A few years ago, Jennifer Lamejo was watching this PBS cooking show, and this chef, David
Chang, started talking about MSG, and of course lots of people believe MSG is bad for you.
It gives you headaches, food hangover, that idea has been around for decades, I grew up
hearing this, maybe you did too.
But Jennifer knows this is a myth, and in fact the very next segment on the show is
science and food writer Harold McGee saying just that.
And he just had this sort of throwaway line that, yeah, this myth of MSG being harmful
can be traced back to one letter in the New England Journal of Medicine.
A letter to the editor in the New England Journal of Medicine.
And I was just sort of sitting there going, huh, one letter.
It was like, oh, it's an origin story.
At the time Jennifer was a PhD student, very interested in the way people talk about race
and Asian-Americans.
So to hear that there was once this letter, the letter Americans to freak out about the
dangers of an ingredient commonly used in Chinese food, an ingredient that was later
proven totally harmless, Jennifer wanted to see that letter.
So she went into the stacks, found this old journal from the 60s, and there it was.
A letter to the editor from a doctor titled Chinese Restaurant Syndrome.
So the letter reads, for several years since I have been in this country, I have experienced
a strange syndrome whenever I have eaten out in a Chinese restaurant.