Play debuting at San Francisco Playhouse hopes to reverse MSG stigma

Over the last decade, there has been a growing push to reverse the stigma surrounding monosodium glutamate, better known as MSG. The issue is now taking center stage at the San Francisco Playhouse.

MSG is a flavor enhancer that has been used in various cuisines for centuries. Despite its long history, MSG has faced significant backlash over the past several decades.

Chef Kathy Fang, the renowned Chinese American chef and owner of House of Nanking and Fang Restaurant in the Bay Area, recalls how the ingredient's negative reputation affected her from an early age.

"I, even as a kid, started to feel this sort of stigma around using the ingredient," Fang said.

Growing up in a family of restaurateurs, Chef Fang was aware of the growing concerns surrounding MSG. She vividly remembers expressing her worries about it to her grandmother.

"I went to my grandmother while she was making dinner for me and saying, 'Oh grandma, we shouldn't be using MSG, it's like not good for you.' And my grandma would be like, 'Stop what you're saying. You don't know what you're talking about.' And she's like, 'I'm going to put more MSG in the dish tonight because it makes you smarter.'"

While her grandmother's comment was likely made in jest, the myths and stigma surrounding MSG had a real impact. The ingredient was controversial for years, despite being classified by the FDA more than a decade ago as "generally recognized as safe" — the same designation given to most food products that are safe for consumption worldwide.

Still, for some diners, the stigma persists.

"They will just assume and say 'Oh, you must not use MSG, right? Because that's so bad for you. Why would you?' And early on, I really had trouble answering questions like that. It would make me feel really uncomfortable," Fang shared.

This nuanced issue is being explored in "Exotic Deadly," a new play at San Francisco Playhouse. Directed by Jesca Prudencio, the play dives into the universal feeling of being misunderstood.

"Exotic Deadly is this heartfelt comedy about family and food, and our relationship to our identity, and our relationship to food," Prudencio said.

Written by Keiko Green, the play unravels the MSG controversy from an unexpected perspective.

"I really want everyone to come and surprisingly see themselves in this 14-year-old teenage Asian American girl," Green explained.

Chef Fang emphasized that the misconceptions about MSG have disproportionately affected Chinese and Asian restaurants, even though the ingredient is widely used in many global cuisines.

"We were kind of unfairly pegged to being the only cuisine that used it, which is not true," Fang said.

Despite the negative stigma, the Fang family has never wavered from their authentic recipes. However, the pressure from diners has led some Asian restaurants to make concessions.

"You'd find restaurants sometimes putting signs up saying 'Oh, we don't use it,'" Fang said. "It kind of made our people feel bad about ingredients we've been using for hundreds of years."

Ultimately, as the play, "Exotic Deadly" suggests, the flavors in food are a vital part of cultural identity.

"It's not something we can just take out and change, and we don't want to. It is part of our culture. If we were to cook based off of what other people felt then that food would be soulless," said Fang.