November 26, 2022 • 36 mins
For millennia humans have recognized four tastes, but in the 1980s a fifth taste first isolated in Japan gained worldwide acceptance - and took off like a rocket! Learn about meaty, musty, savory umami in this classic episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
M Hey, everybody, are you hungry? You want something sweet?
How about something savory? Or how about something sour tart?
Oh no, no, no, no no. I think what you
need is some ou mommy in your mouth. So we're
gonna go back to August and learn all about this
(00:21):
new taste profile. It's actually not new. How ummy works.
Welcome to Stuff you should know A production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, I'm welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
(00:43):
Charles W Chuck Bryant, and Jerry and so this is
stuff you should I tell you about to change the
name of the show right there on a whim. No no, no,
all right, that's a very meaty and savory of you.
Can you smell my juices I'm cooking in them. You
(01:03):
smell like fish stock? Oh yeah, yeah, you know. I
did a Don't be Dumb on Ketchup the origin of Ketchup,
the good one, and it actually Oh you saw that?
Sure you watched this? Of course I do. I had
no idea. I'm your biggest fan, you're one of the
well I know, I'm one of those people. It's like,
this guy is so dumb, what kind of I don't
(01:24):
get it? Get through these What is he acting like that?
But I just keep watching them. I can't help it.
So you saw the one about ketchup, and you know
about ketchy up the Vietnamese fish sauce that actually serves
as the basis for ketchup. Yes, the American condiment, which
is not the number one selling condiment in America is
also know what is it? Mayonnaise? Oh? Yes? Did you
(01:47):
know that I love mayonnaise? Certainly you didn't. What kind
dukes is your brain? Right? Well, I'm dukes, But I'm
just I'm gonna I find myself a defender of mayonnaise
because my whole life people have just thought it was gross.
Not everyone you would do well in, like France or Belgium, Buddy, Yeah,
like on a hamburger and hot dog, people like, because
I don't like ketchup and people think I'm weird. Oh no,
(02:07):
you need some ketchup too, Not that much. I've also found, recently,
as a grown up adult, a real live one that like,
you can replace ketchup with tomatoes and it tastes maybe
even better, depending on the ketchup. You mean on a burger, Yes,
instead of both, you just mean no ketchup. You can
put in both. I'm not I'm not opposed to it. No,
(02:28):
it just it I've found And it was a big
surprise to me, a really big surprise that if you
just put tomatoes, a good tomato on and no ketchup,
you're actually creating the taste that you're looking for with
ketchup that just misses it slightly because it's got more
than tomatoes in it, right. It's really, again, very surprising
(02:52):
to me, even though I realized, of course that tomato
is made from ketchup is made from tomatoes, Like, I
haven't made that connection, just didn't realize how good just
tomatoes were on a burger without ketchup. Yeah, I don't
like raw tomatoes either, so I wouldn't do that. And
you can't dip our French right in a tomato. Well, no,
I'm not opposed to catch up. I'll still use ketchup
(03:13):
not here, especially for dipping fries. I'm cool with that.
I'm not down and ketch up here is what I'm
trying to say. I just think that tomatoes are great
on a burger, but I also like Mayo two I
think is ultimately the point that started me off on this. Yeah,
I like tomato sauce, like red sauce. But I don't
like raw tomatoes or just whole tomatoes. They're slimy, and
(03:36):
I'm not supposed to eat them like an apple or anything. Uh,
if you've been doing that, I can understand why you
don't like raw tomatoes. Some people do. Some people to
slice them and eat them on a plate. You're not
just holding it in your hand, eating it like an apple.
Look at a monster does that? That's what I'm saying,
a monster. Kaiser Willhelm the second Yeah, he was, he
was known, all right. So all of that to say,
(04:00):
O mommy, oh mommy, Oh mama, this one's about O mommy.
The fifth flavor, the fifth beetle, out of what they
now say is six fat fat carbon dioxide is also
one two oh. We supposedly they found receptors that are
(04:23):
tailored specifically dis sensing carbon dioxide on the tongue, and
that ultimately that makes it qualify as a taste. So
they're gonna be seven. Now. I think there's way more.
I don't know why science has been so stingy or
so reluctant to accept the idea that we have more
than four flavor receptors or more four taste receptors. But
(04:43):
oh mommy was isolated in the in the beginning of
the twentieth century, and it wasn't for almost eighty years
before the West finally accepted it. Ah. Yeah. Part of
the reasons because it was the research was written in Japanese.
Well it's okay, that's maybe something to do with it. Uh.
And part of the issue was that um it's umami
(05:07):
is very mild and taste, and when you have um
high concentrations of it to increase set flavor, you've got
salty and sour mixed in. So I think it just
confounded the West. They're like, what we get sour, we
get salty, we get sweet, for sure, why we even
(05:27):
get bitter, but we don't get this other thing. Nope,
and we're not going over five. So you better make
the sumami stuff good. That's what the West said, dumb
Western scientists and food scientists. So chuck, I think we
let the cat out of the bag a little bit.
Um The Japanese are the ones who first discovered umami.
(05:49):
It's right comes from the word umi uh, roughly translated
as delicious. Uh. Chefs, if you talk to a chef
and Mommy's big hot thing. Right now, they'll say, maybe
it's like a mushroomy thing. It's like an earthy it's
it's it is very subtle. Like I said, it's musty. Yeah, musty,
(06:10):
which doesn't sound appealing. No, but it also makes sweet different.
That's oh, Mommy's big great quality. And I think that's
probably one of the reasons why it was hard for
the West to accept it is ou Mommy's big thing
is synergizing. It's a supporting cast member almost yeah, it takes. Yes,
(06:31):
it is. It's like, um, Bud Bundy, Okay, not a
leading guy, but you put him in an ensemble, He's
gonna bring everybody else up. It's what he's known for.
I would give a million American dollars to be inside
your brain during that five ish seconds of your spinning
around searching for supporting cast member and ending up at
(06:54):
Bud Bundy. Will you come back in twenty years and
give me a million dollars and I will let you.
Man would be amazing. So um with like salty sour,
we get again, we get those things. They stand on
their own. Umami actually has a very mild and not
necessarily like pleasurable flavor on its own. Yeah, you don't
want something that's like, oh, this is just umami flavored, right,
(07:17):
But it is almost like it's designed to interact with
other flavors, especially salty and especially sweet. Agreed, and ummy
can even interact with itself and all of a sudden
it takes what was just like ho home day and
turns it into the greatest day of your life with
(07:38):
one bite of chitake mush with some hot umami on
umami action. Uh. So it is nothing new, obviously, It's
not like you can just identify a new taste. Um
It's been around. Um. The Romans and the Greeks before
them enjoyed something called garum and that is a sauce that, boy,
you want to talk about how you find some weird
(08:00):
food wise, they were gutting fish and they said, let's
take this fish cuts and blood, and let's salt it
and leave it out in the sun for three months
and see what happened. See what happened, and you have
to eat it, eat it you, uh, and someone eventually
ate it. They strained the liquid from the top of it,
and they said, boy, this sauce is this is garam sauce.
