It goes on and on, like this is just what they're sending to the maoists right like that, that is that is how far left these people are, Like they're they're telling the Maoist shaking your boots, Bereaucrats, the international power of work, those councils will soon wipe you out. Like it is wild in sense. Yeah, I mean the fact that this is happening all during all of that. Yeah, yeah, I don't know, that's no, yeah, no, one,
it's it's really important. I have never read an article that actually puts this together, and it was like, it's not just that going on right, Like, you know, if you like the situation in France, they are a week and a half out from de Gaul, who was the president literally fleeing the country because he's so convinced that
they're about to lose the country to communism. Like well, and I should say when I say communism, by the way, part of that message to the to the Maoist is down with the state revolutionary Marxisms like that that that these are these people are like these people have are Marxists who have gone like so far left they've essentially become anarchists. It's it's wild and mean, you know. And also what's happening, like the prog Spring is happening during
the middle of this um. This is also like this is a month after the Holy Week uprising in the US, which is so after MLK was killed, there were these like probably the most intense riots to US has ever seen, like even like even more so than like the ones we saw the Holy Week riot, Like they were like like there there were there were like like thousands of
paratroopers We're being deployed to like kill rioters. Yeah, like nuts, yeah, like that was that was probably the closest like some of the closes the US has ever had to just like actually having revolution in the government, losing control of the entire country and like and what while this article is coming out, like there are still even in May, the Holy Week up risings in April, but like even if like even in May, there are still people on
the streets fighting the cops, like while while this article is being written, and you know, if you look at the there's something about first on that entire year. I mean it's wild like the six May sixty like that that that year is just the year like the entire world went. I mean there's like like like they they I can't remember if they act successfully over through the government.
They like almost over through the government of Pakistan, like a whole bunch of students shot in Mexico because they're
trying to bring down the government. Like it's everywhere. There was all this stuff going on um And you know, also the everything that is happening is we're two years into the Culture Revolution and it's kind of interesting because but by sixty eight we're kind of into the backlash phase of the culture Revolution, where most of what's happening is that the sort of various rebel factions that formed the nine seven and nine sixty six are just getting
like slaughtered by the sort of like state factions. And it's more it's it's it's a culture revolution. It's really complicated, but like bye bye. By this point, the sort of like revolution part of it has like kind of calmed down and it's more the state in its sort of
new form taking control. But you know, if you're living through this, right, it looks like the culture revolutions happens in in in sixty six and then sixty seven, and then suddenly there was a culture revolution happening literally everywhere. And this is the context of the MSG scared like kicks off in right. It It starts in like right in the middle of arguably the two most radical months
of the entire twentieth century. Wow. Yeah, And and this is this is the kind of ship that starts like just an absolute mania in the American mind that is powerful enough that like sixty years later, it's still around. I mean it feels like the it happening as such like a a manic time, like people were probably already like kind of feeling that energy. Right. It was like everything that was directed everywhere, even at this article. Yeah.
And I genuinely think if if this had happened two months later, two months earlier, I don't think I don't think there would have been like a big scare about it, Like it might have been a thing I suck around
for a bit. But I think the fact that the end of the New York Times article happen came out exactly like in the middle of May sixty eight, and that like the original one comes out like right before the like the original article that gets set to the thing comes out like a couple of weeks before the
Holy Week up Rising. I think it was the fact that it was exactly in this moment where everyone on Earth is if you we're living through this, like this is the capital or revolution like has come and you know, and that that chattered everyone's brains. Like I don't know. I wonder like do people remember what it was like like when like when like the height of twenty twenty was happening, Like just how sort of wild like there
was just psychologically I'm telling you there was like an energy. Yeah, yeah,
that's collective strange. I mean, like obviously it's different than it was sixty eight, But I really do agree with you, like if it happened in January, you know, yeah, and you know I So the the other thing that's interesting about about this whole sort of like Chinese restaurant syndrome is that you could actually track it spread like across other countries by sort of like moments of like peak anti Chinese like sentiment and also anti Japanese sentiment to
a lesser extent, because that that that sort of replaces the anti Chinese stuff by the time you to the eighties and nineties, but will not replaces. But it's like it's like the dominant mode of like we have a person who needs to be afraid of any stage. Um, but there was interesting. Okay, so if if if if you if you look up, um, like if you're looking
for you like medical stuff about Chinese restaurant syndime. One of the things you will find is a case report of the Indian Journal of Critical Medical Care from two thousand and seventeen claiming that they were treating a patient who got Chinese restaurant syndrome and like couldn't speak because the thing in the back of his throat had like inflamed, and you know, and then they had this whole thing about like this this is like this is like a
