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Podcast: Today In History with The Retrospectors
Episode: Chinese Restaurant Syndrome
Description: Rerun: MSG, the umami seasoning frequently added to Chinese cuisine, came under fire on 4th April, 1968 - when Dr Robert Ho Man Kwok wrote a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine musing about the possible causes of a ‘syndrome’ he experienced whenever he ate at Chinese restaurants in the US. “The most prominent symptoms are numbness at the back of the neck, gradually radiating to both arms in the back, general weakness and palpitation”, he wrote, in a letter that soon attracted multiple responses from other clinicians - and spawned an unscientific panic about monosodium glutamate...