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Selects: How Umami Works! · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: M Hey, everybody, are you hungry? You want something sweet?
0:04
Speaker 1: How about something savory? Or how about something sour tart?
0:11
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, no, no no. I think what you
0:13
Speaker 1: need is some ou mommy in your mouth. So we're
0:16
Speaker 1: gonna go back to August and learn all about this
0:21
Speaker 1: new taste profile. It's actually not new. How ummy works.
0:31
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know A production of I
0:34
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, I'm welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
0:43
Speaker 1: Charles W Chuck Bryant, and Jerry and so this is
0:47
Speaker 1: stuff you should I tell you about to change the
0:51
Speaker 1: name of the show right there on a whim. No no, no,
0:55
Speaker 1: all right, that's a very meaty and savory of you.
1:00
Speaker 1: Can you smell my juices I'm cooking in them. You
1:03
Speaker 1: smell like fish stock? Oh yeah, yeah, you know. I
1:07
Speaker 1: did a Don't be Dumb on Ketchup the origin of Ketchup,
1:12
Speaker 1: the good one, and it actually Oh you saw that?
1:13
Speaker 1: Sure you watched this? Of course I do. I had
1:15
Speaker 1: no idea. I'm your biggest fan, you're one of the
1:20
Speaker 1: well I know, I'm one of those people. It's like,
1:22
Speaker 1: this guy is so dumb, what kind of I don't
1:24
Speaker 1: get it? Get through these What is he acting like that?
1:26
Speaker 1: But I just keep watching them. I can't help it.
1:28
Speaker 1: So you saw the one about ketchup, and you know
1:30
Speaker 1: about ketchy up the Vietnamese fish sauce that actually serves
1:35
Speaker 1: as the basis for ketchup. Yes, the American condiment, which
1:39
Speaker 1: is not the number one selling condiment in America is
1:42
Speaker 1: also know what is it? Mayonnaise? Oh? Yes? Did you
1:47
Speaker 1: know that I love mayonnaise? Certainly you didn't. What kind
1:50
Speaker 1: dukes is your brain? Right? Well, I'm dukes, But I'm
1:53
Speaker 1: just I'm gonna I find myself a defender of mayonnaise
1:55
Speaker 1: because my whole life people have just thought it was gross.
1:59
Speaker 1: Not everyone you would do well in, like France or Belgium, Buddy, Yeah,
2:02
Speaker 1: like on a hamburger and hot dog, people like, because
2:05
Speaker 1: I don't like ketchup and people think I'm weird. Oh no,
2:07
Speaker 1: you need some ketchup too, Not that much. I've also found, recently,
2:11
Speaker 1: as a grown up adult, a real live one that like,
2:14
Speaker 1: you can replace ketchup with tomatoes and it tastes maybe
2:17
Speaker 1: even better, depending on the ketchup. You mean on a burger, Yes,
2:22
Speaker 1: instead of both, you just mean no ketchup. You can
2:26
Speaker 1: put in both. I'm not I'm not opposed to it. No,
2:28
Speaker 1: it just it I've found And it was a big
2:32
Speaker 1: surprise to me, a really big surprise that if you
2:37
Speaker 1: just put tomatoes, a good tomato on and no ketchup,
2:40
Speaker 1: you're actually creating the taste that you're looking for with
2:43
Speaker 1: ketchup that just misses it slightly because it's got more
2:48
Speaker 1: than tomatoes in it, right. It's really, again, very surprising
2:52
Speaker 1: to me, even though I realized, of course that tomato
2:55
Speaker 1: is made from ketchup is made from tomatoes, Like, I
2:58
Speaker 1: haven't made that connection, just didn't realize how good just
3:01
Speaker 1: tomatoes were on a burger without ketchup. Yeah, I don't
3:04
Speaker 1: like raw tomatoes either, so I wouldn't do that. And
3:07
Speaker 1: you can't dip our French right in a tomato. Well, no,
3:11
Speaker 1: I'm not opposed to catch up. I'll still use ketchup
3:13
Speaker 1: not here, especially for dipping fries. I'm cool with that.
3:17
Speaker 1: I'm not down and ketch up here is what I'm
3:19
Speaker 1: trying to say. I just think that tomatoes are great
3:22
Speaker 1: on a burger, but I also like Mayo two I
3:24
Speaker 1: think is ultimately the point that started me off on this. Yeah,
3:27
Speaker 1: I like tomato sauce, like red sauce. But I don't
3:31
Speaker 1: like raw tomatoes or just whole tomatoes. They're slimy, and
3:36
Speaker 1: I'm not supposed to eat them like an apple or anything. Uh,
3:39
Speaker 1: if you've been doing that, I can understand why you
3:41
Speaker 1: don't like raw tomatoes. Some people do. Some people to
3:43
Speaker 1: slice them and eat them on a plate. You're not
3:46
Speaker 1: just holding it in your hand, eating it like an apple.
3:49
Speaker 1: Look at a monster does that? That's what I'm saying,
3:51
Speaker 1: a monster. Kaiser Willhelm the second Yeah, he was, he
3:55
Speaker 1: was known, all right. So all of that to say,
4:00
Speaker 1: O mommy, oh mommy, Oh mama, this one's about O mommy.
4:06
Speaker 1: The fifth flavor, the fifth beetle, out of what they
4:11
Speaker 1: now say is six fat fat carbon dioxide is also
4:18
Speaker 1: one two oh. We supposedly they found receptors that are
4:23
Speaker 1: tailored specifically dis sensing carbon dioxide on the tongue, and
4:27
Speaker 1: that ultimately that makes it qualify as a taste. So
4:30
Speaker 1: they're gonna be seven. Now. I think there's way more.
