What makes you drool over delicious foods? Is it only salt, sugar, bitterness, sourness and hotness that make delicious foods taste irresistible? Definitely not! The logic for this is very simple: If these basic tastes are the only determining factors for making food delicious then most foods will taste delicious because they contain one or more of these basic flavors. But this is not true. There must be some element that sets delicious foods a class apart from the rest.

It takes people like Dr. Kikunae Ikeda to unravel the mystery of delicious foods. I’m sure you must be a lover of the Japanese seaweed Kombu. If you aren’t yet, just try it out. I’m sure you’ll fall for this utterly irresistible meaty food that has a magical effect on soups when added. Dr. Ikeda found that glutamic acid, a chemical, takes the credit for the unique taste of Kombu. He used the Japanese word Umami to describe this special taste.

Do you know what this discovery means? Yes, you’ve said it! Apart from conventional tastes, we humans are gifted with an extra taste sense over the conventional ones. Also, the elements causing the special taste are not unique to a particular species of organisms. As they are chemicals, they can be manufactured anywhere. So, you can enjoy your delicious foods with a sprinkling of glutamic acid powder bought from the market. You know very well that fructose increases the taste of soft drinks incredibly. We simply cannot do without sodium chloride (common salt) for most food items. Monosodium glutamate (better known as Ajinomoto, Vetsin or Accent ), was used as a powerful taste-enhancer for many delicious foods, especially Chinese noodles.

Our longing for delicious foods is primitive. Our ancestors searched for foods with high concentration of sugars, fats and salts for their energy requirements. Owing to the high concentrations of taste elements, these foods tasted irresistible. A built in psychological algorithm in present day humans says that delicious foods are naturally nutritious and we should have them.

For further information, visit these links below :

umami video

Psychology today

image credit : iehow