(08:22):
This this good stuff is delicious. Garam means delicious in
ancient Roman. I think so. And it is uh that
was umami personified um because how umami was discovered. Uh
in nineteen o seven, there was a brilliant chemist name
uh Kikuna Akita s A right that a e. It's
(08:45):
got an extra little pop to it. Got you? But yeah,
you did it, thank you. So he was a chemist
and uh he worked at the Imperial University. I'm sorry
he was. Yeah, he was a professor at the Imperior
Real University of Tokyo. And he was perplexed that he
tasted something one day and said, this is not any
(09:08):
of those four flavors. No, no, no, I know this
is different. He was all about the dashi. And dashi
is the basis of miso soups, lots of other stuff,
but basically it's a fish stock made from I think
tuna flakes and um combo which is dried kelp yes,
(09:29):
and they are all kinds of recipes for a dashi base.
And it's in a lot of things from sauces and
like soba noodle sauces to like you said, mi, so
um really really big ingredient in Japanese cuisine, right, And
this guy was like, this little boy loves this dashi
and I want to know exactly what is making it
so wonderful. So, since he was a chemist, he took
(09:51):
I think something like twelve kilograms of dashi and boiled
it down ten of them, isolated some stuff. The first
thing that came out were some obvious ones that he
clearly discarded. Is not responsible for your mommy, because there
were salts. He's like, no, it's not that. It's not salt.
We understand salt. It's not salt. I know for effect,
(10:12):
it's not salt. What else is in here? He starts
sorting through it, right, Well, didn't he separate the dashi
into its parts and then break those down? Yeah? Okay,
I just jumped ahead of step to make a terrible chemist.
He's on he's on kelp at this point, one of
the ingredients. Okay. And so with the kelp is where
he found those two salts and your right. He was like, well,
I know these flavors and they're not what I've been
(10:34):
experiencing on my tongue. Now they're old news news. So
he looked a little further and he found well, wait
a minute, what is this. It's glutamic acid. And he's like, maybe,
but glutamic acid has a sour taste and that's weird,
Like it can't be glutamic acid. It doesn't quite make sense.
(10:54):
So he added some more stuff, came up with a
chemical reaction and what popped out on the other and
is what you and I call monosodium glutamate MSG. And
he figured out that it's not glutamate acid, it's not
the salt, but it's actually glutamate. But then he figured
out even further, like glutamate. That doesn't make any sense,
(11:15):
Like glutamate glutamate doesn't work. Then he realized it's not
the protein that's giving it the taste. It's the amino
acids that actually make up proteins that give you mommy
its taste. Boom, So glutamate, I'm sorry, isn't amino acid
right right right? And that's one of the things that
gives you mommy has taste. This is the first thing
(11:36):
that was discovered, um to give you mommy its taste. Yeah,
and that was the kelp. So you know, dashi has
a different components. So he had a student he said,
you know what, let me get that the dried tuna flakes. Um, yeah,
bonito delicious. There's different kinds, but bonito is definitely one
of them. Um. And he says, let me identify these components.
(11:59):
And he found was something called uh, you want to
try that one and a signate? Is that right? Yeah?
I think that is right. Man. It's a nucleic acid.
Like you say yes. So he's like, boom, I've got
number two. And then in nineteen sixty another scientist named
Akira uh kuney knaka. He worked for Yamasa, the famous
(12:21):
soy saucy a and now you're just showing off, he was, um.
And he went on to work in pharmaceuticals. It was interesting,
is the chemist. Yeah, but it's like you work for
soy sauce and then you go to work for a
pharmaceutical company. Right, I'm good at both things. But you're right,
it's all this chemistry. Um. So he said, you know what,
I can identify a third thing called guanai late. It's
(12:45):
another nucleotide in those shataki mushrooms you were talking about. Yeah,
and it's not like just bonito flakes, combo and staki
mushrooms are the only things that produce your mommy taste.
These are just the three things that those guys into
town and isolated different stuff out of right. Yeah, I
always want to see Banita apple bum when you say
(13:05):
Bonita tribe called quest After all these years, they keep
making reference, they keep making appearances in episodes lately. Oh yeah,
they have been. Huh you mentioned him in Hula Hoops. Yeah,
this one. You can't remember which one we talked about
the scenario, Oh, what's the what's the what's the scenario?
You know what? My friend Justin whom you also know
(13:26):
his mother actually left her wallet and Elsa Gundo. No boy,
and he even called me. He was like, dude, guess
what happened? My mother left a wallet and Elsa Gundo.
It's crazy. Yeah, it was pretty remarkable. We should probably
take a break, Yeah, and then we'll talk a little
bit more about the science of taste right after this.
(14:05):
So we have done an episode on taste that was great.
It was great. It's called taste and how it works
from July right, highly recommended. Yeah, but we're gonna go
over a little bit more here. Well, yeah, I think
if we're gonna talk about mommy. We'd be big jerks
if we just assumed you know everything there is to
know about. Yeah, we got to talk about what's called
the gustatory system. Okay, so um, when we're talking about
(14:28):
taste specifically, that's separate from flavor, which we'll get to.
But taste begins on the tongue, right, And on the
tongue you're gonna find what we like to call taste
buds or pepi a. The p a have taste buds
on them, right. Yes, there are three main types of papa.
You have the fun fungy form, mushroom shaped, the folly eight.
(14:51):
Those are the ridges and grooves at the back of
the tongue, and the circumvallate and those are circular at
the front front end of the tongue, right. And then
some papi a have a couple of taste buds. Some
have hundreds of taste buds. And then when you look
into the taste buds themselves, um, they have receptor cells.
And what's interesting is when you think about a taste bud,
(15:13):
you'd be like, oh, well, there's a salty taste bud,
sweet taste bud, ou mommy ou mommy, sweet sour, bitter,
that right, carbon dioxide, So that's not the case. As
a matter of fact, taste bud has different receptor selves,
and these different receptor cells can be tuned to accept
or sense different types of taste. Wasn't it the shape
(15:36):
if I remember correctly that, well, that was with the smell.
Smell and tasted closely related, and we should say that
the spoiler alert for the taste episode. We're not a
harm percent sure how we sense taste or smell um,
but yes, the the predominant theory is that that a
specific type of odorant or taste molecule will interact with
(16:00):
a specific type of receptor and when it does, the
chemical in that molecule, that food molecule um unlocks that
receptor and by doing that, it's translated into an electrical impulse. Boom.