4:33
Speaker 1: I don't know why science has been so stingy or
4:36
Speaker 1: so reluctant to accept the idea that we have more
4:39
Speaker 1: than four flavor receptors or more four taste receptors. But
4:43
Speaker 1: oh mommy was isolated in the in the beginning of
4:48
Speaker 1: the twentieth century, and it wasn't for almost eighty years
4:51
Speaker 1: before the West finally accepted it. Ah. Yeah. Part of
4:55
Speaker 1: the reasons because it was the research was written in Japanese.
4:58
Speaker 1: Well it's okay, that's maybe something to do with it. Uh.
5:02
Speaker 1: And part of the issue was that um it's umami
5:07
Speaker 1: is very mild and taste, and when you have um
5:10
Speaker 1: high concentrations of it to increase set flavor, you've got
5:14
Speaker 1: salty and sour mixed in. So I think it just
5:17
Speaker 1: confounded the West. They're like, what we get sour, we
5:23
Speaker 1: get salty, we get sweet, for sure, why we even
5:27
Speaker 1: get bitter, but we don't get this other thing. Nope,
5:33
Speaker 1: and we're not going over five. So you better make
5:35
Speaker 1: the sumami stuff good. That's what the West said, dumb
5:38
Speaker 1: Western scientists and food scientists. So chuck, I think we
5:43
Speaker 1: let the cat out of the bag a little bit.
5:45
Speaker 1: Um The Japanese are the ones who first discovered umami.
5:49
Speaker 1: It's right comes from the word umi uh, roughly translated
5:55
Speaker 1: as delicious. Uh. Chefs, if you talk to a chef
5:59
Speaker 1: and Mommy's big hot thing. Right now, they'll say, maybe
6:02
Speaker 1: it's like a mushroomy thing. It's like an earthy it's
6:06
Speaker 1: it's it is very subtle. Like I said, it's musty. Yeah, musty,
6:10
Speaker 1: which doesn't sound appealing. No, but it also makes sweet different.
6:14
Speaker 1: That's oh, Mommy's big great quality. And I think that's
6:17
Speaker 1: probably one of the reasons why it was hard for
6:21
Speaker 1: the West to accept it is ou Mommy's big thing
6:25
Speaker 1: is synergizing. It's a supporting cast member almost yeah, it takes. Yes,
6:31
Speaker 1: it is. It's like, um, Bud Bundy, Okay, not a
6:37
Speaker 1: leading guy, but you put him in an ensemble, He's
6:40
Speaker 1: gonna bring everybody else up. It's what he's known for.
6:43
Speaker 1: I would give a million American dollars to be inside
6:47
Speaker 1: your brain during that five ish seconds of your spinning
6:50
Speaker 1: around searching for supporting cast member and ending up at
6:54
Speaker 1: Bud Bundy. Will you come back in twenty years and
6:57
Speaker 1: give me a million dollars and I will let you.
6:59
Speaker 1: Man would be amazing. So um with like salty sour,
7:04
Speaker 1: we get again, we get those things. They stand on
7:06
Speaker 1: their own. Umami actually has a very mild and not
7:09
Speaker 1: necessarily like pleasurable flavor on its own. Yeah, you don't
7:14
Speaker 1: want something that's like, oh, this is just umami flavored, right,
7:17
Speaker 1: But it is almost like it's designed to interact with
7:21
Speaker 1: other flavors, especially salty and especially sweet. Agreed, and ummy
7:27
Speaker 1: can even interact with itself and all of a sudden
7:31
Speaker 1: it takes what was just like ho home day and
7:35
Speaker 1: turns it into the greatest day of your life with
7:38
Speaker 1: one bite of chitake mush with some hot umami on
7:41
Speaker 1: umami action. Uh. So it is nothing new, obviously, It's
7:46
Speaker 1: not like you can just identify a new taste. Um
7:49
Speaker 1: It's been around. Um. The Romans and the Greeks before
7:52
Speaker 1: them enjoyed something called garum and that is a sauce that, boy,
7:57
Speaker 1: you want to talk about how you find some weird
8:00
Speaker 1: food wise, they were gutting fish and they said, let's
8:03
Speaker 1: take this fish cuts and blood, and let's salt it
8:07
Speaker 1: and leave it out in the sun for three months
8:10
Speaker 1: and see what happened. See what happened, and you have
8:13
Speaker 1: to eat it, eat it you, uh, and someone eventually
8:17
Speaker 1: ate it. They strained the liquid from the top of it,
8:19
Speaker 1: and they said, boy, this sauce is this is garam sauce.
8:22
Speaker 1: This this good stuff is delicious. Garam means delicious in
8:26
Speaker 1: ancient Roman. I think so. And it is uh that
8:29
Speaker 1: was umami personified um because how umami was discovered. Uh
8:35
Speaker 1: in nineteen o seven, there was a brilliant chemist name
8:39
Speaker 1: uh Kikuna Akita s A right that a e. It's
8:45
Speaker 1: got an extra little pop to it. Got you? But yeah,
8:49
Speaker 1: you did it, thank you. So he was a chemist
8:54
Speaker 1: and uh he worked at the Imperial University. I'm sorry
8:57
Speaker 1: he was. Yeah, he was a professor at the Imperior
9:00
Speaker 1: Real University of Tokyo. And he was perplexed that he
9:05
Speaker 1: tasted something one day and said, this is not any
9:08
Speaker 1: of those four flavors. No, no, no, I know this
9:12
Speaker 1: is different. He was all about the dashi. And dashi
9:15
Speaker 1: is the basis of miso soups, lots of other stuff,
9:19
Speaker 1: but basically it's a fish stock made from I think
9:23
Speaker 1: tuna flakes and um combo which is dried kelp yes,
9:29
Speaker 1: and they are all kinds of recipes for a dashi base.
