Chinese operators blast study's unhealthful label; as business drops, angry restaurateurs charge cuisine was unfairly represented

Nation's Restaurant News, Oct 25, 1993 by Peter O. Keegan

Outraged operators have begun to mobilize and fight back after a consumer group's report painting Chinese food as unhealthful emptied seats at many of their restaurants around the country.

The study, which was conducted by the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Science in the Public Interest, hit the 28,000-member Chinese restaurant community like a bombshell.

Operators contend that the study of 15 Chinese dishes in three cities unfairly represented their cuisine and say that business has dropped dramatically since the report was published last month.

"It has affected business tremendously," said Stephen Lee, a Chinese restaurateur in Maryland and a spokesman for the North American Chinese Restaurant Association. "Reports are coming in from all over that it has affected business on the average as much as 20 percent; some have even seen a 50-percent loss in business."

Lee said the newly formed association is farming out bids to do a study of its own and will begin a national public-relations campaign to combat the bad press.

"There was a lot of sensationalism involved in this," Lee said. "And they broke the story on a soft news week. The president was out of town, and congress was not in session, so it got a lot of coverage."

The study, published in the agency's Nutrition Action Newsletter, found that an order of Kung Pao chicken topped with peanuts has almost the same amount of fat as four McDonald's Quarter Pounders, while an order of Lo Mein has as much salt as a whole Pizza Hut cheese pizza.

The CSPI, which did not return phone calls, received a government grant to conduct the study and is planning future reports on Italian and Mexican cuisines.

"They damned an entire industry by comparing five cups of food to one serving," Lee said. "McDonald's is fairly formatted, but when you go into a Chinese restaurant, variances are huge." Lee went on to say that dishes in different cities might have the same name, but their ingredients vary.

"When the article first hit, I got over 50 calls from my customers asking if it was true. I told them it's erroneous" said Perry Moi, who has operated Plum Garden in McHenry, Ill., for almost 30 years.

Moi, who is state chairman of the National Restaurant Association, said he lost 8 percent to 10 percent of his business but added that operators in Chicago are down 25 percent to 35 percent. "In Chicago people are more media conscious, so it's worse," he said. "Ninety-five percent of these are mom-and-pop operations working hard every day and supporting their communities, and suddenly they have to defend their restaurants."

Moi has debated nutritionists on TV, been interviewed by USA Today, the Chicago Tribune and CNN, and he said The Chinese Restaurant Association of Chicago has hired the Rodale Institute to do a study, breaking down entrees into nutritional categories. "The results show conclusively that the CSPI study is not right." The next step, he said, is to educate the public on the benefits of Chinese cooking.

"I don't think the article was conducted very well. They didn't provide enough facts," said Laura Chin, vice president of 22-unit Leeann Chinn in Minneapolis. "You have to look very carefully at the portion sizes. They measured five cups of food, which is a ridiculously high amount."

Other operators agree that a usual entree-sized portion is shared between two people and rice is added, which they claim invalidates the study. Nevertheless, the damage to the $9 billion Chinese restaurant segment has been done, and after years of battling fears of MSG, Chinese operators have new enemies -- salt and fat.

Ai-Ling Wang, who owns two Empress of China restaurants in Louisville, Ky., has been working with the American Heart Association for 10 years, featuring Heart Smart Cuisine.

"Eighty percent of our menu has low-fat items with the logos on it, and we are still down 13 to 15 percent," she said. "Some restaurateurs in the area are down 30 to 40 percent. Some are half off Many employees, are looking for jobs right now."

Wang said that she will work to educate the public about the health aspects of Chinese food, which is "good for my business and for my culture."

But not all operators report that business has been adversely affected -- particularly those areas where health seems not to be a great concern. "I haven't seen much of a difference," said Rick Chu, vice president of six-unit Debbie Wong Restaurants in Massachusetts and Connecticut. "People in my area are not as health conscious as people in the bigger cities."

Several restaurants in California -- Chef Chu's in Los Altos, China Moon Cafe in San Francisco and Mandarette in Los Angeles -- didn't seem to be as hard hit as restaurants in other areas of the country. Barbara Tropp.

Troop, who has been a Chinese scholar for 20 years and and lived in Taiwan, said the problem is not the Chinese restaurateur, but the public, which eats Chinese food American style. "That's the problem with the study. It isolates the food from its base."

Tropp said Chinese people eat four to five cups of rice for every one cup of meat or fish tooping, while Americans eat one cup of rice for every four or five cups of topping.