Lucky Lee's framing of an entire cuisine as “unhealthy.”

" . . . I am not without sympathy for Ms. Haspel. She’s just a normal mompreneur who is trying to balance parenting and work while avoiding gluten, dairy, sugar, GMO oils, brown sauces, and anyone who could have tipped her off to the cultural insensitivity of her branding. My guess is she doesn’t make it out to Flushing or Sunset Park very often, and that her experience of American-Chinese food is limited to restaurants that cater to Western tastes by deep frying or adding sugar or overdoing it on the MSG. . . "

This piece from the offspring of San Francisco's famed Henry's Hunan restaurants brought up the memory of picking up a family member at the hospital after a cardiac incident. The discharge nurse went over the home care plan and admonished him, "No CHINESE food! Too much soy sauce and sodium. We have patients who eat one Chinese meal and end up back in the hospital again. Don't eat it!"

We listened politely, trying to hold back laughing out loud, and later wondered what kind of food these patients reported as Chinese. This happened in the Bay Area, home to the country's best and many of the most authentic and traditional Chinese eateries. The depiction of Chinese cuisine as "unhealthy" has always puzzled me, as the dominant Cantonese/Hong Kong-style I grew up with in Northern California is full of seafood, fresh greens and less reliant on meat proteins. Yet, clearly something else is rampant even here with bad dietary choices sold under "Chinese" branding that are popular with customers other than ourselves.

We Dont Need A White Wellness Savior To Fix Chinese Food

There are real problems with Lucky Lee's framing of an entire cuisine as “unhealthy.”

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