9:32
Speaker 1: And it's in a lot of things from sauces and
9:36
Speaker 1: like soba noodle sauces to like you said, mi, so
9:39
Speaker 1: um really really big ingredient in Japanese cuisine, right, And
9:42
Speaker 1: this guy was like, this little boy loves this dashi
9:44
Speaker 1: and I want to know exactly what is making it
9:47
Speaker 1: so wonderful. So, since he was a chemist, he took
9:51
Speaker 1: I think something like twelve kilograms of dashi and boiled
9:55
Speaker 1: it down ten of them, isolated some stuff. The first
9:59
Speaker 1: thing that came out were some obvious ones that he
10:02
Speaker 1: clearly discarded. Is not responsible for your mommy, because there
10:06
Speaker 1: were salts. He's like, no, it's not that. It's not salt.
10:09
Speaker 1: We understand salt. It's not salt. I know for effect,
10:12
Speaker 1: it's not salt. What else is in here? He starts
10:14
Speaker 1: sorting through it, right, Well, didn't he separate the dashi
10:16
Speaker 1: into its parts and then break those down? Yeah? Okay,
10:19
Speaker 1: I just jumped ahead of step to make a terrible chemist.
10:23
Speaker 1: He's on he's on kelp at this point, one of
10:26
Speaker 1: the ingredients. Okay. And so with the kelp is where
10:29
Speaker 1: he found those two salts and your right. He was like, well,
10:31
Speaker 1: I know these flavors and they're not what I've been
10:34
Speaker 1: experiencing on my tongue. Now they're old news news. So
10:37
Speaker 1: he looked a little further and he found well, wait
10:40
Speaker 1: a minute, what is this. It's glutamic acid. And he's like, maybe,
10:46
Speaker 1: but glutamic acid has a sour taste and that's weird,
10:50
Speaker 1: Like it can't be glutamic acid. It doesn't quite make sense.
10:54
Speaker 1: So he added some more stuff, came up with a
10:57
Speaker 1: chemical reaction and what popped out on the other and
11:00
Speaker 1: is what you and I call monosodium glutamate MSG. And
11:05
Speaker 1: he figured out that it's not glutamate acid, it's not
11:08
Speaker 1: the salt, but it's actually glutamate. But then he figured
11:12
Speaker 1: out even further, like glutamate. That doesn't make any sense,
11:15
Speaker 1: Like glutamate glutamate doesn't work. Then he realized it's not
11:18
Speaker 1: the protein that's giving it the taste. It's the amino
11:22
Speaker 1: acids that actually make up proteins that give you mommy
11:25
Speaker 1: its taste. Boom, So glutamate, I'm sorry, isn't amino acid
11:30
Speaker 1: right right right? And that's one of the things that
11:34
Speaker 1: gives you mommy has taste. This is the first thing
11:36
Speaker 1: that was discovered, um to give you mommy its taste. Yeah,
11:40
Speaker 1: and that was the kelp. So you know, dashi has
11:43
Speaker 1: a different components. So he had a student he said,
11:46
Speaker 1: you know what, let me get that the dried tuna flakes. Um, yeah,
11:51
Speaker 1: bonito delicious. There's different kinds, but bonito is definitely one
11:55
Speaker 1: of them. Um. And he says, let me identify these components.
11:59
Speaker 1: And he found was something called uh, you want to
12:03
Speaker 1: try that one and a signate? Is that right? Yeah?
12:06
Speaker 1: I think that is right. Man. It's a nucleic acid.
12:09
Speaker 1: Like you say yes. So he's like, boom, I've got
12:12
Speaker 1: number two. And then in nineteen sixty another scientist named
12:16
Speaker 1: Akira uh kuney knaka. He worked for Yamasa, the famous
12:21
Speaker 1: soy saucy a and now you're just showing off, he was, um.
12:26
Speaker 1: And he went on to work in pharmaceuticals. It was interesting,
12:29
Speaker 1: is the chemist. Yeah, but it's like you work for
12:32
Speaker 1: soy sauce and then you go to work for a
12:34
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical company. Right, I'm good at both things. But you're right,
12:38
Speaker 1: it's all this chemistry. Um. So he said, you know what,
12:41
Speaker 1: I can identify a third thing called guanai late. It's
12:45
Speaker 1: another nucleotide in those shataki mushrooms you were talking about. Yeah,
12:50
Speaker 1: and it's not like just bonito flakes, combo and staki
12:55
Speaker 1: mushrooms are the only things that produce your mommy taste.
12:58
Speaker 1: These are just the three things that those guys into
13:00
Speaker 1: town and isolated different stuff out of right. Yeah, I
13:03
Speaker 1: always want to see Banita apple bum when you say
13:05
Speaker 1: Bonita tribe called quest After all these years, they keep
13:09
Speaker 1: making reference, they keep making appearances in episodes lately. Oh yeah,
13:13
Speaker 1: they have been. Huh you mentioned him in Hula Hoops. Yeah,
13:16
Speaker 1: this one. You can't remember which one we talked about
13:20
Speaker 1: the scenario, Oh, what's the what's the what's the scenario?
13:23
Speaker 1: You know what? My friend Justin whom you also know
13:26
Speaker 1: his mother actually left her wallet and Elsa Gundo. No boy,
13:32
Speaker 1: and he even called me. He was like, dude, guess
13:34
Speaker 1: what happened? My mother left a wallet and Elsa Gundo.
