ME IN EVERYTHING U SAY

The Racist Myth of MSG and 'Chinese Restaurant Syndrome'

Wed, 15 May 2013 21:28:18 +0100

This is the story of a racist myth that began with a light-hearted letter to the New England Journal of Medicine in 1968 and subsequently exploded in North American culture — in direct opposition to every shred of scientific evidence — becoming so prevalent that credulous eaters buy into it to the point of experiencing its effects on a purely psychosomatic basis.

It’s often been called “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome” and its premise is that MSG in Chinese food results in unpleasant allergic reactions. Interestingly enough, higher quantities of MSG in non-Chinese foods are not reported to have the same effects. MSG is a naturally occurring amino acid, and some of the highest levels of MSG a North American consumer is likely to ingest come in vine-ripened tomatoes, aged cheese, and dry-aged steak — yet there is no reported medical phenomenon known as “Italian Food Syndrome” or “American Steakhouse Syndrome”.

Monosodium glutamate was first isolated from the seaweed kombu, commonly used in the Japanese broth dashi, by biochemist Kikunae Ikeda of the Tokyo Imperial University in 1908. He named its taste umami because it differed from the five conventional flavours of sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and spicy. Ikeda patented his discovery and MSG became commercially available in 1909. It was found to enhance flavours with one third of the amount of sodium as traditional salt, i.e. sodium chloride. In this sense, monosodium glutamate is probably healthier than sodium chloride because it achieves flavour with reduced sodium levels.

MSG was immediately popular in Asia and became common in the North American food industry after World War II, used in baby food, canned soup, vegetable juice, frozen food, as well as seasoning mix brands such as Accent. Yet somehow in the 1960s, this popular food additive became associated with Chinese food and deemed a health hazard. Why? Because Chinese people, culture, and food have been targeted by widespread and effective racist hate campaigns in North America since the 19th century, buttressed by wild claims that the Chinese are “unclean”, carry diseases, are sexually-deviant opium addicts, inscrutable and sneaky, a Yellow Peril.

The 1968 letter to the New England Journal of Medicine which solidified the myth of MSG was actually written by a Chinese immigrant named Robert Ho Man Kwok, who described “numbness at the back of the neck, gradually radiating to both arms and the back, general weakness and palpitation” after eating in American Chinese restaurants. The letter opened the floodgates to a barage of letters and related articles complaining of headaches, dizziness, paralysis of the throat, tingling in the temples, tightness of the jaw, irregular heartbeat, depression, hyperactivity, and all manner of digestive ailments.

Given this preponderance of anecdotal evidence, numerous scientific studies have been performed since then attempting to identify this “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome”. The funny thing is that no study has ever been able to do so. When people don’t know that they’re consuming MSG, they don’t suffer adverse reactions. All national and international food safety bodies have concluded that MSG is perfectly safe. People in Japan eat MSG every single day and the Japanese have the longest life expectancy in the world.

Fear of MSG is a racist remnant of the Chinese Exclusion era which exists only in North America and has been thoroughly debunked by science. Yet racist socialization is so powerful that people actually experience physical effects such as headaches, depression, and indigestion based solely on their indoctrinated fear of Chinese people and Chinese food. Think it over next time you eat parmesan cheese or a vine-ripened tomato.

daniellemertina: pkanaya: sharkyrook: fullmetal-dipshit: the-nicest-asshole: UK grading system ...

