[bookface]

I didn't originally see the connection between MSG and Chinese food as coming from a place of racism, but you might be right. I'm still not so sure though. If somebody said to you "I got food poisoning from a Chinese restaurant last night", would you say "That's racist! An Italian restaurant could have just as easily given you food poisoning."?

It's pointless to try to tell people what is and isn't offensive. Normally, I err on the side of thinking that if somebody is offended, they must have reason to be and I should be sensitive to that, but in this case I had no idea what racism the author was referring to.

[michh]

Perhaps the stereotype of Chinese restaurants specifically being untrustworthy/unhealthy/unhygienic (i.e. Chinese chefs don't care about their customers / they're not up to our western standards) isn't universal, but it definitely exists in some parts of the world. MSG is an example of that, another one is the myth that you might just be eating cat or dog being advertised as something different (also often applied to Korean food in a similarly racist way).

Not saying it's high on the prioritised list of racist tropes we need to be fighting, but yeah, it's there.