13:38
Speaker 1: It's crazy. Yeah, it was pretty remarkable. We should probably
13:42
Speaker 1: take a break, Yeah, and then we'll talk a little
13:43
Speaker 1: bit more about the science of taste right after this.
14:05
Speaker 1: So we have done an episode on taste that was great.
14:07
Speaker 1: It was great. It's called taste and how it works
14:10
Speaker 1: from July right, highly recommended. Yeah, but we're gonna go
14:15
Speaker 1: over a little bit more here. Well, yeah, I think
14:16
Speaker 1: if we're gonna talk about mommy. We'd be big jerks
14:19
Speaker 1: if we just assumed you know everything there is to
14:22
Speaker 1: know about. Yeah, we got to talk about what's called
14:24
Speaker 1: the gustatory system. Okay, so um, when we're talking about
14:28
Speaker 1: taste specifically, that's separate from flavor, which we'll get to.
14:32
Speaker 1: But taste begins on the tongue, right, And on the
14:36
Speaker 1: tongue you're gonna find what we like to call taste
14:38
Speaker 1: buds or pepi a. The p a have taste buds
14:43
Speaker 1: on them, right. Yes, there are three main types of papa.
14:47
Speaker 1: You have the fun fungy form, mushroom shaped, the folly eight.
14:51
Speaker 1: Those are the ridges and grooves at the back of
14:53
Speaker 1: the tongue, and the circumvallate and those are circular at
14:57
Speaker 1: the front front end of the tongue, right. And then
15:00
Speaker 1: some papi a have a couple of taste buds. Some
15:03
Speaker 1: have hundreds of taste buds. And then when you look
15:06
Speaker 1: into the taste buds themselves, um, they have receptor cells.
15:11
Speaker 1: And what's interesting is when you think about a taste bud,
15:13
Speaker 1: you'd be like, oh, well, there's a salty taste bud,
15:15
Speaker 1: sweet taste bud, ou mommy ou mommy, sweet sour, bitter,
15:21
Speaker 1: that right, carbon dioxide, So that's not the case. As
15:24
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, taste bud has different receptor selves,
15:28
Speaker 1: and these different receptor cells can be tuned to accept
15:32
Speaker 1: or sense different types of taste. Wasn't it the shape
15:36
Speaker 1: if I remember correctly that, well, that was with the smell.
15:40
Speaker 1: Smell and tasted closely related, and we should say that
15:44
Speaker 1: the spoiler alert for the taste episode. We're not a
15:46
Speaker 1: harm percent sure how we sense taste or smell um,
15:50
Speaker 1: but yes, the the predominant theory is that that a
15:56
Speaker 1: specific type of odorant or taste molecule will interact with
16:00
Speaker 1: a specific type of receptor and when it does, the
16:04
Speaker 1: chemical in that molecule, that food molecule um unlocks that
16:10
Speaker 1: receptor and by doing that, it's translated into an electrical impulse. Boom.
16:15
Speaker 1: So you chew your food up, gets spitty and saliva covered,
16:19
Speaker 1: and it breaks it down, cut your tongue and that's
16:21
Speaker 1: when that transduction. Uh, those electrical impulses are sent to
16:27
Speaker 1: the n ST the solitary tract of the brain, sorry,
16:30
Speaker 1: the nucleus of the solitary tract of the brain. Yeah,
16:33
Speaker 1: that's where it all happens. That's when it puts all
16:35
Speaker 1: these different tastes together and says delicious, I like this
16:40
Speaker 1: or more to the point, and that's probably going to
16:43
Speaker 1: kill you, so stop eating that. Yeah. And like we said,
16:47
Speaker 1: taste is different than flavor. Taste is just one aspect
16:49
Speaker 1: of flavor. For a food item or really anything to
16:53
Speaker 1: have a flavor, it includes not just the taste, but
16:57
Speaker 1: also the smell, the side of it, the temperature of it,
17:00
Speaker 1: how it feels, is the firm is it a little
17:03
Speaker 1: too gelatinous? Um. These are all things that your brain
17:08
Speaker 1: takes into account, um, including things like memories that you
17:12
Speaker 1: form from having it before. Cotton candy when I was
17:15
Speaker 1: a kid gives me great memories. Yeah, So that plays
17:18
Speaker 1: a part in flavor exactly, like you can like it
17:21
Speaker 1: releases some different aspect of it that only you can
17:25
Speaker 1: experience that flavor. Yeah, Like if you had a cotton
17:28
Speaker 1: candy jelly bean, it would conjure up that memory and
17:31
Speaker 1: that would be part of the flavor experience yea, or
17:34
Speaker 1: if it's one of your past lives. So that's kind
17:37
Speaker 1: of the science of taste. And with your mommy specifically. Um. Again,
17:41
Speaker 1: one of the things that the West was having trouble
17:44
Speaker 1: with this accepting that ou mommy was a real thing
17:48
Speaker 1: was that there wasn't any um what's called psychophysical evidence
17:53
Speaker 1: that ou momi was its own taste. Right. For a
17:56
Speaker 1: long time, they thought it was just a component of
17:58
Speaker 1: salty taste, because monosodium glutamate is a type of salt, right,
18:03
Speaker 1: It's a salt protein combination that makes MSG. And for
18:07
Speaker 1: many many years this was the only um this is
18:12
Speaker 1: the only source of umami taste. But finally in the eighties,
18:16
Speaker 1: once they had the first international symposium on New Mommy,
18:19
Speaker 1: it was a real thing. That was a party. Um
18:22
Speaker 1: the I'll bet it was too because it was in Hawaii,
18:25
Speaker 1: and the Japanese and Americans love Hawaii, so I bet
18:28
Speaker 1: everybody was partying down there. They started to do studies
18:31
Speaker 1: in the early eighties and they found, oh, actually, no,
18:34
Speaker 1: there are specific receptor cells on the human tongue. And
18:39
Speaker 1: it turns out not just in human tongues, but mostly
18:41
Speaker 1: human tongues that are designed or geared towards accepting we're
18:46
Speaker 1: sensing umami tastes. That's right. Those are the g protein
18:50
Speaker 1: coupled receptors g pc rs, and that is for sweet, bitter,
18:54
Speaker 1: and umami and uh, sour and salty those a little different.