serious disorder, and they specifically cited that letter to the editor from sixty eight the power of that thing. And you know, Okay, so if you look what what was going on in India in two thousand seventeen, and it turns out the thing that's going on is like a giant rise and anti Chinese sentiment culminating in the toy seventeen Indian Chinese border incidents. Where did you remember when all those guys you're like beating each other to death
in the mountains with sticks? I do baking. Remember that I as so sad and many times in my life, and especially post pandemic, my brain is broken, but I do vaguely remember that I had kind of forgotten about it, and then and then I slok at this article and sol in seventeen, I was like, wait, hold on, hold on, wasn't that wasn't didn't didn't that happen in twenty seventeen. And it's funny because like, yeah, right, attentual rise again,
suddenly Chinese restaurants and it reappears. It's it's really, it's really incredible. It's it's yeah, it's an incredible set of brain worms. Um. I just I mean, this is definitely not on topic, I guess, but even just seeing like COVID being blamed on China, like there's always like a like a way for ignorant people just to point the
finger at China, which is really fucking shitty. It's so yeah, it's yeah, I mean, I think it's it's just sort of like like one of the things you sort of need to have a national project is that in order for you to be in order for you to be like a nation, you have to have you have to have another You have have people who aren't part of the nation, and the US is pretty effectively they have they you know, they can have the sort of rotating cast of people who like aren't like from the nation, right,
if you want to stay in, there are people that need to stay out. Yeah. Sometimes with Mexico sometimes sometimes you get it with sort of like like internal subversion from like black people, like additions people. But yeah, you know, they have this rotating cast. China is always one of the ones that come back to because it's just big and there's a lot of them, and you know, people
are easily feared by it. Like I think it's like it's unknown, and maybe people don't understand it very well that don't look into it themselves and want to be educated. But forever reason, people fear it so easily, and it's so bizarre. It's so bizarre. Yeah it sucks. Oh yeah, Okay, So I'm going to do an ad break and then we're gonna talk about more of this stuff because it
keeps going and we're back, all right. So obviously we're dealing with sort of anti Chinese sentiment and anti Japanese sentiments as you know, Japanese sentiment escalating as the safety surting into like the eighties and nineties. But there's more going on here. Um. Part of the reason you know, back like this in theory could have been about like
soy sauce. Right, Like, there's a lot of things that they could have picked out of that to be the thing about, but they picked M. S. G. And part of the reason they picked MSG is that this is the period when people start like figuring out that food additives exist. Mm hmmm, and people don't get really sort of touchy about it. And actually Ralph Nader uh famous. Yeah, so he's around in the sixties, um because he's old
as ship. Yeah yeah, and he's you know, okay, so I give I give him credit for for he has probably saved as many lives as like any other American, single American you can name, by being the guy who like lobbied to have seatbelts in cars being mandatory. I think that was not before because the US is a like truly deranged country. Yeah, he wasn't half bad most
of the time. Yeah, but but come on, he's also one of the guys who's like the big pusher for getting the US government to study MSG and a lot of other food editives and like nine so you know, and like there's a bunch of other food items that they're studying the health effects of. And and on the one hand, like, yeah, it probably is good to study the effects of like food editives because like I don't know, companies do stuff that sucks all the time, and so
it is good to study with a your food. On the other hand, Okay, it's gonna sound really ignorant, so I apologize, What where again if you already said this, where was that foul? Where was mustry found? As it created in the lab? Like what's the Yeah, but by this point it's basically creating a lab. The first time someone was able to distill it was they did this whole distillation process of seaweed seed. Yeah. But but but
by this point, it's no worries. Yeah, no, like by bye bye bye, I mean even by like they're early actually twenties. I think it's it's mostly being produced artificially, which is probably but yeah, yeah, and it makes it taste better. But like, like you know, it is something that like you like you can't find it like in in dashi, like you can find it in like soup broths and stuff like from the way from seaweed. So
it's it's not like I didn't know that. I've known about MSG for most of my life and I never like for whatever reason. Growing up, we always associated with sodia like salt, salty. Yeah, well, I mean it is right, like it is a kind of salt, but like I don't know, like people people have this whole thing like oh, it's artificial. It's like like yeah, we make it artificially, but like it's not it's not like it's not a thing that you can get out of plants. It's just
that we don't do it that way because it's easier. Yeah, the source of it is the artificial. But also like you're gonna be a stickler on this one thing when you eat like I don't know, so many other and drink so many other things. Like there was cocaine and coke. Yeah, there's every every every every every American like in nineteen sixty nine is like by by their body volume, drinking two pounds of lead a year. So like it's like
like this is the thing you're gonna stick up. Yeah, well and and you know, and this this is this is this is sort of the problem with with what Ralph Nader is doing with this sort of like pushing the government investigation of it, is that like you know, like I don't know how racist nine nine, Ralph Nader was My My guess is that I don't think that his big thing was we need to study this because it's the dirty Chinese like salt or whatever. I I think I think mostly just wanted to you wanted the
