Umami: flavour that attracts us to food
When we talk about flavours, it is commonly stated that there are four types of flavours that humans can sense: sweet, salty, sour and bitter. However, there is another type of flavour, for which there are receptors, called umami , and it is the taste of meat. The closest to describing is that it would be the taste of soya sauce. The existence of such flavour and receptors for it is internationally recognized in the academic community in 1987 at the scientific meeting of the Umami International Symposium held in Hawaii. Which molecules produce umami? We know that hydrogen ion, H +, make a sense of sour, some other ions are responsible for salty flavour, sugars are for sweet, but what makes "umami"? It is a flavor of glutamate, or more precisely, the amino acid L-glutamate and its salts eg. sodium glutamate, the usual food flavour enhancing additive - or various 5'-nucleotides such as guanosine monophosphate (GMP) or inosine monophosphate (IMP). The ...