18:58
Speaker 1: Those sort of flow through ion channels, which is way
19:02
Speaker 1: over my head to be honest. Well, it's just like
19:05
Speaker 1: if a molecule is a positive charge of a negative charge,
19:07
Speaker 1: if it's if it's a positive eye on it has
19:10
Speaker 1: positive charge, it's not going to make it through all
19:12
Speaker 1: sorts of the channels. It's only going to make it
19:14
Speaker 1: through positive channels. It's not it's simple, I know, but
19:18
Speaker 1: as far as relating that to a taste, it's just
19:20
Speaker 1: sort of I'll can think of his manage. Well, that's
19:22
Speaker 1: the whole thing. It's like you said, It's like it's
19:24
Speaker 1: like your brain just turns to manage it's transduction is
19:28
Speaker 1: taking in electric chemical and turning it into an electrical charge.
19:33
Speaker 1: I just think that's endlessly fascinating. Oh sure, the senses
19:36
Speaker 1: and how they work, it's like it's amazing, But not
19:38
Speaker 1: just that electricity and electric electrical generation, like remember that
19:42
Speaker 1: episode Electricity maybe one of our best if you ask me. Agreed,
19:47
Speaker 1: all right, So what way? What we have here are
19:49
Speaker 1: three kinds of receptor cells that they know are that
19:54
Speaker 1: that respond to this combination that makes up what MSG
19:58
Speaker 1: is I'm sorry. What umami is it's that ate, the
20:04
Speaker 1: gwen elate in the MSG. And what they think is
20:07
Speaker 1: that they actually hold on to these these compounds hold
20:10
Speaker 1: on longer, which is why you get these interesting combinations.
20:15
Speaker 1: When you have like, uh, cheese with an apple or
20:19
Speaker 1: cheese on an apple pie. It takes sweet and like
20:23
Speaker 1: doesn't just make it sweeter, it makes it like sweet
20:26
Speaker 1: in a different way, right exactly. Um. And the same
20:28
Speaker 1: thing again, when when you mix together different types of
20:32
Speaker 1: either amino acids or nucleic acids that create a new
20:35
Speaker 1: mommy taste, they magnify this ummmy nous of this is
20:39
Speaker 1: meatiness of the whole thing. And um. Also with I
20:43
Speaker 1: believe salty too, Oh mommy and salty mixed together. Um.
20:48
Speaker 1: The fact that it it hangs onto that that molecule
20:51
Speaker 1: longer and it just leaves that charge going, then that
20:55
Speaker 1: sweet can come and go, but it's it's affected by it.
20:59
Speaker 1: Food science is so interesting, it is. And we're gonna
21:01
Speaker 1: talk a little more about food science and evolution right
21:04
Speaker 1: after this. All right, So here's one thing I didn't get,
21:24
Speaker 1: and I reread this a few times. I get the
21:27
Speaker 1: first part of this, which is as follows is that
21:30
Speaker 1: people have long thought that tastes had a part in
21:34
Speaker 1: evolution in that we were just wired to know that
21:37
Speaker 1: if something sweet is probably okay to eat and that
21:40
Speaker 1: will give us nutrition, something really bitter may be dangerous
21:43
Speaker 1: to eat, that might be poisonous. And of course there's
21:46
Speaker 1: exceptions to all of this. Those are pretty good general
21:49
Speaker 1: rules when it comes to UH evolution. Right that that
21:54
Speaker 1: was the evolution explanation for the sense of taste, right, Yeah.
21:57
Speaker 1: But what I don't get and is where in here
21:59
Speaker 1: does it explain the evolutionary UH method of umami? Like
22:05
Speaker 1: what role it played? I got this? You ready? Well
22:08
Speaker 1: is it this part about cooking? Yes? Oh it was
22:10
Speaker 1: very poorly stated, it really was. But it's really interesting
22:13
Speaker 1: when you realize this that so you said that ou
22:16
Speaker 1: mommy is is like one of the newer tastes or
22:19
Speaker 1: something like that, It actually is. Yeah, they couldn't figure out,
22:23
Speaker 1: like what part did this have an evolution? No, but
22:25
Speaker 1: even before that, like if you look at it evolutionarily speaking,
22:29
Speaker 1: it's it's actually very old. Supposedly the receptors are very old,
22:34
Speaker 1: like four million years old or something like that. But
22:36
Speaker 1: the idea that we can taste you mommy, or us
22:39
Speaker 1: tasting you mommy is very actually fairly recent because ou
22:45
Speaker 1: mommy is released by cooking food. Like if you eat
22:49
Speaker 1: a bunch of raw hamburger, that's not gonna be umami tasting.