thing to study food editives. I could be wrong about that. I don't know. I haven't I've looked into this exact zero percent. But like, you know, the problem is that like once the sort of racial panic is going, like you can't put you can't put the sort of cork back in the bottle, right and you know, okay, so there have been a bunch of studies about this, um and like but but you know, okay, the problem with what's happening is that because of the way MS has
been sort of racialized, like the studies don't matter. Like it's it just does not matter what anyone actually sort of writes about it until you get an actual cultural change because the study science is irrelevant. Um, they have the study to justify a bunch of things and that's the only study they care about. Yeah, it's it's it's it's like the like vector that's like the like the fake factory of vaccines cause autism. Ship, Like, no, it's
they just believe this. They have one paper that's literally a joke exactly. Yeah, that's like, but disprove it. But like noah's a million others like that. By the way, that study, I want to point this out. The methodology of that study was they asked parents who thought their kids had developed autism because of the vaccine if they thought their kids had developed autism because of the vaccine, and then the parents said yes, and that's the study.
That's the study. Yeah, that's a lot of study. It's a joke, like it's it's literally a Twitter pool. They like got published, and they're attracted because al right, like this this is the scientific basis of all this bullshit, and what qualifies is a fucking study. Then you could you could, I don't know you can. You can publish fucking anything if you put your mind to it. This is this. This, this is what I'm telling all of you, like,
follow your dreams, try to get something published. They published this bullshit, so like you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna
do a study. Yeah. Well the other thing. The other thing, specifically, like there's a real problem here with like this is everything with medical studies because like you can have a medical study that you get published with a sample size of one because it's you found a thing and a guy and you're like, oh, I'm gonna publish this, but you like medical studies, like you could just like you
could publish any bullshit and like it sucks. But okay, so all right, like lots of so after this, there are lots of studies by lots of people, and like mostly what they find is they can't find any Okay. So there's some like initial studies that like find some alarming stuff in mice. But the problem with these studies that what they're doing is Okay, yeah, it turns out you can take a mouse and you just like fill
a syringe with MSG and inject them with it. It's bad for them, but like yeah, yeah, you would you injected a mouse with pure salt, and bad things happen.
Like yes, if you took a human being and you injected fucking a third of a cup of MSG directly into their veins, it would probably be bad for them, like okay, you know, right, um, And they found out the conclusion from that was basically like okay, if someone ate like a third of a cup of MSG raw having not eaten for like forty eight hours, it would probably do things that are not great for you. Can't
you say that. I've had a bunch of other fings like like I don't know if if if you didn't eat for twenty four hours and eight a third or a couple of salts, like that's probably that's not good for you. Like I don't do that, So, like you know, okay, very very specific circumstances have to light it up for
you to have reactions. So there's a study from two thousands where they also this is also another empty stomach study by the way, because they've okay, no one has ever been able to replicate like any of these results with a person eating food that has MSG in it. They're everybody able to do it. They've been able to
get some results. If you have people eat like basically pure MSG and have not eaten any food like around it, Yeah, it's like you're that's useless because the the molecule at that point it probably interacts with other things and that's you know what I mean, Like if it's just I'm not the actual I don't know, Yeah, I'm of a chemistry. So I'm gonna let the chemistry nerds arguing I did
fail a p chem so great. Yeah, I I look how I only had to take chemistry in so I just didn't take a p KEM because, like, I suck. I took a CHM like my first my freshman year. Now it's like, let's not do this again. I can't do this. Just don't take the thing. I wanted to be a psychiatrist for a really long time, but failing AP chemistry and just experiencing chemistry, I was like, I can't. Yeah,
it sucks. It's the worst. But okay. So the reason I was talking about the vaccines cause as like autism ship is that there was another thing with MSG where people were claiming it was causing asthma and it no, they had there. They had another looking incredibly elaborate pseudoscience bullshit about like the MSG like getting absorbed, like getting absorbed improperly through like like fetal membranes. That's like completely nonsense,
Like it doesn't. Yeah, people people like what what white people love to say that the diseases they've gotten from fucking the fact that like they're they're the air in their house is n c O two by volume and like and and could because because they've decided to run an entire country by just putting fucking trucking yards everywhere, like okay, a finger to point at right, like it can't be yeah, you know you know what I mean, Like, yeah,
I should. I should make this clear. By the way, when when I when I when I when when when I say when I say that like autisms, I'm not sorry. When when I say that asthma specifically is when I'm talking about the bad air specifically talking about asthma, I'm not talking about autism with that that that that is not what causes autism or whatever, like just it's cool and also funk autism speaks, yes, yeah, but yeah, I want to put that on the record. That's what I mean.