Mon, 13 May 2013 05:09:00 +0100

daniellemertina:

pkanaya:

sharkyrook:

fullmetal-dipshit:

the-nicest-asshole:

UK grading system
75-100 A+
70-74 A
64-69 A-
60-63 B+
55-59 B
50-54 B-
46-49 C+
43-45 C
38-42 C-
35-37 D
0-34

Time to move to the UK

Dude I would kill for that grading scale

THAT’S NOT FAIR

i was literally thinking about this yesterday and how unfair the american grading system is for people that grade poorly

what are y’all talking about? the UK doesn’t even do the A-F thing like America does.

wikipedia coulda told you that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_undergraduate_degree_classification

True story, at my MSc at the University of Edinburgh, I got a 100% on a piece of computer science homework that consisted entirely of objective, either-right-or-wrong questions. My professor gave me a 9/10, and said he only reserves 10/10 for Nobel-prize winning work. I shit you not. 70% and higher meant you graduated with distinction.

future me

Tue, 07 May 2013 00:52:00 +0100

future me

"My lawyer gives the same speech to everyone who wants to do business with me now. ‘Nicki is not one..."

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 19:38:00 +0100

“My lawyer gives the same speech to everyone who wants to do business with me now. ‘Nicki is not one of those artists who allow her representatives to make decisions for her.’ I’m on conference calls all day with lawyers, accountants, and executives—people of power—and they treat me with respect. Because I command respect. I’m not cocky, but I deserve to know what’s going on. It’s my brand and my life. That’s my advice to women in general: Even if you’re doing a nine-to-five job, treat yourself like a boss. Not arrogant, but be sure of what you want—and don’t allow people to run anything for you without your knowledge. You want everyone to know, Okay, I can’t play games with her. I have to do right by this woman. That’s what it’s all about.”

- Nicki Minaj, Elle, April 2013

thecatsmustbecrazy: because

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 21:50:58 +0100

thecatsmustbecrazy:

because

daniellemertina: sometimes when i am upset or i feel something i do not immediately want to feel i...

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 18:50:53 +0100

daniellemertina:

sometimes when i am upset or i feel something i do not immediately want to feel i have to repeat to myself

do not lie to yourself. do not lie to yourself.

so i properly process my feelings & healthily deal with my life.

sajklaf: I’m not impressed easily, but this girl is so freakin’...

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 14:21:00 +0100

sajklaf:

I’m not impressed easily, but this girl is so freakin’ awesome!

thecatsmustbecrazy: chart This is the greatest chart in the...

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 02:54:00 +0000

thecatsmustbecrazy:

chart

This is the greatest chart in the history of charts, because it plots cats vs. cats, and also because it uses kittens as data points.

Who perpetuates male stereotypes?

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 15:49:00 +0000

daniellemertina:

the weird thing about male stereotypes is that they’re mostly perpetuated by men.

i was just talking to my father and he told me that i need to “leave men alone” because men are stupid, manipulative, potentially violent/ dangerous, only want sex, are immature at this age, a waste of my time, and will prevent me on focusing on my education.

lol that’s pretty much every negative stereotype against men wrapped up into one sentence and i hear this all the time from men.

but when women regurgitate it because they experience some of this stuff first hand then *we’re* man hating.

the truth is male privilege makes a lot of men very entitled which leads to unsavory behavior. so in this sense these stereotypes have some truth.

but at the same time even i know not all men fall into these categories. but if i talk to my father or my uncles or my older male cousins they’ll be the ones who are most willing to say that pretty much all men do. or they’ll say “i’m like that. that’s how i know.”

And this doesn’t just happen when men are trying to keep women (daughters, sisters) away from other men. It’s all over our media.

thecatsmustbecrazy: hi me

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 15:48:00 +0000

thecatsmustbecrazy:

hi

Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974 | Kazuo Hara, 1974

Sun, 03 Mar 2013 03:41:00 +0000

Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974 | Kazuo Hara, 1974

me

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 23:32:00 +0000

Essentially all of these.

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 18:37:00 +0000

Essentially all of these.

Video

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 21:46:00 +0000

"I suspect it’s difficult for men to imagine a world in which their bodies have long been..."

