Opinion | ‘Chinese kitchens are dirty and MSG is bad for you’: how racism persists in the West, despite evidence to the contrary

Racism can be so deep-seated that it can affect what we eat. I had no idea that my almost lifelong belief that MSG, the popular name for the flavouring additive monosodium glutamate, was bad for health, was the result of anti-Chinese bias. Stay away from Chinese restaurants unless they have a sign in the window saying, “We don’t use MSG”, became the mantra and I stuck religiously to it.

Japanese scientist Kikinae Ikeda created MSG in 1908 as a result of searching for what made the country’s kitchen staple, seaweed, so flavourful. He isolated glutamate, found naturally in a wide variety of food including potatoes, tomatoes, mushrooms, peas and grapes, and mixed it with water and table salt to stabilise it, creating an ingredient he described the taste of as umami, Japanese for “savoury”.

Others in the country, in China, and elsewhere in Asia and the world, also thought so and the company he set up to produce and market MSG remains the global leader. The white crystals are used in a wide variety of packaged and processed products including crisps, frozen meals, sauces and gravies – yet, no one complains of ill-effects to their health when they consume them.

For those Chinese food claims about MSG, blame Dr Robert Ho Man Kwok, a Chinese immigrant to the United States. In a letter he wrote to the respected New England Journal of Medicine in 1968, he complained of “a numbness at the back of the neck, gradually radiating to both arms and the back, and general weakness and palpitation” after eating at “certain Chinese food restaurants”.