I'm not I'm not saying that trucks cause autism. They don't. Like yeah, yeah, so okay, but there's a lot of like incredibly weird, racial, very dumb, anti scientific panic about it. It's possible that there existed so Ofvisually it was about like like anyone who eats this will have these sentiments, right, and then over time the argument got sort of fizz down to there might be a group of people who in the population, like a small group people who are
like specifically sensitive to it, and that's probably plausible. Like there's some experimental evidence that shows that there could be a group of people for whom they're more sensitive to it than a regular person And I don't know, people of allergies like whatever, like yeah, yeah, yeah, Like it's not like like yeah, it's it's not a thing to sort of like like yeah, I don't know, like if you're a person who gets allergy reactions to ship, like yeah,
that's allergies, right, but like it's it's not the sort of like I don't know if the panic about it is utterly unjustified. There may be if there may be a group of people who it has some effect on because there are larger to it or whatever. But yeah, imagine imagine demonizing peanuts because there's a group of people that can't eat peanuts, you know what I mean? Like, that's that's that's why, like why would you ever do that?
To be fair, I I am okay with demonizing peanuts specifically, specifically if it gets people to stop fucking were shipping that bastard Jimmy Carter, who was a neoliberal ghoul, and his reputation has been fucking just like like, his reputation has been saved entirely by the fact that every single person who came after him was an utterly deranged war criminal and his war crime was like suppressing well he
was a peanut farmer. Oh sorry, sorry, this is this is this is this is the this is this is the the deep Jimmy Carter lore for okay it yeah, okay, but you know, all right, So going going back, I think so this was the kind of thing that like, you know, people avoiding msg is just kind of had just kind of been like like a part of daily life, Like it was just like a thing that existed in
the world. But it wasn't like at a certain point it became the kind of thing that people would talk about like in conversation and like they'll did you know, you could just get people to do ant msg rans, But it wasn't really a sort of like mainstream political issue in the way that it had been like in that st nine where there's well, the only thing that happened is in the nineties the FDA did to study about it. The f d A was like, it's fine,
don't don't don't eat three grams of it at one time. Likes, as long as you're not sitting there like eating MSG raw out of the fucking like you think about like hyd syrup, why yeah, and like like by by volume, hypric dose cord and syrup was killed way more people than also. Now now there's like a whole thing about like MSG causing obesity, which I I don't know if
that's true or not. I think their studies are fucking whack, but you know, it's it's it might cause obesity like every other food that the US has made in the
last twenty years. Yeah, yeah, and what what what one one day we will do a episode about like the politics of anti fatnists because it's fucked but today we're we're doing this episode and okay, so you know, every once in a while, the way the way of this stuff work, every once in a while, there would be a sort of like like a mainstream like Asian American
figure who would talk about it. For example, there's there's there's a Korean chef named David Chang who talks about it um and he he did some like he gave speeches about it and the start demonization of it, but it didn't really get back to Mainsham discourse until when are Good Friends a Gino Moto. The people who made the stuff in the first place hired a bunch of Asian American like celebrities to do a pro MSG campaign.
