Three Takes at the Lunch Table: Which Claim About Japanese Fujisu Can You Actually Trust?

At noon, while I was queuing by the microwave in the break room, Lao Zhou from engineering turned around and asked me: Have you heard of Japanese Fujisu? Before I could even react, two colleagues from different generations jumped in, and the three of them gave three completely different versions. I didn't say much at the time—I just kept every word in mind. On the way home, the more I thought about it, the more I felt those three takes were worth pulling apart.

Lao Zhou is fifty-two and spoke with the most certainty. He said this kind of thing just has a nice-sounding name; at bottom it's no different from any ordinary dietary supplement. What's written on the package doesn't matter—what matters is whether the distribution channel is legitimate and whether the labeling is clear. He added that what he fears most is those one-page websites where the images are made to look like news, and at the bottom there's just a mobile number telling you to add them on a messaging app. The moment he sees that, he skips it. His basis for judgment is actually very simple: if you can't see the full ingredient list, can't see company information, and can't see how to contact customer service, then there's nothing to discuss.

Ah-Kai, a sales rep in his early thirties, had a completely different take. He said he'd seen a ton of discussion on social media—some people say they feel more energetic after taking it, some say they feel nothing, and others say they bought a version whose packaging looked almost identical but the contents were different. He admitted he'd never bought it himself; he just felt that with so much buzz, there must be "something to it." I didn't call him out at the time, but I knew in my heart that high discussion volume and whether something actually works are two things you can't equate.

The youngest one, an intern named Xiao Ye, was actually the most conservative. She said her aunt had once bought capsules claiming to supplement this and that, and later her family accompanied her to a clinic, bringing the whole bottle to show the doctor. The doctor said only one thing: first confirm what you're deficient in, then talk about whether to supplement. Xiao Ye said she learned something from that experience—health supplements aren't better the more you take, and some ingredients, if over-supplemented, can actually crowd out the absorption of others. That wasn't her own words; it was a reminder she heard during that clinic visit.

Putting the three accounts side by side, I realized they were actually answering three different questions. Lao Zhou was answering "how do you judge whether a source is reliable," Ah-Kai was answering "what are people talking about," and Xiao Ye was answering "is your body actually deficient." These three questions operate on different levels, yet they often get mashed into one question—"does this thing actually work?" No wonder the same table of people ends up talking past each other.

After I got home, I wrote down what I'd heard, line by line, on paper and split it into two piles. One pile was hearsay: who took it for how long, who said it felt really effective, which group said which version is the purest—I put all of that on the "unverifiable" side. The other pile was verifiable: whether the packaging has a complete ingredient list and warnings, whether it's a legally imported food or drug, whether it requires a prescription, whether the sales page has company and customer service information. I realized the only pile I could actually act on was the second one. No matter how much you discuss the first pile, it will never turn into an answer. So I wrote that keyword—Japanese Fujisu—on the other side of the paper as a question to be investigated, reminding myself to first figure out which category it falls under in Taiwan before deciding whether to keep looking into it.

The next day I brought that piece of paper to the office and, during lunch break, asked Lao Zhou a more specific question: If the packaging says it's a food, but the advertising talks about it like a drug, what does that count as? He said that gap itself is a red flag, because foods can't claim therapeutic effects—anyone writing it that way is usually trying to dodge regulations. I then asked: If I want to confirm whether something is a prescription drug, who should I ask? He said the most direct way is to take it to a pharmacy and ask the pharmacist, or bring it to a clinic along with everything else you're currently taking, because the point was never a single product—it's whether it interacts with what you're already taking.

In the end, this whole thing had no conclusion, and it didn't need one. What I kept was a repeatable sequence: first confirm which category it belongs to, then confirm the source and labeling, and only then talk about whether you're actually deficient and whether to ask a professional. Skip any step, and the discussion goes right back to that lunch-table state of everyone talking past each other. As for those claims that sound so certain, I now ask one question first: Who said this, based on what, and can it be verified? If it can't be verified, I set it aside for now—no rush to believe it, no rush to dismiss it.

I folded that piece of paper and put it in a drawer. Next time someone brings up a similar topic in the break room, I'll probably ask them first: Which problem are you trying to solve right now? Are you afraid of buying something from an unknown source, or do you want to know whether you need to supplement? Different questions mean completely different things to look into—and that's far more useful than rushing to pick a side.