22:54
Speaker 1: It's not gonna taste very good. But you cook that
22:56
Speaker 1: hamburger and you have molecularly changed it's kind position. You've
23:00
Speaker 1: unlocked some of the proteins into its constituent amino acids,
23:05
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden you've got umami taste. It's
23:09
Speaker 1: like a caramelizing it onion is completely different than the
23:12
Speaker 1: taste of a raw onion or even a just regular
23:16
Speaker 1: grilled onion. Yeah, and the big mystery of all this,
23:19
Speaker 1: evolutionarily speaking, is that what you're gaining or one of
23:22
Speaker 1: the biggest sources of umami taste is glutamate. Well that's great,
23:27
Speaker 1: but the human body produces tons of glutamate, so it
23:29
Speaker 1: wouldn't make sense that we would have a taste receptor
23:31
Speaker 1: to find it in nature because we got enough in
23:34
Speaker 1: our body. Well, you need other essential amino acids. And
23:38
Speaker 1: if it figures that the best way to get amino
23:41
Speaker 1: acids is to cook or ferment food, you want you
23:46
Speaker 1: need you need fire because amino acids can be bound
23:50
Speaker 1: to proteins and we don't absorb them as well, or
23:53
Speaker 1: our body spends a lot more energy of breaking them
23:56
Speaker 1: down and digesting them than if we cook them or
23:59
Speaker 1: if we forment them. So man invents fire, man starts
24:02
Speaker 1: to cook food, Man advances more rapidly. Yes, that's one
24:06
Speaker 1: of the ideas that, um, why our brain developed as
24:09
Speaker 1: well as it did, or we became as intelligent as
24:12
Speaker 1: we did, was from cooking food. So we were able
24:15
Speaker 1: to um break down our food a lot more easily
24:19
Speaker 1: and gain from it, absorb it, and um basically grow
24:23
Speaker 1: huge brains. That it came from cooking. And where where
24:27
Speaker 1: do we get oh, mommy taste from cooked or fermented
24:30
Speaker 1: food where these proteins have been broken down into much
24:33
Speaker 1: more easily absorbed amino acid constituents. Man, I like that.
24:36
Speaker 1: I agree. I feel like I just made it confusing though.
24:39
Speaker 1: Did it come across No, it's it's totally makes sense.
24:43
Speaker 1: We learned how to cook food and that put us
24:45
Speaker 1: at the head of the evolutionary ladder. Right, and O,
24:49
Speaker 1: mommy tastes comes from cooked or fermented food? Very clear? Uh,
24:56
Speaker 1: what is not clear, or maybe it is clear. Is
24:59
Speaker 1: MSG bad for you? A lot of people say it
25:01
Speaker 1: makes me dizzy, or it makes my heart flutter or
25:04
Speaker 1: or you know the MSG crash after you go the
25:06
Speaker 1: Chinese food buffet. Well, there's actually something called Chinese food syndrome.
25:11
Speaker 1: Not not true. Apparently it's a myth, supposedly, supposedly culturally
25:16
Speaker 1: bound syndrome where like very few other cultures outside of
25:21
Speaker 1: the United States or the West even think of the
25:24
Speaker 1: idea that MSG can make you sick, and that it's
25:27
Speaker 1: apparently a psycho somatic reaction where you expect MSG is
25:31
Speaker 1: going to make you sick, so you get sick. Yep,
25:34
Speaker 1: that's one explanation. Maybe your body or our bodies are
25:39
Speaker 1: just different in how we process and metabolize MSG, or
25:44
Speaker 1: maybe you have oded a little bit too much of
25:46
Speaker 1: anything could be a bad thing, right, it could be
25:49
Speaker 1: all these things. But what science is saying is there's
25:54
Speaker 1: no evidence that MSG is bad for you quote unquote right,
25:57
Speaker 1: And apparently study after study found people that that MSG
26:03
Speaker 1: doesn't cause these things. Yeah, it's it's weird, So get
26:06
Speaker 1: off the couch. Lazy, you're just looking for an excuse
26:09
Speaker 1: to not cut the grass and so MSG again, it
26:12
Speaker 1: has kind of a bad has kind of a bad
26:15
Speaker 1: rap here in the US, but it's everywhere, and it
26:18
Speaker 1: was actually one of the first things that Um, yeah,
26:23
Speaker 1: professor Akita Um did was he figured out a way
26:27
Speaker 1: to patent extracting monosodam glutamate from wheat, which is where
26:33
Speaker 1: it's sound much more abundantly than in like kelp, and
26:36
Speaker 1: package it into a seasoning and he he had no
26:39
Speaker 1: ill will. He's like, this is great. This can make
26:43
Speaker 1: that boring dish like taste better, that healthy boring dish
26:46
Speaker 1: taste better. So it's not it's ironic then that people
26:50
Speaker 1: think it's bad for you, when in fact, when he
26:52
Speaker 1: packaged it, he was like, this is gonna be good
26:54
Speaker 1: for you. It's gonna make this thing that's good for
26:57
Speaker 1: you taste even better, and our country is going to
26:59
Speaker 1: be very hell the right. Yeah, but it's hard to find.
27:01
Speaker 1: You said, it wasn't everything, but it's disguised and ingredients. Yeah,
27:05
Speaker 1: again stealthily because MSG has a bad rap here in
27:08
Speaker 1: the West. Yeah, they should just put MSG right. They
27:11
Speaker 1: do sometimes for the most part, though, they will call
27:14
Speaker 1: it something like hydrolyzed wheat protein because remember, it can
27:17
Speaker 1: be extracted from wheat. UM. Sometimes they'll call it just
27:21
Speaker 1: natural flavors. Yeah, because all these things are naturally what
27:26
Speaker 1: else texturized, vegetable protein, autolized yeast extract uh yeah, or
27:32
Speaker 1: just natural flavors. So if you see that, that can
27:35
Speaker 1: be a lot of things though, but just natural flavors.