So you chew your food up, gets spitty and saliva covered,
and it breaks it down, cut your tongue and that's
(16:21):
when that transduction. Uh, those electrical impulses are sent to
the n ST the solitary tract of the brain, sorry,
the nucleus of the solitary tract of the brain. Yeah,
that's where it all happens. That's when it puts all
these different tastes together and says delicious, I like this
or more to the point, and that's probably going to
(16:43):
kill you, so stop eating that. Yeah. And like we said,
taste is different than flavor. Taste is just one aspect
of flavor. For a food item or really anything to
have a flavor, it includes not just the taste, but
also the smell, the side of it, the temperature of it,
how it feels, is the firm is it a little
(17:03):
too gelatinous? Um. These are all things that your brain
takes into account, um, including things like memories that you
form from having it before. Cotton candy when I was
a kid gives me great memories. Yeah, So that plays
a part in flavor exactly, like you can like it
releases some different aspect of it that only you can
(17:25):
experience that flavor. Yeah, Like if you had a cotton
candy jelly bean, it would conjure up that memory and
that would be part of the flavor experience yea, or
if it's one of your past lives. So that's kind
of the science of taste. And with your mommy specifically. Um. Again,
one of the things that the West was having trouble
with this accepting that ou mommy was a real thing
(17:48):
was that there wasn't any um what's called psychophysical evidence
that ou momi was its own taste. Right. For a
long time, they thought it was just a component of
salty taste, because monosodium glutamate is a type of salt, right,
It's a salt protein combination that makes MSG. And for
many many years this was the only um this is
(18:12):
the only source of umami taste. But finally in the eighties,
once they had the first international symposium on New Mommy,
it was a real thing. That was a party. Um
the I'll bet it was too because it was in Hawaii,
and the Japanese and Americans love Hawaii, so I bet
everybody was partying down there. They started to do studies
in the early eighties and they found, oh, actually, no,
(18:34):
there are specific receptor cells on the human tongue. And
it turns out not just in human tongues, but mostly
human tongues that are designed or geared towards accepting we're
sensing umami tastes. That's right. Those are the g protein
coupled receptors g pc rs, and that is for sweet, bitter,
(18:54):
and umami and uh, sour and salty those a little different.
Those sort of flow through ion channels, which is way
over my head to be honest. Well, it's just like
if a molecule is a positive charge of a negative charge,
if it's if it's a positive eye on it has
positive charge, it's not going to make it through all
sorts of the channels. It's only going to make it
through positive channels. It's not it's simple, I know, but
(19:18):
as far as relating that to a taste, it's just
sort of I'll can think of his manage. Well, that's
the whole thing. It's like you said, It's like it's
like your brain just turns to manage it's transduction is
taking in electric chemical and turning it into an electrical charge.
I just think that's endlessly fascinating. Oh sure, the senses
and how they work, it's like it's amazing, But not
(19:38):
just that electricity and electric electrical generation, like remember that
episode Electricity maybe one of our best if you ask me. Agreed,
all right, So what way? What we have here are
three kinds of receptor cells that they know are that
that respond to this combination that makes up what MSG
is I'm sorry. What umami is it's that ate, the
(20:04):
gwen elate in the MSG. And what they think is
that they actually hold on to these these compounds hold
on longer, which is why you get these interesting combinations.
When you have like, uh, cheese with an apple or
cheese on an apple pie. It takes sweet and like
doesn't just make it sweeter, it makes it like sweet
(20:26):
in a different way, right exactly. Um. And the same
thing again, when when you mix together different types of
either amino acids or nucleic acids that create a new
mommy taste, they magnify this ummmy nous of this is
meatiness of the whole thing. And um. Also with I
believe salty too, Oh mommy and salty mixed together. Um.
(20:48):
The fact that it it hangs onto that that molecule
longer and it just leaves that charge going, then that
sweet can come and go, but it's it's affected by it.
Food science is so interesting, it is. And we're gonna
talk a little more about food science and evolution right
after this. All right, So here's one thing I didn't get,
(21:24):
and I reread this a few times. I get the
first part of this, which is as follows is that
people have long thought that tastes had a part in
evolution in that we were just wired to know that
if something sweet is probably okay to eat and that
will give us nutrition, something really bitter may be dangerous
to eat, that might be poisonous. And of course there's
(21:46):
exceptions to all of this. Those are pretty good general
rules when it comes to UH evolution. Right that that
was the evolution explanation for the sense of taste, right, Yeah.
But what I don't get and is where in here
does it explain the evolutionary UH method of umami? Like
what role it played? I got this? You ready? Well
(22:08):
is it this part about cooking? Yes? Oh it was
very poorly stated, it really was. But it's really interesting
when you realize this that so you said that ou
mommy is is like one of the newer tastes or
something like that, It actually is. Yeah, they couldn't figure out,
like what part did this have an evolution? No, but
even before that, like if you look at it evolutionarily speaking,
(22:29):
it's it's actually very old. Supposedly the receptors are very old,
like four million years old or something like that. But
the idea that we can taste you mommy, or us
tasting you mommy is very actually fairly recent because ou
mommy is released by cooking food. Like if you eat
(22:49):
a bunch of raw hamburger, that's not gonna be umami tasting.
It's not gonna taste very good. But you cook that
hamburger and you have molecularly changed it's kind position. You've
unlocked some of the proteins into its constituent amino acids,
and all of a sudden you've got umami taste. It's
like a caramelizing it onion is completely different than the
(23:12):
taste of a raw onion or even a just regular
grilled onion. Yeah, and the big mystery of all this,
evolutionarily speaking, is that what you're gaining or one of
the biggest sources of umami taste is glutamate. Well that's great,
but the human body produces tons of glutamate, so it
wouldn't make sense that we would have a taste receptor
to find it in nature because we got enough in
(23:34):
our body. Well, you need other essential amino acids. And
if it figures that the best way to get amino
acids is to cook or ferment food, you want you
need you need fire because amino acids can be bound
to proteins and we don't absorb them as well, or
our body spends a lot more energy of breaking them
(23:56):
down and digesting them than if we cook them or
if we forment them. So man invents fire, man starts
to cook food, Man advances more rapidly. Yes, that's one
of the ideas that, um, why our brain developed as
well as it did, or we became as intelligent as
we did, was from cooking food. So we were able
to um break down our food a lot more easily
(24:19):
and gain from it, absorb it, and um basically grow
huge brains. That it came from cooking. And where where
do we get oh, mommy taste from cooked or fermented
food where these proteins have been broken down into much
more easily absorbed amino acid constituents. Man, I like that.
I agree. I feel like I just made it confusing though.
(24:39):
Did it come across No, it's it's totally makes sense.
We learned how to cook food and that put us
at the head of the evolutionary ladder. Right, and O,
mommy tastes comes from cooked or fermented food? Very clear? Uh,
what is not clear, or maybe it is clear. Is
MSG bad for you? A lot of people say it
(25:01):
makes me dizzy, or it makes my heart flutter or
or you know the MSG crash after you go the
Chinese food buffet. Well, there's actually something called Chinese food syndrome.
