Yes, MSG, the Secret Behind the Savor. (NY Times – Via Umami Mart)
IN 1968 a Chinese-American physician wrote a rather lighthearted letter to The New England Journal of Medicine. He had experienced numbness, palpitations and weakness after eating in Chinese restaurants in the United States, and wondered whether the monosodium glutamate used by cooks here (and then rarely used by cooks in China) might be to blame.
The consequences for the restaurant business, the food industry and American consumers were immediate and enormous. MSG, a common flavor enhancer and preservative used since the 1950s, was tagged as a toxin, removed from commercial baby food and generally driven underground by a new movement toward natural, whole foods.
“It was a nightmare for my family,” said Jennifer Hsu, a graphic designer whose parents owned several Chinese restaurants in New York City in the 1970s. “Not because we used that much MSG — although of course we used some — but because it meant that Americans came into the restaurant with these suspicious, hostile feelings.”
I’ve been quite clear on the subject. The anti-MSG movement is the Red Scare of our generation, and all you culinary Joe McCarthys are on notice.
Wonderful read, that was. My wife is Chinese, so we have delicious home cooked Chinese food all the time. Im trying to encourage her to add them to this chinese food website too, but her english isnt really up to it yet. I’ll subscribe to your site for later reading if you don’t mind!