Explain about Japan

12th March 2024

Explanation of the study points

• In this posting as well as talking about umami, we’d like to talk about words related to the processing of food, especially food with umami in it.
• Also we will again highlight some phrasal verbs. Phrasal verbs are difficult to learn but are used a lot in the English language😁.
• Once more a reminder. The words used in this website are usually based on the British spelling and usage of the language and the pronunciation is British English.
  
  

What is the umami taste and who discovered it?

The word 旨味（umami）means a ‛savoury tastiness’. A meaty taste. A deep taste. The basis of tastes? Umami is known to bring out other tastes. It is said to enhance¹ the taste of things. Umami is considered the fifth taste with the other four tastes being sweet, sour, salty and bitter. Some people call these tastes ‛taste sensations’.

Dr. Kikunae Ikeda discovered it in 1907, called it ‛umami’ and got a patent for it the next year, 1908. He had believed there was a fifth taste as he was eating broths² containing something he believed to be a separate taste from the four other tastes and he really started to look for it after having a broth one day at home made by his wife which had a strong taste of umami in it. The broth was made from a dashi³ made from brown 昆布(kombu) kelp seaweed.

Prior to⁴ this Ikeda had studied in Germany for two years from 1899 and had noticed the umami taste in the tomatoes, asparagus, meats and cheeses according to the Umami Information Center¹. This, along with the umami he’d tasted in Japan, motivated him to find out what umami really was.

What creates the umami taste?

Ikeda found that the source of the umami taste was from glutamate* crystals⁵ contained in the kombu. Glutamate is a common amino acid. Amino acids form the basis of proteins.

• ‛Glutamate’ is used at times in this posting to refer to both ‛glutamic acid’ and ‛free glutamate’.

In 1913 Shitaro Kodama, a pupil⁶ of Ikeda’s found inosinate* in umami and in 1957 Dr. Akira Kunitaka discovered that umami has guanylate in it². Inosinate and guanylate are nucleotides. Pairing glutamate with these nucleotides really helps draw out the flavour in umami as actually glutamate is bland⁷ by itself. That’s the key point about umami. More than the other four tastes, umami is about combining different foodstuffs⁸ to create the umami taste.

• ‛Inosinate’ means the same as ‛inosine’ in this posting.

This combining or pairing of the different umami substances⁹ is what the Japanese were naturally doing when they made their kombu and bonito flake¹⁰ and other kombu and fish based hotpots (hot pots)¹¹ all those years ago.

This pairing or combining of foods to bring out stronger tastes in the foodstuffs is called synergism¹² . It is called the ‛synergistic effect’. That’s one reason why tomato sauce and cheese, with their glutamate and anchovies with their inosinate taste good on a pizza. The other reason – well pizzas are just tasty!

To get any taste from the glutamic acid, including when it’s not combined with either of the nucleotides, the glutamic acid or glutamate as you could call it, has to be changed into free glutamate. Free glutamate is when the glutamate amino acids are not attached to other proteins. The processing in any way of food that has umami in it helps to break down the glutamic acid into this free glutamate form¹³.

Different forms of food processing

Fermenting – Fermented food has a lot of umami. Soya sauce is fermented. Miso is fermented. Cheese is fermented. Fermentation usually uses bacteria, yeast or mould to change sugars into gases, acid or alcohol. Sometimes you might hear the word コウジカビ(kōjikabi) with ‛kabi’ meaning ‛mould’. It is a mould very much associated with Japan that has been used for centuries for fermenting foodstuffs such as miso and sake.

Drying – Dried food includes the two main ingredients in dashi – the dried kombu and the bonito flakes. The guanylate that Dr. Akira Kunitaka found was later found to be present in shiitake mushrooms in quite high quantities and was found in very high amounts in dried shiitake mushrooms.

Drying food takes the water away and this really brings out the umami taste.

Ageing or maturing – Food and drink that is aged or matured to get the rich umami flavour includes cheese, sake and wine. They are left for a long time. Mature Cheddar cheese for example is cheddar that has been aged longer than other types of cheddars and so it has a stronger taste. The opposite word of ‛mature’ when thinking about food is ‛mild’.

Curing– In the past curing food usually meant covering food with salt to seal it to take out a lot of water from the foodstuff so that it could be kept for a long time, maybe months or years even, without going bad or going off. Bacteria couldn’t enter. Modern curing still uses a lot of salt but it uses other chemicals as well a lot of the time. Smoking food is also a form of curing. The smoke seals the foodstuff as salt does. Foods that are often cured using salt are usually meats – think of ham and bacon. Smoked salmon and smoked cheese are examples of common smoked food.

Ripening – Free glutamate also builds up in ripened food. Ripened food is fruit or other things grown to eat that are ready to be eaten because they’ve had long enough to grow and develop. Nice red tomatoes that have been in the sun a long time will certainly be ripe and will have ten times more free glutamate than green tomatoes³.

Health benefits of umami

Umami has the ability to make you feel full – the ability to fill you up. Glutamate works as a neurotransmitter in the brain⁴ and this stimulating¹⁴ of the brain is thought to be connected to feeling full. This stops people eating too much.

Another health benefit of umami is that it increases saliva flow, stimulating appetite and for elderly people this is particularly important. If elderly people have taste problems and can’t taste the umami, they lose their appetite, eat less and this causes poor health⁵.