Not not true. Apparently it's a myth, supposedly, supposedly culturally
bound syndrome where like very few other cultures outside of
the United States or the West even think of the
(25:24):
idea that MSG can make you sick, and that it's
apparently a psycho somatic reaction where you expect MSG is
going to make you sick, so you get sick. Yep,
that's one explanation. Maybe your body or our bodies are
just different in how we process and metabolize MSG, or
maybe you have oded a little bit too much of
(25:46):
anything could be a bad thing, right, it could be
all these things. But what science is saying is there's
no evidence that MSG is bad for you quote unquote right,
And apparently study after study found people that that MSG
doesn't cause these things. Yeah, it's it's weird, So get
off the couch. Lazy, you're just looking for an excuse
(26:09):
to not cut the grass and so MSG again, it
has kind of a bad has kind of a bad
rap here in the US, but it's everywhere, and it
was actually one of the first things that Um, yeah,
professor Akita Um did was he figured out a way
to patent extracting monosodam glutamate from wheat, which is where
(26:33):
it's sound much more abundantly than in like kelp, and
package it into a seasoning and he he had no
ill will. He's like, this is great. This can make
that boring dish like taste better, that healthy boring dish
taste better. So it's not it's ironic then that people
think it's bad for you, when in fact, when he
packaged it, he was like, this is gonna be good
(26:54):
for you. It's gonna make this thing that's good for
you taste even better, and our country is going to
be very hell the right. Yeah, but it's hard to find.
You said, it wasn't everything, but it's disguised and ingredients. Yeah,
again stealthily because MSG has a bad rap here in
the West. Yeah, they should just put MSG right. They
do sometimes for the most part, though, they will call
it something like hydrolyzed wheat protein because remember, it can
(27:17):
be extracted from wheat. UM. Sometimes they'll call it just
natural flavors. Yeah, because all these things are naturally what
else texturized, vegetable protein, autolized yeast extract uh yeah, or
just natural flavors. So if you see that, that can
be a lot of things though, but just natural flavors.
(27:40):
You don't know what you're eating. But there are some
upsides to using this MSG. It's actually it actually can
be used in the way that Professor A. Keda envisioned it,
which is taking stuff and making it slightly healthier. Actually,
when you have UM, when you use certain like potassium
chloride rather than sodium chlor ride to make MSG, you
(28:02):
can actually replace the sodium in UM a dish. So
if you have a sodium problem, you can use some
of this stuff. Or hey, how about that uh, low
fat food that didn't taste so good at little MSG,
it tastes better, right, although recent medical research suggests that
you should be not eating low fat food, that regular
(28:24):
fat food is not bad for you. Or hey, old person,
you don't taste so good anymore, and you take medication
that even dampens that. Right, Why don't you throw some
MSG on there? Why why don't you back to life.
You know, yes, so chuck um. Whether MSG is a
bad rap or not, it's definitely all over the place. Uh.
(28:47):
And it is making things taste good, in my opinion,
is here to stay. It is. But there's other ways
to to get a new mommy flavor out of food.
And this this article actually has some helpful tips for
cooking if you want to go and cook and get
a umami taste. Have you ever been to umami Burger? No?
I haven't. It sounds awesome, It's good. I like it.
(29:10):
It sounds like you can make one at home with
some mushrooms. Yeah. Umami Burger is a chain. Uh. I
don't know where they have them, but I had it
in Los Angeles and they add powdered mushroom and seaweed
to the beef with little soy sauce. You don't even
know what you're eating except that it tastes good. You know,
you're like, hmm, I get to take the mushroom and
(29:31):
seaweed in this burger, all right? It's just umami flavored um.
And you know it's interesting. There's this uh. I think
it's called like Umami Information dot Com or something like that.
Really interesting site. But they point out that, um, while
you associate umami with Asian cooking, it's actually found all
(29:53):
over the world, like in Italy with tomato sauces and
catch up in the United States. Uh in chie is
in Europe. Um. In West Africa they have something called
um oh what is it called sambara? I think it's
kind of like a miso in West Africa that sounds
kind of delicious. Sombala that sounds good, just like the
(30:17):
sounds of it exactly. So it's it's interesting that like
people have been cooking with oo mommy stuff long before
we ever knew the word ou mommy um. And it's
been around the world too. Uh, caramelizing onions we mentioned
in like butter nothing better? Um what else? Um, you
can put parmesan cheese rinds into a super stew and
(30:40):
it'll oo mommy. That thing up. That's a good one
if you're making a stock used bones of an animal
and supposedly against that kind of thing. The guy who
invented real stock is reputed to have believed that there
was a fifth taste that had yet been unidentified back
in the nineteenth century because he's like just boiled this calf.
(31:01):
He's like, there's there's something going on here besides the
Big four. Wow, nobody believed. Uh. If you're cooking with mushrooms,
and I recommend this with all vegetables, roast those things
a little bit first. It brings out all kinds of
flavors and it makes your brain bigger. Like if you
if you got to make an omelet, don't just throw
(31:22):
raw peppers and stuff in there. Cook that stuff up
a little bit on the side, then add that to
the egg mixture. It makes the world of difference. You know,
everybody should watch Internet Roundup just just to get an
idea of what like our little gesticulations are. Like when
you're talking about like cooking peppers on the side and
(31:43):
throw them in there, like just the you're making very
cute little hand gestures over there. Well. I always joke
with Emily, I'm gonna open an omelet stand on the
beach one day. It's my retirement job. She's like, why
an omelet stand on the beach. I was like, because
no one's ever done it. No, they really haven't You
ever go to the beach. You're laying there in the
hot sun, Like I could use an omelet every time
(32:03):
I think I just want my retirement job to be
very slow paced and not busy. You'll get to eat omelets.
You got anything else? Um, cooking with wine is a
good one too. Yeah, that's umami city. Um No, just
go forth and try o mommy, ng up your dishes
and you will be happy. You will be happy to
(32:24):
say us it's It'll be an indefinable quality, but you'll
know it's ummi. Yes to be something about it. I
can't put my finger on it. You'll say. This stuff
is ou my, which again means delicious roughly in Japanese.
If you want to know more about ou mommy, you
can type that word in the search bart how stuff
(32:46):
works dot com. Uh. And since I said, oh mommy,
it's time again for a listener mail, I'm just gonna
call this a nice, simple thank you from a listener.
Those are nice. Uh. Some into is nice, you know. Yeah.
It's from Meredith from Granite Falls, Minnesota. And she's just
thanking us because she has a boring summer job. She said,
(33:08):
I work at a hospital and I scan a bunch
of old files into an external hard drive. That's what
I do is I remove a lot of staples, stare
at the scanner and I wait for it to be
done over and over. Yeah. Can you imagine there? It's like, oh,
we need to digitize all these records. Let's hire someone
to do that. Yeah, so God bless you Meredith for
(33:31):
doing that. I found listening to eight hours of music
just wasn't doing the trick anymore. Then I discovered the
wonderful world of podcast, and you guys are my all
time faves. You guys are so funny, and I love
all the dumb jokes you make. I don't know if
they're dumb. I think like groundbreaking is a better way. Yeah. Uh,
they really make my day, guys. And even if I
don't understand all the tangents you go off on because
(33:52):
I'm only twenty one and don't understand most of these
references you make the movies or pop culture things from
decades gone by, I still enjoyed that the podcast is
more of a conversation between you guys than just strictly
reading from a script. Oh yeah, we don't even have
a script. Clearly, that would be the worst script ever. Um.