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 16:57:00 +0000

“I suspect it’s difficult for men to imagine a world in which their bodies have long been inextricably linked to their value as an individual, and that no matter how encouraging your parents were or how many positive female role models you had or how self-confident you feel, there is an ever-present pressure that creeps in from all sides, whispering in your ear that you are your body and your body defines you. A world where, from the time of pubescence on, you can feel the constant and palpable weight of the male gaze, and not just from your male peers but from teachers and sports coaches and the fathers of the children you baby-sit, people you’re supposed to respect and trust and look up to, and that first realization that you are being looked at in that way is the beginning of a self-consciousness that you will be unable to shake for the rest of your life.Even if they are never verbalized, the rules of bodily conduct for females become clear early on: when school administrators reprimand you for the inch of midriff that shows when you lift your hands straight in the air or youth group leaders tell you that the sight of your unintentional cleavage is what causes godly young men to fall, you learn that your body is dangerous and shameful and that it’s your responsibility to cloister it in a way that is acceptable to everyone else. You learn that your body is a topic of public debate that everyone is entitled to weigh in on, from a male classmate telling you that those jeans make your ass look huge to the male-dominated United States Congress dictating the parameters that rape must fall within to be considered legitimate. To be a woman, and to live life in a woman’s body, is to be held to a set of comically paradoxical standards that make you constantly second-guess yourself and jump through a million hoops in pursuit of an impossible perfection.”

- Stop Catcalling Me by Kendall Goodwin (x)

White vs. Black Victims of Abuse

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 03:39:00 +0000

illegalplumpudding:

and to me, the important thing to notice is the differences in how rihanna and britney spears are treated. or madonna or denise richards or kelly preston or any of the multitudes of white women who have been abused or ARE being abused, in the case of spears—and how are they looked at? compared to rihanna? is madonna known and defined by the abuse she experienced? does anybody even know what i’m talking about when i say brittney is being abused?

why is nobody pressuring brittney to “just leave” and hoping she “stays safe”?

Being Black on a Liberal White Campus

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 18:56:00 +0000

daniellemertina:

“That life is stressful for Black students and other students of color on predominantly White campuses should not come as a surprise, but it often does. White students and faculty frequently underestimate the power and presence of the overt and covert manifestations of racism on campus, and students of color often come to predominantly White campuses expecting more civility than they find. Whether it is the loneliness of being routinely overlooked as a lab partner in science courses, the irritation of being continually asked by curious classmates about Black hairstyles, the discomfort of being singled out by a professor to give the ‘Black perspective’ in class discussion, the pain of racist graffiti scrawled on dormitory room doors, the insult of racist jokes circulated through campus email, or the injury inflicted by racial epithets (and sometimes beer bottles) hurled from a passing car, Black students on predominantly White college campuses must cope with ongoing affronts to their racial identity.”

— Beverly Daniel Tatum, Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? (via tabularasae)

Literally all of this stuff happened at Pomona College, a supposedly liberal haven.

On Rosa Parks

Sun, 17 Feb 2013 04:17:00 +0000

illegalplumpudding:

also. i don’t feel like there’s enough discussion on public space when it comes to the civil rights movement. see the sitting at the front or back of the bus discussions or the lunch counter discussions. i feel like color blind liberalism has largely clouded the structural issues at stake with those situations almost completely—the question that rosa parks was forcing to the surface was not “where can i sit when i’m tired”—but “who controls the public space?”

who gets to decide what the rules of public space should be? who enforces the rules of public space? who gets to *access the resource of public space*?

do you realize how *massive* this is? how *profoundly* the black community toppled the order of white supremacist heteropatriarchy?

Important to note because the question of who controls public space is still relevant today. While that control isn’t rooted in law, if you are making it unfavorable or uncomfortable to be somewhere, it’s still a form of control.

theblacksupremacist: CURVED me BUT WHICH ONE AM I???? CAN U...

Sat, 16 Feb 2013 17:34:00 +0000

theblacksupremacist:

CURVED

me BUT WHICH ONE AM I???? CAN U GUESS???

Photo

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 17:54:00 +0000