Three Men at Lunch Talked About Japanese Futosu, So I Went Home and Checked Every Rumor One by One

At lunch, while I was reheating my bento in the office pantry, Lao Wang from the department next door suddenly lowered his voice and said that his wife's colleague's husband had recently asked someone to bring back a box of something from Tokyo. The packaging supposedly said something like "futosu," and people said you could really feel it after two weeks. Xiao Chen, sitting across from him, immediately chimed in, saying he had heard another version in the gym locker room: some people said it was for boosting the energy of middle-aged and older men, and that younger people who took it would instead get too "heaty." Lao Zhou, who handles the mailroom, slowly put down his chopsticks and said only one thing: if you're all talking about the same thing, then why do the three of you describe the effects so differently? That sentence stuck in my mind like a small splinter I couldn't pull out.

Back at my desk that afternoon, the words "Japanese Futosu" kept running through my head. Strangely, all three of them spoke with absolute certainty, yet none of them could say what was written in the ingredients section on the package, and none of them could clearly say whether it was a food, a health food, or a medicine. Lao Wang said it was "brought back by someone asked to carry it"; Xiao Chen said "a lot of people online recommend it"; Lao Zhou said "I think I saw something in the news before." Three sources, three tones, but all of them stopped at "I heard." It suddenly occurred to me that they were not actually concerned about the same thing: Lao Wang cared about whether it worked, Xiao Chen cared about whether he should touch it, and Lao Zhou cared about what category this thing actually belonged to.

On the way home, I opened my phone and tried to break apart those three claims from lunch. The first claim was about "effects," and that kind of claim is the hardest to verify, because everyone's physical condition and daily habits are different. What feels effective to one person may feel like nothing at all to someone else, or may not even be suitable. The second claim was about "whether it suits me." That is actually a question, not a conclusion, and it requires first knowing your own health condition and what else you are taking. The third claim was about "classification," and this one actually has the best chance of being answered, because as long as you look at the package labeling and see what category it is placed under, you can know whether what you are dealing with is a food or a medicine.

The next day at lunch break, I explained this way of breaking it down to Lao Zhou. He nodded and added one more thing: your division is right, but it is still missing a step. He said many people only check whether "it worked for others," but never check whether "this thing can legally be sold in Taiwan, who imports it, and whether the labeling is complete." He said that when he was younger, he had also jumped on the bandwagon and bought something advertised as brought back from abroad, only to discover later that the packaging was entirely in a foreign language and he could not even understand the expiration date. In the end, the whole box expired. He said that was not a question of whether the product worked, but of the fact that he had never figured out what he had bought. That made me think: the reason a rumor is a rumor is often that it skips the two checkpoints of "source" and "labeling."

So I rewrote the question into three lines. First line: What is this thing classified as in Taiwan? Is it a food, a health food, or a medicine that requires a prescription? Second line: If it belongs to the medicine category, then it should not circulate in ordinary stores or through unclear channels, and a doctor or pharmacist should be consulted first. Third line: If it belongs to the food or health food category, then is its labeling complete, is its source clear, and are there exaggerated claims? After writing those three lines, I realized that the question I originally wanted to ask, "does it work," had actually been pushed far down the list. Because before the first three lines are clear, talking about effects is empty.

On the weekend, I went with my family to the community pharmacy to pick up chronic-disease medication, and I casually asked the pharmacist a question: if someone sees a product online and wants to confirm whether it is legitimate, how should they ask? The pharmacist said the most practical approach is to bring the product name, a photo of the packaging, and a list of all the medicines and health foods you are currently taking, and ask together. She said many people only ask "can I take this," but what they should ask more is "will this interact with what I am taking now." She also reminded me that if a product claims it can treat a certain disease, then you should be especially careful, because that has already crossed into the line of medicine or medical efficacy, and is not something an ordinary food can say.

After I got home, I compared the pharmacist's words with the lunch conversation and found a common blind spot: everyone is in a hurry to know "does it work," but very few people first ask "what is this." Lao Wang's "you can feel it in two weeks," Xiao Chen's "it makes you heaty," and Lao Zhou's "I saw it in the news" cannot verify one another, because they have no common baseline. What can truly be checked is the classification on the packaging, the import source, whether the labeling is complete, and whether a professional is willing to give advice based on your situation. As for effects, that belongs to the realm of individual constitution and health conditions, and cannot be settled by one sentence from a colleague's colleague's husband.

That night I copied those three lines of questions into the notes app on my phone, and also marked each of the three claims I had heard at lunch as either "rumor" or "checkable." Lao Wang's claim was marked rumor, Xiao Chen's was marked rumor, and Lao Zhou's "I saw it in the news" barely counted as half a clue, but it still had to be confirmed back at the source. I did not reach any conclusion from this. Instead, I ended up with a pile of question marks still waiting to be confirmed. But at least the next time someone says in that absolutely certain tone, "that stuff really works," I know I can first ask one question: the thing you're talking about, what category does the packaging say it is? That one sentence is probably enough to keep a lot of rumors outside the door.