One of these days I'll have a real story to
(34:12):
share directly related to a recent show. But for now,
I just want to say thank you so much and
keep up the amazing work that is. Best wishes from Meredith. Meredith,
thank you. And she's a PostScript that says, I absolutely
love it when Josh Josh calls chuckers. Don't even know why.
It just makes him a smile every time. Nice and
it just has a rank chuckers. It's a fun word.
(34:34):
It is. It's like ou mommy. What we said mommy
a lot. I wonder how many times, I don't know,
we should have an ou mommy counter on the website. Yeah,
it would be cool. I don't know if we are
familiar with the technology that could do that though. And
at the end it just turns into a big pile
of salty dried fish cuts. I seriously am making some
(34:59):
top notch me so soup. I've been inspired to. You've
gotten pretty good everything. Yeah, yeah, I've gotten pretty good
at um hot and sour soup. But I make it
from a mix and just add some stuff to it.
This is I'm going to make from like dashi and
mi so from scratch. Well, I'm not gonna like ferment
the soybeans or anything like that. But you're gonna make
your own dashi. No, I'm gonna buy dashi. You should
(35:22):
make your own doshi. I'm not gonna make my own dosh.
You know how bad my apartment smell. If I like
fermented and then boiled down fish just to make the
stock you need, it's crazy. You need a spice kitchen.
I do need a spice kitchen, now that you mention it.
Um no, But I will let you know how the
miso soup turns out all right? Okay. If you want
to get in touch with us, you can tweet to
(35:43):
us at s y s K podcast. You can join
us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know.
You can send us an email The Stuff podcast a
house to works dot com, and as always, join us
at our home on the web. Stuff you Should Know
dot Com. Stuff you Should Know is a production and
of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts My Heart Radio,
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
(36:06):
you listen to your favorite shows. H
M Hey, everybody, are you hungry? You want something sweet?
How about something savory? Or how about something sour tart?
Oh no, no, no, no no. I think what you
need is some ou mommy in your mouth. So we're
gonna go back to August and learn all about this
(00:21):
new taste profile. It's actually not new. How ummy works.
Welcome to Stuff you should know A production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, I'm welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
(00:43):
Charles W Chuck Bryant, and Jerry and so this is
stuff you should I tell you about to change the
name of the show right there on a whim. No no, no,
all right, that's a very meaty and savory of you.
Can you smell my juices I'm cooking in them. You
(01:03):
smell like fish stock? Oh yeah, yeah, you know. I
did a Don't be Dumb on Ketchup the origin of Ketchup,
the good one, and it actually Oh you saw that?
Sure you watched this? Of course I do. I had
no idea. I'm your biggest fan, you're one of the
well I know, I'm one of those people. It's like,
this guy is so dumb, what kind of I don't
(01:24):
get it? Get through these What is he acting like that?
But I just keep watching them. I can't help it.
So you saw the one about ketchup, and you know
about ketchy up the Vietnamese fish sauce that actually serves
as the basis for ketchup. Yes, the American condiment, which
is not the number one selling condiment in America is
also know what is it? Mayonnaise? Oh? Yes? Did you
(01:47):
know that I love mayonnaise? Certainly you didn't. What kind
dukes is your brain? Right? Well, I'm dukes, But I'm
just I'm gonna I find myself a defender of mayonnaise
because my whole life people have just thought it was gross.
Not everyone you would do well in, like France or Belgium, Buddy, Yeah,
like on a hamburger and hot dog, people like, because
I don't like ketchup and people think I'm weird. Oh no,
(02:07):
you need some ketchup too, Not that much. I've also found, recently,
as a grown up adult, a real live one that like,
you can replace ketchup with tomatoes and it tastes maybe
even better, depending on the ketchup. You mean on a burger, Yes,
instead of both, you just mean no ketchup. You can
put in both. I'm not I'm not opposed to it. No,
(02:28):
it just it I've found And it was a big
surprise to me, a really big surprise that if you
just put tomatoes, a good tomato on and no ketchup,
you're actually creating the taste that you're looking for with
ketchup that just misses it slightly because it's got more
than tomatoes in it, right. It's really, again, very surprising
(02:52):
to me, even though I realized, of course that tomato
is made from ketchup is made from tomatoes, Like, I
haven't made that connection, just didn't realize how good just
tomatoes were on a burger without ketchup. Yeah, I don't
like raw tomatoes either, so I wouldn't do that. And
you can't dip our French right in a tomato. Well, no,
I'm not opposed to catch up. I'll still use ketchup
(03:13):
not here, especially for dipping fries. I'm cool with that.
I'm not down and ketch up here is what I'm
trying to say. I just think that tomatoes are great
on a burger, but I also like Mayo two I
think is ultimately the point that started me off on this. Yeah,
I like tomato sauce, like red sauce. But I don't
like raw tomatoes or just whole tomatoes. They're slimy, and
(03:36):
I'm not supposed to eat them like an apple or anything. Uh,
if you've been doing that, I can understand why you
don't like raw tomatoes. Some people do. Some people to
slice them and eat them on a plate. You're not
just holding it in your hand, eating it like an apple.
Look at a monster does that? That's what I'm saying,
a monster. Kaiser Willhelm the second Yeah, he was, he
was known, all right. So all of that to say,
(04:00):
O mommy, oh mommy, Oh mama, this one's about O mommy.
The fifth flavor, the fifth beetle, out of what they
now say is six fat fat carbon dioxide is also
one two oh. We supposedly they found receptors that are
(04:23):
tailored specifically dis sensing carbon dioxide on the tongue, and
that ultimately that makes it qualify as a taste. So
they're gonna be seven. Now. I think there's way more.
I don't know why science has been so stingy or
so reluctant to accept the idea that we have more
than four flavor receptors or more four taste receptors. But
(04:43):
oh mommy was isolated in the in the beginning of
the twentieth century, and it wasn't for almost eighty years
before the West finally accepted it. Ah. Yeah. Part of
the reasons because it was the research was written in Japanese.
Well it's okay, that's maybe something to do with it. Uh.
And part of the issue was that um it's umami
(05:07):
is very mild and taste, and when you have um
high concentrations of it to increase set flavor, you've got
salty and sour mixed in. So I think it just
confounded the West. They're like, what we get sour, we
get salty, we get sweet, for sure, why we even
(05:27):
get bitter, but we don't get this other thing. Nope,
and we're not going over five. So you better make
the sumami stuff good. That's what the West said, dumb
Western scientists and food scientists. So chuck, I think we
let the cat out of the bag a little bit.
Um The Japanese are the ones who first discovered umami.