So they hired Eddie Huong, who's like a writer and chef who's like probably most famous for being the guy who wrote Fresh off the Boat, and so that they have this whole sort of campaign and this like takes off right like he he. This is this is one of those things that was like completely forgotten that happened in that no one now remembers because this happens like before COVID, like before we had the lockdowns and before I'll be honest, it escapes my memory. I I have
no member this happening either, but apparently it did. I don't know. I was I think this was still well the I think this is well the election was still going on, so yeah, the best time to do that
year everything happens. But okay, so you know this campaign like takes off like like any Huang's on on NBC and did you like the talk show circuit with Jenny Am advocating for like so that their whole thing is that they wanted to remove Chinese restaurants sent from the dictionary, and they had this whole like hashtag redefinance CRS is like the redefining Chinese Restaurant syndrome, and this is like a whole thing, and you know, and there's there's there's
something okay, but this was one of the things that's gonna drew me to the story because if you look at the press for this, right, it's like activists pressure maryon Webster and like that's kind of true, Like it's superficially it is kind of what happened, and like, yeah, I'm glad the dictionary change the entry to say like this is like outdated and kind of bullshit, but like, okay,
think about what actually happened here, right. A company that makes a product hired a bunch of a bunch of sort of Asian American like big celebrity people to do a marketing campaign for them in the name of anti racism, which like, yes, I I am glad we are addressing
the racism in our own MSG. However, common I feel like it's a really sort of like it's a It's a really literal example of the kind of like vopidity and listlessness of like Asian American identity and culture and politics like pre COVID, like this is this is this is this hands something like early January, right, so COVID is still sort of like some disease in China, like
we haven't hit full of racis and yet. And again like this is not like an activist campaign, you know, I mean, like activists get on board with it, I guess, but like activism is doing an ad campaign for a company that makes salt right. Yeah, it's not exactly grassroots or yea, and and you know, okay, and it works right like this this is a thing that like the Asian American community like picks up right, I mean sort of.
I don't know. I I don't remember it, but I when I look looking looking back on the articles and hashtags and stuff, it's like, wow, they got lots of tweets. But you know, I I think I think the reason that this worked is is because of the sort of
self conception of like Asian American nous. Is this like backstory of like like immigrants stepping off the boat and they start a restaurant, and then your kids get an education to the answer the professional class, and like there isn't like I don't know, like this is in fact, this is literally like part of the reason I'm doing Also, it was like this is literally what happened to my family.
Like they like they showed up from Taiwan, they worked in a restaurant, then they opened a restaurant, and then like I don't know, like every successive generation, well okay, I was gonna say every every successive generation got more like professionally, but like I have a bunch of doctors onthing. But but then they also produced me, who's a podcaster. So I'm I'm defying Asian American stereotypes bite being more
dipship than my parents. But you know, like this has become like this single sort of cultural narrative of like what it is to be in Asian American, Right, Like you see this in every single story that Asian American media like has produced in the last like ten years. It has one plot. Right, There's a family in the US. They're trying to fit in. They almost always have some kind of small business, and then something appears that challenges
their ability to like assimilate into American society. This is and then you know, they deal with it and that's the end. Right, This is a plot of crazy rich Asians, is a plot of everything ever all at once. The plot of Fresh of the Boat is the prout of the fucking c W. Kung Fu show. It is the plot. Like literally everything that like we produce has one plot, and it's this. And the reason why is it's you know,
there's the reason why. This is the only sort of like piece of media that that the sort of Asian American culture class have been able to produce. Is the reason why all the fucking activism and ad campaigns are just like, fucking we got hired by a company and we're gonna talk about where racism racism is bad, so
about this company can sell more product. Like, the reason is this is because this is an incredibly marketable self conception of Asian American nous like that the conception of it as being restaurant owners is there because it's it's it's a form of culture that can be sold to
white people. Right, It's, hey, look we're different. We eat wacky food, but you can eat it too, And ultimately we're all in this for capitalism in the patriarchal family, like just like you are, don't worry, It's gonna be fine. And you know that that really depresses me because this
this is a moment that demands something else. And I think that's why kind of like I think that's why the sort of mainstream like Asian American reaction to like you know, like that there was there was another there was another Asian woman like who got stabbed to death like two weeks ago, and there was like fucking no coverage of it, Like nobody gave a ship. It's just gotten to the point where like this happens, like six people report on it and then everyone just sort of
moves onto their life. Yeah, And I think the reason why this sort of like stop Asian hate ship has gotten to a you know, like it's gotten it gets gone through the sign cycle where everyone like had the signs up and then they took them down and so you know, like and I think the reason why it was it turned into this sort of like like did the organizing turning this like incredibly vapid like put a sign in your store like two the hashtag stuff like is because of this is is because what like what
what it means to be sort of Asian American has been hollowed out and hauled out and hold out and sold and sold and sold for just decades and decades and decades and now, you know, like in a time and it's actually sort of like you know, when it when it's really in danger and it's called to action, it hasn't been able to do much right. And well, yeah, pointing out the film and TV thing is really important because I mean, so many marginalized communities have this experience.
