I just overheard a coworker saying “Oh, I would never try that in my life!”, in a discussion of food. (This was about consuming a steak cooked less than medium well). It made me wonder what life is like for those who refuse to try new food, especially those who refuse to try mundane things like fried shrimp.
Why limit yourself? It seems like such a closed-minded way to view food. Help me understand?
Theres people who have very strong perceptions about food, like they don’t like mayo but like the exact same thing if called aioli. My mother will eat a tuna sandwich, but hates the idea of a fish taco. She thinks she hates tofu and is suspicious that any Asian food is secretly tofu, but has had stir fry with chicken and tofu and liked it. No she cannot identify tofu. Conversely, she thinks she loves mushrooms, but doesn’t know you need to cook them so she will add them to eggs or salads raw or nearly raw, and enjoy it. She thinks MSG makes her sick.
Its kinda like a placebo effect. She got sick at a chinese place once, and soneone told her “Oh its the MSG” and it was just cemented into her mind. Maybe she had raw tofurkey in the 1980s when it was peddled as a drop-in meat replacement.
It’s a Nocebo Effect! Placebo is Latin meaning “I will please,” and Nocebo is “I will harm.”
MSG is a really common one. It’s in all kinds of foods, and if people don’t know it’s there it won’t affect them. But if they do know it’s there, or even think it’s there, it can harm them. In school I heard about a study where they gave people who claimed to be MSG sensitive two meals, Chinese food and Italian food. They said the Chinese meal (which contained no MSG) gave them MSG effects, and the Italian meal (chock-full of MSG) did not. 😂
It’s a racist myth we know exactly where it started in the 1950s with one doctor who had a bad experience at a Chinese restaurant then published an article, not even a study, describing Chinese Restaurant Syndrome due to the use of MSG. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glutamate_flavoring#Social_perceptions