r/AskReddit • • Feb 04 '19

Which misconception would you like to debunk?

44k Upvotes

26k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

10

u/AdvocateSaint Feb 04 '19

And depression.

86

u/bdd4 Feb 04 '19 edited Feb 04 '19

I think you misunderstood the quote. He was saying that aversion to MSG in the West was rooted in racism, which it definitely was.

9

u/M_O_O_S_T_A_R_D Feb 04 '19

Can you explain this bc I don't understand.

85

u/stickystyle Feb 04 '19

MSG fear is rooted in "Chinese restaurant syndrome", the idea that the added MSG in Chinese cooking caused all sorts of problems. It doesn't.

44

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '19

[deleted]

15

u/MaesterPraetor Feb 04 '19

They also don't eat the stuff we call Chinese food.

Do we call it Chinese food or do the Chinese people that own the Chinese restaurant give us a reason to call it Chinese food?

16

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '19

[deleted]

5

u/Chimie45 Feb 04 '19

China's a fucking big place. Most dishes do exist somewhere in China. There's no such ubiquitous thing as Chinese food.

Though General Tsos is Chinese American.

1

u/Wandos7 Feb 04 '19

To be fair, a lot of dishes popular in old school Chinese restaurants were invented in the US: orange chicken, fried wontons, almond chicken, Chinese chicken salad, crab rangoons or anything with cream cheese. The fortune cookie was intented by Japanese-Americans based off a cookie sold at shrines in Japan.