(05:49):
It's right comes from the word umi uh, roughly translated
as delicious. Uh. Chefs, if you talk to a chef
and Mommy's big hot thing. Right now, they'll say, maybe
it's like a mushroomy thing. It's like an earthy it's
it's it is very subtle. Like I said, it's musty. Yeah, musty,
(06:10):
which doesn't sound appealing. No, but it also makes sweet different.
That's oh, Mommy's big great quality. And I think that's
probably one of the reasons why it was hard for
the West to accept it is ou Mommy's big thing
is synergizing. It's a supporting cast member almost yeah, it takes. Yes,
(06:31):
it is. It's like, um, Bud Bundy, Okay, not a
leading guy, but you put him in an ensemble, He's
gonna bring everybody else up. It's what he's known for.
I would give a million American dollars to be inside
your brain during that five ish seconds of your spinning
around searching for supporting cast member and ending up at
(06:54):
Bud Bundy. Will you come back in twenty years and
give me a million dollars and I will let you.
Man would be amazing. So um with like salty sour,
we get again, we get those things. They stand on
their own. Umami actually has a very mild and not
necessarily like pleasurable flavor on its own. Yeah, you don't
want something that's like, oh, this is just umami flavored, right,
(07:17):
But it is almost like it's designed to interact with
other flavors, especially salty and especially sweet. Agreed, and ummy
can even interact with itself and all of a sudden
it takes what was just like ho home day and
turns it into the greatest day of your life with
(07:38):
one bite of chitake mush with some hot umami on
umami action. Uh. So it is nothing new, obviously, It's
not like you can just identify a new taste. Um
It's been around. Um. The Romans and the Greeks before
them enjoyed something called garum and that is a sauce that, boy,
you want to talk about how you find some weird
(08:00):
food wise, they were gutting fish and they said, let's
take this fish cuts and blood, and let's salt it
and leave it out in the sun for three months
and see what happened. See what happened, and you have
to eat it, eat it you, uh, and someone eventually
ate it. They strained the liquid from the top of it,
and they said, boy, this sauce is this is garam sauce.
(08:22):
This this good stuff is delicious. Garam means delicious in
ancient Roman. I think so. And it is uh that
was umami personified um because how umami was discovered. Uh
in nineteen o seven, there was a brilliant chemist name
uh Kikuna Akita s A right that a e. It's
(08:45):
got an extra little pop to it. Got you? But yeah,
you did it, thank you. So he was a chemist
and uh he worked at the Imperial University. I'm sorry
he was. Yeah, he was a professor at the Imperior
Real University of Tokyo. And he was perplexed that he
tasted something one day and said, this is not any
(09:08):
of those four flavors. No, no, no, I know this
is different. He was all about the dashi. And dashi
is the basis of miso soups, lots of other stuff,
but basically it's a fish stock made from I think
tuna flakes and um combo which is dried kelp yes,
(09:29):
and they are all kinds of recipes for a dashi base.
And it's in a lot of things from sauces and
like soba noodle sauces to like you said, mi, so
um really really big ingredient in Japanese cuisine, right, And
this guy was like, this little boy loves this dashi
and I want to know exactly what is making it
so wonderful. So, since he was a chemist, he took
(09:51):
I think something like twelve kilograms of dashi and boiled
it down ten of them, isolated some stuff. The first
thing that came out were some obvious ones that he
clearly discarded. Is not responsible for your mommy, because there
were salts. He's like, no, it's not that. It's not salt.
We understand salt. It's not salt. I know for effect,
(10:12):
it's not salt. What else is in here? He starts
sorting through it, right, Well, didn't he separate the dashi
into its parts and then break those down? Yeah? Okay,
I just jumped ahead of step to make a terrible chemist.
He's on he's on kelp at this point, one of
the ingredients. Okay. And so with the kelp is where
he found those two salts and your right. He was like, well,
I know these flavors and they're not what I've been
(10:34):
experiencing on my tongue. Now they're old news news. So
he looked a little further and he found well, wait
a minute, what is this. It's glutamic acid. And he's like, maybe,
but glutamic acid has a sour taste and that's weird,
Like it can't be glutamic acid. It doesn't quite make sense.
(10:54):
So he added some more stuff, came up with a
chemical reaction and what popped out on the other and
is what you and I call monosodium glutamate MSG. And
he figured out that it's not glutamate acid, it's not
the salt, but it's actually glutamate. But then he figured
out even further, like glutamate. That doesn't make any sense,
(11:15):
Like glutamate glutamate doesn't work. Then he realized it's not
the protein that's giving it the taste. It's the amino
acids that actually make up proteins that give you mommy
its taste. Boom, So glutamate, I'm sorry, isn't amino acid
right right right? And that's one of the things that
gives you mommy has taste. This is the first thing
(11:36):
that was discovered, um to give you mommy its taste. Yeah,
and that was the kelp. So you know, dashi has
a different components. So he had a student he said,
you know what, let me get that the dried tuna flakes. Um, yeah,
bonito delicious. There's different kinds, but bonito is definitely one
of them. Um. And he says, let me identify these components.
(11:59):
And he found was something called uh, you want to
try that one and a signate? Is that right? Yeah?
I think that is right. Man. It's a nucleic acid.
Like you say yes. So he's like, boom, I've got
number two. And then in nineteen sixty another scientist named
Akira uh kuney knaka. He worked for Yamasa, the famous
(12:21):
soy saucy a and now you're just showing off, he was, um.
And he went on to work in pharmaceuticals. It was interesting,
is the chemist. Yeah, but it's like you work for
soy sauce and then you go to work for a
pharmaceutical company. Right, I'm good at both things. But you're right,
it's all this chemistry. Um. So he said, you know what,
I can identify a third thing called guanai late. It's
(12:45):
another nucleotide in those shataki mushrooms you were talking about. Yeah,
and it's not like just bonito flakes, combo and staki
mushrooms are the only things that produce your mommy taste.
These are just the three things that those guys into
town and isolated different stuff out of right. Yeah, I
always want to see Banita apple bum when you say
(13:05):
Bonita tribe called quest After all these years, they keep
making reference, they keep making appearances in episodes lately. Oh yeah,
they have been. Huh you mentioned him in Hula Hoops. Yeah,
this one. You can't remember which one we talked about
the scenario, Oh, what's the what's the what's the scenario?
You know what? My friend Justin whom you also know
(13:26):
his mother actually left her wallet and Elsa Gundo. No boy,
and he even called me. He was like, dude, guess
what happened? My mother left a wallet and Elsa Gundo.
It's crazy. Yeah, it was pretty remarkable. We should probably
take a break, Yeah, and then we'll talk a little
bit more about the science of taste right after this.
(14:05):
So we have done an episode on taste that was great.
It was great. It's called taste and how it works
from July right, highly recommended. Yeah, but we're gonna go
over a little bit more here. Well, yeah, I think
if we're gonna talk about mommy. We'd be big jerks
if we just assumed you know everything there is to
know about. Yeah, we got to talk about what's called
the gustatory system. Okay, so um, when we're talking about
(14:28):
taste specifically, that's separate from flavor, which we'll get to.