But I think China, like Asian culture in particular, I think it really people if they're ignorant and they just see what's depicted on media, they don't see them as three dimensional beings, you know what I mean, what they have is like a very hollow version of a human And so I don't know, it's it kind of upsets me because I feel like media is the first thing people learn things from, whether it's film or TV or whatever.
But yeah, well, and also I think it's I think it's part of the reason why, like the way that those those depictions sort of obscure class where you know, because these things, right, like a lot of these families are poor, but they're still business owners, right, And that that's like like if you're who are American as well, it's because you're a business and you're like a sort
of struggling like American entrepreneur. And this obscure is the fact that there there is a massive Asian American just underclass people who are like delivery drivers or work in warehouses or you know, I mean like they're they're there. Who could there are groups of people who like come to the US from China who you know, like live in like basically completely isolated communities in pertect Chinatown where
they're only speaking Chinese and they just sucking. Like there are people who have to do a bunch of like warehouse ship and then they leave and that's it, right, Like and these these people this ship never you like, you never actually get any kind of sort of class analysis, because the way that media thinks about Asian Americans is like there's there's one of they're either one or three things.
They're a business owner, they're like a rich professionals like a doctor or something, or they're like the fucking people
on Blink where they're just like super rich assholes. And that that allows I think like a specific kind of anti Asian politics to work that like Asian people are seen to sort of like Setubal like four an elite, and it's like no, I don't know, like it's it's just not you know, it's it's not true and and it and it means that when you get like Asian American political movements, like the sort of stuff antiation hating, right, like you have like the guy who founded door Dash, right,
is like is a nation is like a Chinese American guy, right, and he's like he used to he's a tech billionaire. He used to be like an emany Like you know, you would have the stop Asian hate advance, Like this fucking guy is on their light, is up on the stage talking about anti agent hate. And it's like, okay, this guy has like brutally and horribly exploited like literally
millions of Asian Americans. But you know, there's there's there's there's no there's never gonna be reckoning with that because you know, and he's he's capitalist, like he's achieved the capitalist dream or whatever the ship and and I I mean because because because Asian American contentia has been flattened in this way, like those people are just completely invisible and it it sucks and I hate it and yeah, yeah,
I it's just I don't know. There's nothing good. I can like anything I can say to make anything better, but I think it's just I don't know. Maybe we can do an episode one day about like film and TV and stuff, because I think it really starts there unfortunately, like like it's it's silly, but people that don't know a Chinese person will see a Chinese person on their TV and be like, that's the only Chinese person I've ever seen in my life. And I'm gonna make assumptions
about the whole race now. But one day I'm going to do an epid. We're gonna do an episode that's entirely me shifting on Jackie Chan. People are gonna get really mad at me. But funk that guy. That's a hot take. He started his career as a fucking scamp. That was literally his first thing was he was a scap. And he's yeah, he's the fucking homophote piece of shit. Fuck him. Uh yeah, done your parable damage for this episode.
Let's do it. Yeah, all right, that will that will be something we're We're now to the part of the episod we are teasing you with subsequent episode. But yeah,
but yeah, I don't know. And it's a little bit upsetting how these are really important movements are just like they the plateau and they become like this vapid thing like you're saying, Like, I think that gives people such an easy out of like quote unquote being an ally or supporting because they think they're doing something by like holding up a sign or something without really internalizing or spreading the awareness that is necessary. And uh, I don't know.
I I guess the thing I want to end on also is me being piste off at a bunch of Asian American kids in the sets. So one of the stories you will hear a lot if you're studying Asian American politics, like is the story that like the term Asian American was invented by these like activists who actually were like doing a bunch of stuff eight um, these like student act like this radical student activists, and like
that's true. But the thing you have to understand about those people is that all of those people were like like all those people were basically like we're third world ists.