27:40
Speaker 1: You don't know what you're eating. But there are some
27:43
Speaker 1: upsides to using this MSG. It's actually it actually can
27:47
Speaker 1: be used in the way that Professor A. Keda envisioned it,
27:50
Speaker 1: which is taking stuff and making it slightly healthier. Actually,
27:55
Speaker 1: when you have UM, when you use certain like potassium
27:58
Speaker 1: chloride rather than sodium chlor ride to make MSG, you
28:02
Speaker 1: can actually replace the sodium in UM a dish. So
28:07
Speaker 1: if you have a sodium problem, you can use some
28:10
Speaker 1: of this stuff. Or hey, how about that uh, low
28:13
Speaker 1: fat food that didn't taste so good at little MSG,
28:16
Speaker 1: it tastes better, right, although recent medical research suggests that
28:21
Speaker 1: you should be not eating low fat food, that regular
28:24
Speaker 1: fat food is not bad for you. Or hey, old person,
28:27
Speaker 1: you don't taste so good anymore, and you take medication
28:31
Speaker 1: that even dampens that. Right, Why don't you throw some
28:34
Speaker 1: MSG on there? Why why don't you back to life.
28:38
Speaker 1: You know, yes, so chuck um. Whether MSG is a
28:43
Speaker 1: bad rap or not, it's definitely all over the place. Uh.
28:47
Speaker 1: And it is making things taste good, in my opinion,
28:50
Speaker 1: is here to stay. It is. But there's other ways
28:53
Speaker 1: to to get a new mommy flavor out of food.
28:56
Speaker 1: And this this article actually has some helpful tips for
29:00
Speaker 1: cooking if you want to go and cook and get
29:03
Speaker 1: a umami taste. Have you ever been to umami Burger? No?
29:07
Speaker 1: I haven't. It sounds awesome, It's good. I like it.
29:10
Speaker 1: It sounds like you can make one at home with
29:14
Speaker 1: some mushrooms. Yeah. Umami Burger is a chain. Uh. I
29:18
Speaker 1: don't know where they have them, but I had it
29:19
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles and they add powdered mushroom and seaweed
29:22
Speaker 1: to the beef with little soy sauce. You don't even
29:25
Speaker 1: know what you're eating except that it tastes good. You know,
29:29
Speaker 1: you're like, hmm, I get to take the mushroom and
29:31
Speaker 1: seaweed in this burger, all right? It's just umami flavored um.
29:35
Speaker 1: And you know it's interesting. There's this uh. I think
29:38
Speaker 1: it's called like Umami Information dot Com or something like that.
29:44
Speaker 1: Really interesting site. But they point out that, um, while
29:48
Speaker 1: you associate umami with Asian cooking, it's actually found all
29:53
Speaker 1: over the world, like in Italy with tomato sauces and
29:57
Speaker 1: catch up in the United States. Uh in chie is
30:00
Speaker 1: in Europe. Um. In West Africa they have something called
30:04
Speaker 1: um oh what is it called sambara? I think it's
30:09
Speaker 1: kind of like a miso in West Africa that sounds
30:13
Speaker 1: kind of delicious. Sombala that sounds good, just like the
30:17
Speaker 1: sounds of it exactly. So it's it's interesting that like
30:20
Speaker 1: people have been cooking with oo mommy stuff long before
30:24
Speaker 1: we ever knew the word ou mommy um. And it's
30:27
Speaker 1: been around the world too. Uh, caramelizing onions we mentioned
30:31
Speaker 1: in like butter nothing better? Um what else? Um, you
30:37
Speaker 1: can put parmesan cheese rinds into a super stew and
30:40
Speaker 1: it'll oo mommy. That thing up. That's a good one
30:44
Speaker 1: if you're making a stock used bones of an animal
30:48
Speaker 1: and supposedly against that kind of thing. The guy who
30:50
Speaker 1: invented real stock is reputed to have believed that there
30:54
Speaker 1: was a fifth taste that had yet been unidentified back
30:58
Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century because he's like just boiled this calf.
31:01
Speaker 1: He's like, there's there's something going on here besides the
31:05
Speaker 1: Big four. Wow, nobody believed. Uh. If you're cooking with mushrooms,
31:10
Speaker 1: and I recommend this with all vegetables, roast those things
31:13
Speaker 1: a little bit first. It brings out all kinds of
31:16
Speaker 1: flavors and it makes your brain bigger. Like if you
31:18
Speaker 1: if you got to make an omelet, don't just throw
31:22
Speaker 1: raw peppers and stuff in there. Cook that stuff up
31:26
Speaker 1: a little bit on the side, then add that to
31:28
Speaker 1: the egg mixture. It makes the world of difference. You know,
31:34
Speaker 1: everybody should watch Internet Roundup just just to get an
31:37
Speaker 1: idea of what like our little gesticulations are. Like when
31:40
Speaker 1: you're talking about like cooking peppers on the side and
31:43
Speaker 1: throw them in there, like just the you're making very
31:45
Speaker 1: cute little hand gestures over there. Well. I always joke
31:48
Speaker 1: with Emily, I'm gonna open an omelet stand on the
31:50
Speaker 1: beach one day. It's my retirement job. She's like, why
31:52
Speaker 1: an omelet stand on the beach. I was like, because
31:54
Speaker 1: no one's ever done it. No, they really haven't You
31:56
Speaker 1: ever go to the beach. You're laying there in the
31:58
Speaker 1: hot sun, Like I could use an omelet every time
32:03
Speaker 1: I think I just want my retirement job to be
32:05
Speaker 1: very slow paced and not busy. You'll get to eat omelets.