It has been found that there are receptors¹⁵ in the stomach that are able to detect¹⁶ umami and when umami is detected this stimulates digestion. Therefore eating umami makes it easier for the stomach to break down any food.

Umami in modern life

For many years some people, particularly in the west, didn’t really believe in umami. However in 1985 in Hawaii the first ever international meeting about umami was held and around the year 2000 receptors were found on the tongue that could detect umami. These receptors are found in our taste buds on our tongue. It is now clearly accepted that umami is the fifth taste.

A lot of dashi is now instant – it’s ready to use when you buy it and it’s sold in both powder and liquid form. Indeed the Japanese company Ajinomoto, which Kikunae Ikeda helped start, is the world’s biggest maker of dashi and MSG – monosodium glutamate. Monosodium glutamate is processed umami and is in a lot of processed foods that you’ll see on the supermarket shelves.

Thinking of the company name – Ajinomoto – ‛Aji’ 味means ‛taste’ and ‛moto’ 元 means ‛the basis of something’. Dashi – the basis of taste.

Are there other tastes?

In a way you could say there are more than the five recognized tastes – sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami.

In 2014 the fact that humans could taste carbohydrates was discovered⁶ and in 2017 taste receptors on the tongue that could detect water were discovered⁷. Six senses of taste? Seven? More?

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References

1 Umami Information Center – Discovery of Umami Kikunae Ikeda (www.umamiinfo.com)

2 Kenzo Kurihara (July 2015) Umami the FifthBasic Taste: History of Studies on Receptor Mechanisms and Role as a Food Flavor p.2 (www.reserachgate.com)

3 Ana San Gabriel, Julie A. Mennella (September 2023) Umami Taste: Inborn and Experiential Effects on Taste Acceptance and Satiation During Infancy p.18 (www.reserachgate.net)

4 NeuroLaunch – Umami Psychology: Exploring the Fifth Taste Sensation (September 2024)

5 Sasano et al. Flavour (2015) The important role of umami in oral and overall health. (www.flavourjournal.com)

6. RealClear Science (May 2017) Scientists discover a sixth sense on the tongue – for water. (www.realclearscience.com)

7. Science (June 2014) Tongue has a sixth sense – we can pick out carbs from other tastes. (www.science.org)

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<Example sentences>

2. prior to ~
■ Prior to living in Italy Emma lived in Croatia for two years.
■ We should have talked about the problem a little prior to the meeting.

7. substance
■ Water is an amazing substance.
■ The ocean research team is now studying all the substances that they collected from the bottom of the sea.
■ Is rubber a natural or chemical substance?

11. form
■ Do you want the airplane ticket in digital or paper form?
■ Some places receive most of their water in the form of rain, other places get it in the form of snow.

12. stimulate / stimulating
■ The smell of the fish stimulated the cats and they came running.
■ What is the government trying to do stimulate the economy?
■ What a stimulating speech! Everyone was listening until the very end.

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■ What do you put in hotpots and how do you eat it? I heard you cook it in front of you at the tables some people put sauce in their own small bowl.

■ What do you or other people eat nattō with?

■ Do you use instant dashi?

■ What do you use miso for?

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■ Do people use the word ‛dashi’ in your country?

■ Do you eat hotpots or things like it?

■ What do people use as stock from where you’re from? My image is ～

■ What is your image of umami?

1. If something ‛enhances’ something else it improves the quality of that thing.
2. ‘Broth’ is a thick soup made by boiling meat or fish and vegetables and sometimes other things such as barley or rice.
3. ‛Dashi’ is cooking stock originating from Japan that is usually made of kombu kelp seaweed and dried fish.
4. ‛Prior to’ something means that something happens or should ‛before’ something else happens.
5. In this sentence a ‛crystal’ means somethings that has become solid that has the same shape all around it.
6. In this sentence ‛pupil’ is similar to the meaning of ‛student’. It means someone who is learning from a teacher and is being guided by them.
7. In this sentence ‛bland’ means ‛not having a strong taste’.
8. ‛Foodstuff’ means food or something that is used to make food.
9. In this sentence ‛substance’ means a material with a particular physical characteristic.
10. When talking about something, ‛flake‛ means something that is ‛thin, small and light’. for example – snowflakes, cornflake, dead flakes of skin. Be careful – when talking about a person the word ‛flake’ has a different meaning….
11. In Asia a ‛hotpot’ (‛hot pot’）is like a big stew which you usually cook at the table in front of you in a big pot.

    The image is there are a lot of vegetables in it and it is thinner than a stew. You could say it’s like a thick soup. In Japan many people eat rice with it which is in a separate bowl.

12. ‛Synergism’ means that the total power of two or more things working together creates more power than if the things were working separately and then the power created by them was added together.
13. In this sentence ‛form’ means ‛type’ – the way something is.
14. In this sentence ‛stimulate’ means to cause part of the body to start working. In other meanings it means to encourage growth or to make someone feel excited.
15. A ‛receptor’ is a nerve ending that sends messages to the brain telling it about something that the nerve ending senses.
16. ‛Detect’ means find or notice something particularly when it is not so easy to notice. There are supposed to be smoke ‛detectors’ to prevent fires now in every house. They ring like an alarm if they detect smoke.