And part of the reason this whole politics collapses. Well, a part of the reason, part of what happened was like part of the demands of these students in these sort of like radical student groups, like but you know, their form to sort of like support the sort of like black radical student groups into like advocate for themselves. But like one of their big demands was they wanted cultural studies departments in in American universities, and they got them.
But you know, okay, so what what what what are those cultural studies like departments? They basically just became these giant traps through radicals where instead of like overthrowing the government, you like come do this cushy job in academia, and like all of all of the sort of like old radicals like from that area either like got regular jobs
or became like Agrican academics. Right. And the other thing that happened with this politics that was the reason why it was completely unsustainable was that and this is this is this has been a sort of a problem with the Asian American identity. Right. Is that Okay, like what the fund is a nation American? Right, It's like anyone from like I don't know likes anyone from like the like the edge of the Pacific to like I don't know, like how how how far? How far? Like I what's
it called? Like how far? How far west? Does that go? The other direction? Like who knows? It's like yeah, like I mean this is like billions and billions and billions of people with completely your related cultures and languages and stuff like that. And the reason they were able to do this, right was because they were mirroring their movement
off of like the Third World right. But the problem that they ran into, and this is the problem with all the Third World movements, was that, Okay, so the Third World movement like as a thing was it was based on a bunch of different nationalist movements, right, Like it was based on that there was going to be this like alliance between like the sort of like the rising socialis powers in Africa and the rising socialist powers and uh in East Asia, and they were gonna sort
of like ally with like the rising sort of like you know, like the rising sort of like minorities getting power in the US. But okay, if you look at those nationalisms, right, you have Chinese nationalism, Cambodian nationalism, and Vietnamese nationalism all colliding with each other, and you know, if it turns out like what okay? So what what what happens if your movement is based on sort of like the unity of a bunch of nationals movements and
they go to war with each other? And you know what happened was when when when China when Vietnam and Vadas Cambodia in and and Vietnam and Vedas Cambodia and then China invades Vietnam in nine seventy nine. Right, the entire politics is fucked because what what what are you supposed to do? Like what's who's who side you're supposed
to take here? Right? Like you can you can do the you know, like if if you're gonna be like a Marxist, like a Marxis Leninist, like the probably the correct line to support Vietnam, Right, but that's a mess because you know how many simple in Maoists, right and if you but but you know, if you're a Maoist and you're fucking people just invaded Vietnam, like you know,
what are you supposed to do? Right? And there was there were earlier attentions with this too, where like like China with China was backing like a really shitty fashion in Angola who ended up ended up being backed by the US and like South Africa, and that caused a whole bunch of tensions between the sort of Chinese maoists and a bunch of the sort of black radical groups because they were like, why the funk are you guys
backing these people in Angola. But you know, and and and this, this whole thing became a problem because all of these nationalisms are competing nationalisms right there. There was never going to be one unified third world. It was always it was always going to end with a bunch of nationalists fighting each other. And when that happens, the Asian like the Asian American movement such as it was just fucking died, and you know, like as a radical movement,
it was just over. And so you know, I think I think the lesson that I would take out of this is just that like, do not build, do not build your movement based off of someone else's nationalism, because those people are going to do things because they're nationalists
that are just fucked right. They're gonna win. They're gonna invade Vietnam like Kemp, like the Cambodians are gonna invade Vietnam, and then Vietnam is gonna like you know, like are arguably justifiably because they've been getting attacked because they're fighting
the Khmer Rouge. But like you know, they're they're these people are all going to go to war with each other, right like you're or you know, you're, you're gonna be stuck in the situation where like you're, you're, you're you're being forced to two sides between like the DIRG and the and like the Marxist government Somalia because they've they've randomly gone to war with each other. So don't do this. This has been my rants that I wanted all I wanted to do about this because yeah, no, I'm glad
you did. I'm glad that I was here for it too, because I don't know. It's good to know this stuff and I get to learn by listening to you still me um, Yeah, I I appreciate all the research that you did. Thanks. Yeah, and yeah, so I guess this has been It can happen here, yeah, yeah, that's the episode. You can find us happen here pod um on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at amc h R three. Um, yeah, yeah, I'm a sure hero six six six on Twitter and
then on Instagram. Just take out the six six sixes, but maybe I should add them because who cares anyway? Thanks bye. It Could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.