Author Questions Whether Umami Is the “Fifth Taste”
Book author Anneli Rufus recently explored claims made about food ingredients that stimulate the purported “fifth taste” promoted by, among others, Ajinomoto, a Japanese company that manufactures monosodium glutamate (MSG), which was created in the early 1900s as the essence of ingredients that purportedly give food a richness and savoriness identified as umami. Ajinomoto-funded researchers have apparently fueled a food fad that has been gathering steam over the past decade by claiming that umami stimulates particular taste buds, much as sweet, sour, salty and bitter do.
Rufus discusses ongoing debates about the safety of MSG; anecdotal evidence allegedly shows that MSG in foods can cause migraines, obesity, asthma, and brain damage. While the Food and Drug Administration requires that food producers include MSG on product labels, the agency does consider MSG as GRAS (generally recognized as safe). Still, other ingredients, such as yeast extract and hydrolyzed vegetable protein also contain MSG. The Codex Alimentarius Commission apparently considers the propanols in some hydrolyzed proteins carcinogenic and genotoxic. Thus, one umami critic “tells everyone who will listen, at least one source of umami causes cancer.” See AlterNet.com, June 12, 2010.
