Taming our prejudiced palates

This sinister and illogical prejudice rears its ugly head in all aspects of our lives – including our beliefs about food! Though we may like to believe that we are beyond any form of prejudice in the kitchen, we may be surprised to learn just how much racism and xenophobia have shaped some of our attitudes to eating.

Take our default attitude to MSG for example – an ingredient that is unquestionably accepted as unhealthy, and therefore undesirable, by vast swaths of the population. MSG (short for monosodium glutamate) is a naturally occurring, flavour enhancing compound which is widely associated with Chinese food and other forms of Asian cuisine.

MSG has been proven by scientists and health experts alike to be a relatively benign substance, no more harmful than a bit of simple sugar or salt. Yet, many of us still truly believe that MSG is bad for us. What’s going on here? The prejudice against MSG can be traced back to a letter published in the The New England Journal of Medicine in 1968 in which a Chinese-American doctor complained about the headaches that he would supposedly suffer from every time he ate at a Chinese restaurant in the US. While the author of the letter makes only a passing reference to the presence of MSG in the food, the letter went the 1960s equivalent of viral, and readers across the country took his letter to be an admission of the unhealthiness of Chinese food, and specifically of MSG. The letter even led to the birth of the term ‘Chinese Restaurant Syndrome’ which was a collection of uncomfortable symptoms said to come from eating Chinese food.

This, of course, all turned out to be paranoid nonsense, but it was influential and lasting nonsense, born out of the fear of the unknown.

This unfounded prejudice has buried itself deep into our collective psyche, which is why many of us continue to give MSG filled Chinese food a suspicious side glance.

This form of vaguely racist thinking about food is nothing new. Though coffee and coffee houses are now an intrinsic part of European culture with bustling caf?s weaving their way through all of the great European cities, during the Middle Ages, believe it or not, coffee was considered by many in the West to be an evil drink. Many political and religious leaders of the time associated coffee with the Muslim empires of the East, warning their followers against partaking in what they called the “beverage of Islam.” Imagine how much poorer off the West would be if it didn’t undo this terrible illogical prejudice against what one Catholic priest at the time dubbed “an infernal black beverage called coffee.” Hindsight may make these kinds of beliefs about food seem obviously prejudiced now, but they were widely accepted as fact at the time. This is something to keep in mind about whatever ‘truth’ about food that we may take for granted now.

I often have the depressing realization that most of my adult years have not been spent in learning new things, but in un-learning all of the prejudiced beliefs that I was indoctrinated into. Admitting one’s own prejudices is never fun, and it’s sometimes daunting to think how much un-learning we have to do. But if we wish to live in a more rational, humane world, then we have to embark on the difficult journey of dismantling our own illogical prejudices, including the prejudices that have spilled over into the kitchen. The good news is that when it comes to food, this freeing of the mind from negative stereotypes will open up a whole new realm of culinary possibilities and delicious foods.