Chinese restaurant syndrome
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 12 April 2019
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Diners at Chinese restaurants in America in the 1960's began to report unusual symptoms, including headaches, flushing, numbness at the back of the neck.
It was linked to the man-made flavour enhancer monosodium glutamate or MSG – but it was also part of wider attitudes towards Chinese restaurants at the time.
Lucy Burns speaks to restaurateurs Philip Chiang and Ed Schoenfeld about their memories of what became known as 'Chinese restaurant syndrome'.
Photo credit: Plates of Chinese food (Dean Conger/Corbis via Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 1:10.1 | You're listening to the Witness History podcast with me Lucy Burns from the BBC World Service. |
| 1:15.0 | Today we're talking about Chinese food and a toxic mixture of flavor enhances and racial prejudice in the 1960s, |
| 1:22.0 | which would become known as Chinese Restaurant Syndrome. |
| 1:26.0 | The story starts in April 1968 with a letter in the New England Journal of Medicine by a Chinese American doctor called Robert Ho-Man Quoc. |
| 1:40.0 | For several years since I've been in this country, I've experienced a strange syndrome whenever I've eaten out at a Chinese restaurant. |
| 1:47.0 | The most prominent symptoms are numbness at the back of the neck, gradually radiating to both arms in the back, general weakness and |
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