Changing the world

It's unlikely that I will ever revolutionize the world, although I take credit for helping to coin, in the late 1960s, the term "Chinese restaurant syndrome" to describe the reactions some diners have to monosodium glutamate, or MSG, used as a flavor enhancer by many Chinese restaurants.

The tale I'm about to tell provides some background. You see, there's one change I still would like to make, and I think you'll agree with me.

Maybe you've never heard of "Chinese restaurant syndrome." That's probably because your body tolerates MSG with no problem. But the syndrome made headlines after a 1968 study of some note.

I was an editor at The Wall Street Journal in New York when the story became national news. The reporter covering the story had referred to "monosodium glutamate allergic reaction syndrome" in his story. Being a proponent of plain English, I changed the description to something I felt every reader could understand: "Chinese restaurant syndrome."

The news editor that day didn't like what the reporter had written, but he didn't like my editing change either. The assistant news editor and copy desk chief that day took my side, and I watched as they duked it out.

That was the way decisions were made in those days. Vermont Royster, editor of the WSJ at the time, waged war on the word "upcoming," which many reporters liked and used because it was simple and easy to understand. But to Royster, whose office was on the floor above the main newsroom, it was a poor and lazy word choice, which led to his posting of the following typewritten memo on the newsroom bulletin board:

"The next time I see 'upcoming' in The Wall Street Journal, I will be downcoming and somebody will be outgoing."

As far as I know, "upcoming" never appeared again.

For 40 years the term "Chinese restaurant syndrome" has been widely used to describe the MSG reaction. I still see it from time to time and grin as I remember the battle of words in the sixth-floor newsroom in the building on Broad Street next door to the New York Stock Exchange in lower Manhattan.

Now I have a new hobby horse.

Most of us suffer from what I like to call "weight-denial syndrome," referring to the reaction we have when we weigh ourselves on the bathroom scales. Or watch a nurse push that doodad farther and farther across the scales in the doctor's office. Or watch the digital readout pop up with an unbelievably wrong number at the health center.

You know what I'm talking about. You weigh at home before your go to the health center, where you weigh before your doctor's appointment, where you are weighed again, all within half an hour, and the weights vary as much as five pounds.

How can that be? Isn't life unfair enough without having to deal with the stress of gaining five pounds simply by staying awake for 30 minutes?

There's another component to weight-denial syndrome: what you are wearing when you weigh. When you get on the bathroom scales, you probably are wearing as little as possible, maybe nothing at all. At the health center, you have on -- at a minimum -- workout clothes. And at the doctor's office you are clad in street clothes.

So the first big question: shoes on or off?

And do you take off your watch, take out your billfold, empty your pockets of change and keys, ditch the cell phone?

Or is there some number we can all agree on that should be subtracted from your scale weight? From my own highly scientific research, I know my clothing, shoes and pocket contents add exactly seven pounds to what I weigh in my bathroom.

Think about it a minute.

Now tell me, truthfully: If you could subtract seven pounds every time you get on the scales at the doctor's office, would this be a better world?

I rest my case.

R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.