Umami -Why The Fifth Taste Is So Important

Umami is the newest discovered taste and has been recognized as the fifth taste after the earlier traditional four tastes sweet, salty, sour, and bitter.

Despite being the latest of all, umami flavor has managed to expand its craze almost throughout the world, especially in the western world.

It has also managed to win credibility among the scientific universe, with its benefits for humans.

Let’s take a look at some crucial details of umami and try to understand why has umami gained so much importance

 

Discovery of Umami

The story of umami discovery is quite interesting. So, one day a Japanese chemist named Kikunae Ikeda sat for his regular meal. He had a soupy dish made of a seaweed named kombu.

He realized that this soup was tasting totally different than the other dishes served to him. That taste neither could be defined as sweet nor salty. He decided to research a bit more.

He took the kombu seaweed to his laboratory, where, after several tests and research he concluded that the particular taste of kombu was a uniquely different taste, which he named “Umami” which means “pleasant savory taste” in Japanese.

 

Source of Umami

After the discovery of Umami food's taste, it was necessary to find out its source. Of course, it wasn’t just the kombu seaweed. There were many other such foods that had this unique umami flavor. So, then what was the reason for some foods having umami flavor was to be found out.

With further research, it was concluded that the unique umami flavor came from the glutamates that were present in the food.

Glutamate is an amino acid, which is responded by the taste, receptors present on our taste buds to release out the umami flavor.

 

Commercialization

In an attempt to isolate the umami flavor of the kombu seaweed, Ikeda prepared the sodium salt of Glutamate, known as Monosodium Glutamate (MSG). This MSG was later known for the umami flavor it adds to your dish and started being used as a substitute for the common salt. MSG is now manufactured as a food seasoning.

 

Significance of Umami

Umami taste is widely known now for the delicious flavor it adds to the overall dish. This is why it was quickly noticed by the western world, especially America, and is now widely used in some of the authentic American origin dishes.

Umami is not just a mere flavor that enhances the food taste, but it can play other crucial roles with respect to human beings.

For instance,

Older adults lose their taste sensation due to heavy loads of medications and old age. Tasting umami flavor, will activate their taste buds and help them have adequate food for healthy life.

Umami is known to boost the metabolism within our body, thus helping with the proper functioning

Umami helps in the proper digestion of food by activating the salivation within the mouth helping with breakage of large food chunks into smaller pieces in order to smoothen the further digestion process.

Read more about What does umami mean and taste like

 

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