But taste begins on the tongue, right, And on the
tongue you're gonna find what we like to call taste
buds or pepi a. The p a have taste buds
on them, right. Yes, there are three main types of papa.
You have the fun fungy form, mushroom shaped, the folly eight.
(14:51):
Those are the ridges and grooves at the back of
the tongue, and the circumvallate and those are circular at
the front front end of the tongue, right. And then
some papi a have a couple of taste buds. Some
have hundreds of taste buds. And then when you look
into the taste buds themselves, um, they have receptor cells.
And what's interesting is when you think about a taste bud,
(15:13):
you'd be like, oh, well, there's a salty taste bud,
sweet taste bud, ou mommy ou mommy, sweet sour, bitter,
that right, carbon dioxide, So that's not the case. As
a matter of fact, taste bud has different receptor selves,
and these different receptor cells can be tuned to accept
or sense different types of taste. Wasn't it the shape
(15:36):
if I remember correctly that, well, that was with the smell.
Smell and tasted closely related, and we should say that
the spoiler alert for the taste episode. We're not a
harm percent sure how we sense taste or smell um,
but yes, the the predominant theory is that that a
specific type of odorant or taste molecule will interact with
(16:00):
a specific type of receptor and when it does, the
chemical in that molecule, that food molecule um unlocks that
receptor and by doing that, it's translated into an electrical impulse. Boom.
So you chew your food up, gets spitty and saliva covered,
and it breaks it down, cut your tongue and that's
(16:21):
when that transduction. Uh, those electrical impulses are sent to
the n ST the solitary tract of the brain, sorry,
the nucleus of the solitary tract of the brain. Yeah,
that's where it all happens. That's when it puts all
these different tastes together and says delicious, I like this
or more to the point, and that's probably going to
(16:43):
kill you, so stop eating that. Yeah. And like we said,
taste is different than flavor. Taste is just one aspect
of flavor. For a food item or really anything to
have a flavor, it includes not just the taste, but
also the smell, the side of it, the temperature of it,
how it feels, is the firm is it a little
(17:03):
too gelatinous? Um. These are all things that your brain
takes into account, um, including things like memories that you
form from having it before. Cotton candy when I was
a kid gives me great memories. Yeah, So that plays
a part in flavor exactly, like you can like it
releases some different aspect of it that only you can
(17:25):
experience that flavor. Yeah, Like if you had a cotton
candy jelly bean, it would conjure up that memory and
that would be part of the flavor experience yea, or
if it's one of your past lives. So that's kind
of the science of taste. And with your mommy specifically. Um. Again,
one of the things that the West was having trouble
with this accepting that ou mommy was a real thing
(17:48):
was that there wasn't any um what's called psychophysical evidence
that ou momi was its own taste. Right. For a
long time, they thought it was just a component of
salty taste, because monosodium glutamate is a type of salt, right,
It's a salt protein combination that makes MSG. And for
many many years this was the only um this is
(18:12):
the only source of umami taste. But finally in the eighties,
once they had the first international symposium on New Mommy,
it was a real thing. That was a party. Um
the I'll bet it was too because it was in Hawaii,
and the Japanese and Americans love Hawaii, so I bet
everybody was partying down there. They started to do studies
in the early eighties and they found, oh, actually, no,
(18:34):
there are specific receptor cells on the human tongue. And
it turns out not just in human tongues, but mostly
human tongues that are designed or geared towards accepting we're
sensing umami tastes. That's right. Those are the g protein
coupled receptors g pc rs, and that is for sweet, bitter,
(18:54):
and umami and uh, sour and salty those a little different.
Those sort of flow through ion channels, which is way
over my head to be honest. Well, it's just like
if a molecule is a positive charge of a negative charge,
if it's if it's a positive eye on it has
positive charge, it's not going to make it through all
sorts of the channels. It's only going to make it
through positive channels. It's not it's simple, I know, but
(19:18):
as far as relating that to a taste, it's just
sort of I'll can think of his manage. Well, that's
the whole thing. It's like you said, It's like it's
like your brain just turns to manage it's transduction is
taking in electric chemical and turning it into an electrical charge.
I just think that's endlessly fascinating. Oh sure, the senses
and how they work, it's like it's amazing, But not
(19:38):
just that electricity and electric electrical generation, like remember that
episode Electricity maybe one of our best if you ask me. Agreed,
all right, So what way? What we have here are
three kinds of receptor cells that they know are that
that respond to this combination that makes up what MSG
is I'm sorry. What umami is it's that ate, the
(20:04):
gwen elate in the MSG. And what they think is
that they actually hold on to these these compounds hold
on longer, which is why you get these interesting combinations.
When you have like, uh, cheese with an apple or
cheese on an apple pie. It takes sweet and like
doesn't just make it sweeter, it makes it like sweet
(20:26):
in a different way, right exactly. Um. And the same
thing again, when when you mix together different types of
either amino acids or nucleic acids that create a new
mommy taste, they magnify this ummmy nous of this is
meatiness of the whole thing. And um. Also with I
believe salty too, Oh mommy and salty mixed together. Um.
(20:48):
The fact that it it hangs onto that that molecule
longer and it just leaves that charge going, then that
sweet can come and go, but it's it's affected by it.
Food science is so interesting, it is. And we're gonna
talk a little more about food science and evolution right
after this. All right, So here's one thing I didn't get,
(21:24):
and I reread this a few times. I get the
first part of this, which is as follows is that
people have long thought that tastes had a part in
evolution in that we were just wired to know that
if something sweet is probably okay to eat and that
will give us nutrition, something really bitter may be dangerous
to eat, that might be poisonous. And of course there's
(21:46):
exceptions to all of this. Those are pretty good general
rules when it comes to UH evolution. Right that that
was the evolution explanation for the sense of taste, right, Yeah.
But what I don't get and is where in here
does it explain the evolutionary UH method of umami? Like
what role it played? I got this? You ready? Well
(22:08):
is it this part about cooking? Yes? Oh it was
very poorly stated, it really was. But it's really interesting
when you realize this that so you said that ou
mommy is is like one of the newer tastes or
something like that, It actually is. Yeah, they couldn't figure out,
like what part did this have an evolution? No, but
even before that, like if you look at it evolutionarily speaking,
(22:29):
it's it's actually very old. Supposedly the receptors are very old,
like four million years old or something like that. But
the idea that we can taste you mommy, or us
tasting you mommy is very actually fairly recent because ou
mommy is released by cooking food. Like if you eat
(22:49):
a bunch of raw hamburger, that's not gonna be umami tasting.
