DLC Blog

The Fifth Taste: Umami

Tsunami is one Japanese word that is well known to the rest of the world, but have you ever heard of Umami??

It is usually said that we can detect four basic tastes: sweet, sour, bitter and salty and all the other tastes are combination of the four. In recent years, some scientists have added a fifth taste, Umami. Although western food scientist are divided about whether it really exists or not, eastern scientists mostly accept the fifth taste. Umami is really hard to translate into English, since it’s a taste that was found mostly in Japanese food and other Asian dishes. The words that are close to Umami are savory, pungent, deliciousness and meaty but none of these exactly translates the essence of Umami.

Umami was first found as a taste in 1908 by a Japanese scientist named Kikunae Ikeda of the Tokyo Imperial University (University of Tokyo) while he was researching the strong flavor in seaweed broth. Ikeda isolated monosodium glutamate (MSG) as the chemical responsible, and with the help of a company called Ajinomoto (translates to “Origin of Taste”), he started commercializing the MSG product.

In US, the use of MSG is argued quite often. In Japan, this is unheard of. Indeed I never heard of the problem until I came to US, but this doesn’t mean MSG is fine. FASEB (Federation of American Societies of Experimental Biology) conducted an experiment concerning the health issue of MSG.. The result is that the symptom complex tends to occur within one hour after eating 3 grams (about 0.11 oz) or more of MSG on empty stomach or without other food. A typical serving of food only contains 0.5 grams (0.017 oz). In other words, as long as you don’t over intake MSG, you will be fine.

When you eat Japanese food next time, it might be interesting to point out which taste is Umami.
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Miyagi
DLC Student Mentor

Posted by Hayato at November 6, 2006 03:59 PM in Foreign Language.