Besides sweet, sour, salty and bitterness, there is umami. Such a interesting word is Japanese standing for freshness. According to wikipedia, “Umami is a Japanese word meaning “savory” or “deliciousness” and thus applies to the sensation of savoriness, specifically to the detection of the natural amino acid, glutamic acid, or glutamates common in meats, cheese and other protein-heavy foods. ”
Basically the “hearty” feeling is generated by MSG(Monosodium Glutamate) in some form.
One thing that quite a lot of people are not aware of is MSG exist in natural food. Meat product, Chesse, potato, tomato, mushrooms, eggs are natural MSG sources. And these natural food do possess a high amount of natural MSG – that is why they all taste so good most of the time. In Japanese cuisine, miso paste are widely used (and in other variation, konbucha is also used). Most of the miso paste is added with MSG, and usually the MSG is extracted from seaweed. This is also one of the open secret why Chinese food taste so good. It is because of the MSG.
MSG can either be extracted from meat or vegetables. In meat, pig protein is used as a cheap means of extracting MSG. While to make the MSG kosher, it can also be extracted from plants like seaweed.
My view on MSG is that it doesn’t really harm you. Added MSG and natural MSG are the same. It is not neccessarily unhealthy to have MSG as long as you are not eating excess amount of it. And having some MSG in food (natural or not) will sometimes reduce the urge for salt. The good side is you will consume relatively less salt and might yield a better option if your diet has a constraint in daily salt intake. There are certainly people who are intolerant to MSG, but the occurance of such events are actually not especially high, and unfortunately most of the processed food will use MSG as a form of addictive to make their product taste better.
What is umami? Look below!
It is important to remember that some unlucky individuals are allergic to MSG. This means that it is dangerous or even fatal to them if ingested or touched. In this way it is not harmless. MSG stands for MonoSodium Glutamate, it is a salt because it contains Sodium.
I have seen people with MSG allergies and I always wonder how they will cope with the situation. That’s because MSG do exist in meat and egg products- maybe the natural ones don’t really have a high enough dosage to trigger a really serious allergy.
Are are some extra ingo foe you on MSG
Most people will recover from mild cases of syndrome without treatment and with no lasting problems. But for those People who have experienced life-threatening reactions need to be extremely cautious about what they eat and should always carry medication prescribed by their doctor for emergency treatment.
MSG allergies also have a nickname 中華料理店症候群 (Chinese Restaurant Syndrome).
Due to in mid 60s, american experienced strange syndrome whenever they have eaten out in a Chinese restaurant, especially one that served northern Chinese food. The most prominent symptoms are numbness at the back of the neck, gradually radiating to both arms and the back, general weakness and palpitations, some might even have burning sensations, numbness, tingling, feelings of warmth, facial pressure or tightness, headache, nausea. All of the symptoms can simple explain by “overdose of vitamin b6.
In a double blind test, even the people who claim they are allegic to MSG show no reaction at all. As for one have reaction, 90% of those are american, while less than 2% are “asian”. During the test maxican, italian, japanese, chinese, and other cusine are serve(all of which cook with same amount of MSG) supricingly 98% show reaction only to chinese, none at others.
Finally only less than 1% of the one show reaction shown sign of life-threatening symptoms (similar to any other severe allergic reaction) such as shortness of breath, heart palpitations, chest pain, or swelling of the lips or throat, for which they require immediate medical attention.
Also here is video from aji-nomoto take about what is “umami”