Umami taste and monosodium glutamate

  • Dec 24, 2019
click fraud protection

Previously it was thought that human taste receptors perceive four taste: sweet, salty, sour and bitter. Most recently revealed the fifth type of taste receptors responsible for the perception of the taste of umami - "beef" taste ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Умами, ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Вкусовая_сенсорная_система.

The carrier is a sugar sweet taste, salty - salt.
In the minds of taste also has its own media and it - monosodium glutamate (MonoSodium Glutamate, MSG, E621).


Chemical engineer, Sergei fleyvorist proteins flavorchemist.lj.ru writes:

"Sodium glutamate - a salt of glutamic acid, one of the amino acids from which proteins are constructed. It is in any protein without exception, without the protein does not exist in principle. Moreover, it is probably the most common among all twenty amino acids. In some plant proteins its amount can be up to 20-40 percent. In the body, it serves a huge number of functions, it can be said that the body without it, in principle, can not live. But, fortunately, it is a nonessential amino acid: that is, if there is not enough food, the body synthesizes it quietly, and if the excess food - safely recycled. Refuse food to the glutamic acid can not be - then you have to completely abandon the protein.

instagram viewer

It happened in the course of evolution: glutamic acid - it can be said, the protein marker. If the food has a protein - is, as a rule, a certain amount of this amino acid, respectively, recognition minds - the way in which the body is protein-rich food. That is why we need this taste is pleasant, that uses food industry.

But not only the industry: most methods of cooking - it is actually the production of the protein glutamate: braising, frying, cooking. Protein in the presence of an acid under the action of heat or by the action of enzymes contained in food or of introduced micro-organisms, is reacted with water. This reaction is essentially similar to what happens to a protein in the digestive tract, and inevitably leads to the disintegration of his long molecules into separate fragments or individual amino acids. They - and especially glutamic acid - just give the food taste good.

If we talk about the fermentation - it is the production of glutamate: soy sauces, fish sauces, cheeses, particularly hard. Sometimes it is used and a natural source of glutamate, for example, if we are talking about ketchup. It actually glutamate from tomatoes, that's why it's so delicious. Cooks groped taste umami chance to taste and chemistry to realize these intuitions in the form of a substance that can be added to foods. "

In 1908, a professor at Tokyo University Kikunae Ikeda found that glutamate cause a palatable broth of kombu seaweed. He called the new taste umami.

Umami has a mild but long-playing aftertaste that causes salivation and a mild sensation on the tongue, stimulating the throat, palate and the back of the mouth. By itself, umami is not has a pleasant taste, but it makes many kinds of delicious food. Optimality umami taste depends on the salt concentration, the malosolonaya food can be tasty, if it suitable amount of umami.

Now sodium glutamate were prepared by bacteria able to synthesize this substance.

Another quote from the article Sergei Belkova:

"Keyword glutamate to human - it is a neurotransmitter: it is transmitted via the order of 60 percent of nerve impulses. In this connection, there's a lot of different stories about the fact that glutamate from food can cause nervous disorders. It should be noted that in this case they could cause any glutamate - not only food, seasoned with soy sauce, or a product in which crystalline added glutamate, but also from conventional meat. Or cottage cheese: it is believed that the low-fat cottage cheese - this is useful protein product; but in the curd glutamate contains 8 times more than in potato chips, for example. The curd it's in bound form, and does not have the taste, but in any case, enters the body and is involved in the metabolism.

But glutamate causes nerve diseases for two simple reasons. Firstly, the body itself is able to synthesize glutamate, if it is not enough, and destroys it, if it is too much. Secondly, there is the blood-brain barrier, which passes the desired substances being protected from unnecessary between the circulatory and central nervous systems. Here glutamate can not pass this barrier and into the brain does not get. This is also the invention of evolution: once again, the glutamate in human food - abysmal. And so it went - from the time when we were little single-celled bacteria, before we became so large and not always intelligent beings.

And in general, the concentration of glutamate in the brain in a hundred times more than in the blood, so even the idea oversaturate brain glutamate from the food looks implausible. All the same glutamate that is used by the nervous system, synthesized and destroyed in situ. "

By the way, in English called monosodium glutamate flavor enhancer - improver, dressing taste. We caught an incorrect translation - "flavor enhancer". In fact, the only flavor that glutamate can enhance - this taste umami. Just as salt enhances the salty taste and enhances the sweet sugar.

Apparently, the myth about the dangers of MSG - it's just a myth, and in fact this substance is much safer salt and sugar.

If you are interested in this topic, read the article from which the quotes I used in full: http://eda.ru/media/vopros/chto-takoe-glutamat-natriya.

The main theme of my blog - Equipment for human life. I write reviews, share experiences, talk about all sorts of interesting things. And I'm doing stories of the interesting places and tell about interesting events.
Add me to your friend list
here. Remember the short address of my blog: Blog1.rf and Blog1rf.ru.

My second big project - http://lamptest.ru. I test LED light bulb and help figure out which ones are good and which are not.