Stumbled upon this interesting article on The Economist, about how the Japanese are researching on a possible sixth taste - kokumi, much as they have proven the existence of the fifth taste, umami, which is essentially what mono sodium glutamate (MSG) is based on.
Kokumi is what people refer to as "heartiness" or "thickness", with the Japanese root words meaning "thick taste" or "rich flavour". To understand the concept, just think of garlic, onions and scallops... all ingredients which Asians love to use to make their soups tastier.
So far, it appears that they haven't pinpointed the compound responsible for kokumi, although they suspect it's a gamma-glutamyl peptide.
Tangential Digression on "Food Additives" Like MSG
Once they do confirm the compound for kokumi, it would be really interesting if people started using this as commonly as they do MSG. There's quite a lot of controversy about MSG and what are considered to be "food additives"... at least where I come from, people say it's either "playing cheat" with food since it is "artificial", or it's bad for health. I've read about a study in which MSG caused some retinal thinning in mice, although the relevant doses were many times exponentially what we would normally use in food, from what I remember.
Considering that MSG is actually a fifth taste, I would think that using it is probably no more playing cheat or artificial than adding sugar or salt to your food, which really are essentially the pure compound responsible for two of the basic tastes. Like salt and sugar, MSG is found naturally in foods like prawns and seafoods. True, MSG has to be distilled or manufactured using some technology... but don't sugar and salt also require some form of technology to be distilled too? It's just that we've gotten used to the notion of those technologies that we no longer think of them as artificial. So I don't think MSG is any more artificial or "playing cheat" with taste than salt or sugar.
I also don't think health problems should be anymore a concern than for sugar or salt. Yes, MSG does seem to have some negative effects. But to be honest, the bad stuff I've read about salt and sugar are way worse than what I've read about MSG. For instance, sugar is probably responsible for a lot of the killer chronic diseases out there, like diabetes mellitus, metabolic syndrome and heart disease. Salt also aggravates hypertension and may be linked to the onset of the disease. And salt and sugar both exert their effect in very normal quantities... compared to the ridiculous amounts of MSG needed for the mentioned retinal damage to start occurring. So I probably wouldn't avoid MSG due to health reasons.
Perhaps the only reason why I might avoid MSG is due to some potential inconveniences it poses; there's the notion that MSG causes you to feel sleepy or thirsty... which does make sense if MSG mimics the action of some related neurotransmitters. Even if this is scientifically not proven, I have experienced it before, and the placebo effect should count for something. So I would probably try to avoid MSG-rich foods (or carbohydrate-rich foods for that matter) for lunches before important meetings.
So I guess my principle for consuming kokumi, should it be discovered, or any other food additive would be the same; it should be a boon, unless its negative health effects exceed those of salt and sugar.
Kokumi is what people refer to as "heartiness" or "thickness", with the Japanese root words meaning "thick taste" or "rich flavour". To understand the concept, just think of garlic, onions and scallops... all ingredients which Asians love to use to make their soups tastier.
So far, it appears that they haven't pinpointed the compound responsible for kokumi, although they suspect it's a gamma-glutamyl peptide.
Tangential Digression on "Food Additives" Like MSG
Once they do confirm the compound for kokumi, it would be really interesting if people started using this as commonly as they do MSG. There's quite a lot of controversy about MSG and what are considered to be "food additives"... at least where I come from, people say it's either "playing cheat" with food since it is "artificial", or it's bad for health. I've read about a study in which MSG caused some retinal thinning in mice, although the relevant doses were many times exponentially what we would normally use in food, from what I remember.
Considering that MSG is actually a fifth taste, I would think that using it is probably no more playing cheat or artificial than adding sugar or salt to your food, which really are essentially the pure compound responsible for two of the basic tastes. Like salt and sugar, MSG is found naturally in foods like prawns and seafoods. True, MSG has to be distilled or manufactured using some technology... but don't sugar and salt also require some form of technology to be distilled too? It's just that we've gotten used to the notion of those technologies that we no longer think of them as artificial. So I don't think MSG is any more artificial or "playing cheat" with taste than salt or sugar.
I also don't think health problems should be anymore a concern than for sugar or salt. Yes, MSG does seem to have some negative effects. But to be honest, the bad stuff I've read about salt and sugar are way worse than what I've read about MSG. For instance, sugar is probably responsible for a lot of the killer chronic diseases out there, like diabetes mellitus, metabolic syndrome and heart disease. Salt also aggravates hypertension and may be linked to the onset of the disease. And salt and sugar both exert their effect in very normal quantities... compared to the ridiculous amounts of MSG needed for the mentioned retinal damage to start occurring. So I probably wouldn't avoid MSG due to health reasons.
Perhaps the only reason why I might avoid MSG is due to some potential inconveniences it poses; there's the notion that MSG causes you to feel sleepy or thirsty... which does make sense if MSG mimics the action of some related neurotransmitters. Even if this is scientifically not proven, I have experienced it before, and the placebo effect should count for something. So I would probably try to avoid MSG-rich foods (or carbohydrate-rich foods for that matter) for lunches before important meetings.
So I guess my principle for consuming kokumi, should it be discovered, or any other food additive would be the same; it should be a boon, unless its negative health effects exceed those of salt and sugar.
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