32:09
Speaker 1: You got anything else? Um, cooking with wine is a
32:13
Speaker 1: good one too. Yeah, that's umami city. Um No, just
32:17
Speaker 1: go forth and try o mommy, ng up your dishes
32:20
Speaker 1: and you will be happy. You will be happy to
32:24
Speaker 1: say us it's It'll be an indefinable quality, but you'll
32:28
Speaker 1: know it's ummi. Yes to be something about it. I
32:34
Speaker 1: can't put my finger on it. You'll say. This stuff
32:36
Speaker 1: is ou my, which again means delicious roughly in Japanese.
32:42
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about ou mommy, you
32:44
Speaker 1: can type that word in the search bart how stuff
32:46
Speaker 1: works dot com. Uh. And since I said, oh mommy,
32:49
Speaker 1: it's time again for a listener mail, I'm just gonna
32:55
Speaker 1: call this a nice, simple thank you from a listener.
32:58
Speaker 1: Those are nice. Uh. Some into is nice, you know. Yeah.
33:01
Speaker 1: It's from Meredith from Granite Falls, Minnesota. And she's just
33:04
Speaker 1: thanking us because she has a boring summer job. She said,
33:08
Speaker 1: I work at a hospital and I scan a bunch
33:10
Speaker 1: of old files into an external hard drive. That's what
33:13
Speaker 1: I do is I remove a lot of staples, stare
33:16
Speaker 1: at the scanner and I wait for it to be
33:18
Speaker 1: done over and over. Yeah. Can you imagine there? It's like, oh,
33:22
Speaker 1: we need to digitize all these records. Let's hire someone
33:26
Speaker 1: to do that. Yeah, so God bless you Meredith for
33:31
Speaker 1: doing that. I found listening to eight hours of music
33:33
Speaker 1: just wasn't doing the trick anymore. Then I discovered the
33:35
Speaker 1: wonderful world of podcast, and you guys are my all
33:38
Speaker 1: time faves. You guys are so funny, and I love
33:40
Speaker 1: all the dumb jokes you make. I don't know if
33:43
Speaker 1: they're dumb. I think like groundbreaking is a better way. Yeah. Uh,
33:47
Speaker 1: they really make my day, guys. And even if I
33:50
Speaker 1: don't understand all the tangents you go off on because
33:52
Speaker 1: I'm only twenty one and don't understand most of these
33:54
Speaker 1: references you make the movies or pop culture things from
33:57
Speaker 1: decades gone by, I still enjoyed that the podcast is
34:00
Speaker 1: more of a conversation between you guys than just strictly
34:03
Speaker 1: reading from a script. Oh yeah, we don't even have
34:05
Speaker 1: a script. Clearly, that would be the worst script ever. Um.
34:10
Speaker 1: One of these days I'll have a real story to
34:12
Speaker 1: share directly related to a recent show. But for now,
34:15
Speaker 1: I just want to say thank you so much and
34:17
Speaker 1: keep up the amazing work that is. Best wishes from Meredith. Meredith,
34:21
Speaker 1: thank you. And she's a PostScript that says, I absolutely
34:25
Speaker 1: love it when Josh Josh calls chuckers. Don't even know why.
34:29
Speaker 1: It just makes him a smile every time. Nice and
34:31
Speaker 1: it just has a rank chuckers. It's a fun word.
34:34
Speaker 1: It is. It's like ou mommy. What we said mommy
34:37
Speaker 1: a lot. I wonder how many times, I don't know,
34:39
Speaker 1: we should have an ou mommy counter on the website. Yeah,
34:46
Speaker 1: it would be cool. I don't know if we are
34:48
Speaker 1: familiar with the technology that could do that though. And
34:51
Speaker 1: at the end it just turns into a big pile
34:53
Speaker 1: of salty dried fish cuts. I seriously am making some
34:59
Speaker 1: top notch me so soup. I've been inspired to. You've
35:02
Speaker 1: gotten pretty good everything. Yeah, yeah, I've gotten pretty good
35:05
Speaker 1: at um hot and sour soup. But I make it
35:08
Speaker 1: from a mix and just add some stuff to it.
35:10
Speaker 1: This is I'm going to make from like dashi and
35:14
Speaker 1: mi so from scratch. Well, I'm not gonna like ferment
35:17
Speaker 1: the soybeans or anything like that. But you're gonna make
35:18
Speaker 1: your own dashi. No, I'm gonna buy dashi. You should
35:22
Speaker 1: make your own doshi. I'm not gonna make my own dosh.
35:24
Speaker 1: You know how bad my apartment smell. If I like
35:26
Speaker 1: fermented and then boiled down fish just to make the
35:29
Speaker 1: stock you need, it's crazy. You need a spice kitchen.
35:32
Speaker 1: I do need a spice kitchen, now that you mention it.
35:35
Speaker 1: Um no, But I will let you know how the
35:37
Speaker 1: miso soup turns out all right? Okay. If you want
35:41
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us, you can tweet to
35:43
Speaker 1: us at s y s K podcast. You can join
35:46
Speaker 1: us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know.
35:48
Speaker 1: You can send us an email The Stuff podcast a
35:50
Speaker 1: house to works dot com, and as always, join us
35:53
Speaker 1: at our home on the web. Stuff you Should Know
35:55
Speaker 1: dot Com. Stuff you Should Know is a production and
36:00
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts My Heart Radio,
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