It's not gonna taste very good. But you cook that
hamburger and you have molecularly changed it's kind position. You've
unlocked some of the proteins into its constituent amino acids,
and all of a sudden you've got umami taste. It's
like a caramelizing it onion is completely different than the
(23:12):
taste of a raw onion or even a just regular
grilled onion. Yeah, and the big mystery of all this,
evolutionarily speaking, is that what you're gaining or one of
the biggest sources of umami taste is glutamate. Well that's great,
but the human body produces tons of glutamate, so it
wouldn't make sense that we would have a taste receptor
to find it in nature because we got enough in
(23:34):
our body. Well, you need other essential amino acids. And
if it figures that the best way to get amino
acids is to cook or ferment food, you want you
need you need fire because amino acids can be bound
to proteins and we don't absorb them as well, or
our body spends a lot more energy of breaking them
(23:56):
down and digesting them than if we cook them or
if we forment them. So man invents fire, man starts
to cook food, Man advances more rapidly. Yes, that's one
of the ideas that, um, why our brain developed as
well as it did, or we became as intelligent as
we did, was from cooking food. So we were able
to um break down our food a lot more easily
(24:19):
and gain from it, absorb it, and um basically grow
huge brains. That it came from cooking. And where where
do we get oh, mommy taste from cooked or fermented
food where these proteins have been broken down into much
more easily absorbed amino acid constituents. Man, I like that.
I agree. I feel like I just made it confusing though.
(24:39):
Did it come across No, it's it's totally makes sense.
We learned how to cook food and that put us
at the head of the evolutionary ladder. Right, and O,
mommy tastes comes from cooked or fermented food? Very clear? Uh,
what is not clear, or maybe it is clear. Is
MSG bad for you? A lot of people say it
(25:01):
makes me dizzy, or it makes my heart flutter or
or you know the MSG crash after you go the
Chinese food buffet. Well, there's actually something called Chinese food syndrome.
Not not true. Apparently it's a myth, supposedly, supposedly culturally
bound syndrome where like very few other cultures outside of
the United States or the West even think of the
(25:24):
idea that MSG can make you sick, and that it's
apparently a psycho somatic reaction where you expect MSG is
going to make you sick, so you get sick. Yep,
that's one explanation. Maybe your body or our bodies are
just different in how we process and metabolize MSG, or
maybe you have oded a little bit too much of
(25:46):
anything could be a bad thing, right, it could be
all these things. But what science is saying is there's
no evidence that MSG is bad for you quote unquote right,
And apparently study after study found people that that MSG
doesn't cause these things. Yeah, it's it's weird, So get
off the couch. Lazy, you're just looking for an excuse
(26:09):
to not cut the grass and so MSG again, it
has kind of a bad has kind of a bad
rap here in the US, but it's everywhere, and it
was actually one of the first things that Um, yeah,
professor Akita Um did was he figured out a way
to patent extracting monosodam glutamate from wheat, which is where
(26:33):
it's sound much more abundantly than in like kelp, and
package it into a seasoning and he he had no
ill will. He's like, this is great. This can make
that boring dish like taste better, that healthy boring dish
taste better. So it's not it's ironic then that people
think it's bad for you, when in fact, when he
packaged it, he was like, this is gonna be good
(26:54):
for you. It's gonna make this thing that's good for
you taste even better, and our country is going to
be very hell the right. Yeah, but it's hard to find.
You said, it wasn't everything, but it's disguised and ingredients. Yeah,
again stealthily because MSG has a bad rap here in
the West. Yeah, they should just put MSG right. They
do sometimes for the most part, though, they will call
it something like hydrolyzed wheat protein because remember, it can
(27:17):
be extracted from wheat. UM. Sometimes they'll call it just
natural flavors. Yeah, because all these things are naturally what
else texturized, vegetable protein, autolized yeast extract uh yeah, or
just natural flavors. So if you see that, that can
be a lot of things though, but just natural flavors.
(27:40):
You don't know what you're eating. But there are some
upsides to using this MSG. It's actually it actually can
be used in the way that Professor A. Keda envisioned it,
which is taking stuff and making it slightly healthier. Actually,
when you have UM, when you use certain like potassium
chloride rather than sodium chlor ride to make MSG, you
(28:02):
can actually replace the sodium in UM a dish. So
if you have a sodium problem, you can use some
of this stuff. Or hey, how about that uh, low
fat food that didn't taste so good at little MSG,
it tastes better, right, although recent medical research suggests that
you should be not eating low fat food, that regular
(28:24):
fat food is not bad for you. Or hey, old person,
you don't taste so good anymore, and you take medication
that even dampens that. Right, Why don't you throw some
MSG on there? Why why don't you back to life.
You know, yes, so chuck um. Whether MSG is a
bad rap or not, it's definitely all over the place. Uh.
(28:47):
And it is making things taste good, in my opinion,
is here to stay. It is. But there's other ways
to to get a new mommy flavor out of food.
And this this article actually has some helpful tips for
cooking if you want to go and cook and get
a umami taste. Have you ever been to umami Burger? No?
I haven't. It sounds awesome, It's good. I like it.
(29:10):
It sounds like you can make one at home with
some mushrooms. Yeah. Umami Burger is a chain. Uh. I
don't know where they have them, but I had it
in Los Angeles and they add powdered mushroom and seaweed
to the beef with little soy sauce. You don't even
know what you're eating except that it tastes good. You know,
you're like, hmm, I get to take the mushroom and
(29:31):
seaweed in this burger, all right? It's just umami flavored um.
And you know it's interesting. There's this uh. I think
it's called like Umami Information dot Com or something like that.
Really interesting site. But they point out that, um, while
you associate umami with Asian cooking, it's actually found all
(29:53):
over the world, like in Italy with tomato sauces and
catch up in the United States. Uh in chie is
in Europe. Um. In West Africa they have something called
um oh what is it called sambara? I think it's
kind of like a miso in West Africa that sounds
kind of delicious. Sombala that sounds good, just like the
(30:17):
sounds of it exactly. So it's it's interesting that like
people have been cooking with oo mommy stuff long before
we ever knew the word ou mommy um. And it's
been around the world too. Uh, caramelizing onions we mentioned
in like butter nothing better? Um what else? Um, you
can put parmesan cheese rinds into a super stew and
(30:40):
it'll oo mommy. That thing up. That's a good one
if you're making a stock used bones of an animal
and supposedly against that kind of thing. The guy who
invented real stock is reputed to have believed that there
was a fifth taste that had yet been unidentified back
in the nineteenth century because he's like just boiled this calf.
(31:01):
He's like, there's there's something going on here besides the
Big four. Wow, nobody believed. Uh. If you're cooking with mushrooms,
and I recommend this with all vegetables, roast those things
a little bit first. It brings out all kinds of
flavors and it makes your brain bigger. Like if you
if you got to make an omelet, don't just throw
(31:22):
raw peppers and stuff in there. Cook that stuff up
a little bit on the side, then add that to
the egg mixture. It makes the world of difference. You know,
everybody should watch Internet Roundup just just to get an
idea of what like our little gesticulations are. Like when
you're talking about like cooking peppers on the side and
(31:43):
throw them in there, like just the you're making very
cute little hand gestures over there. Well. I always joke
with Emily, I'm gonna open an omelet stand on the
beach one day. It's my retirement job. She's like, why
an omelet stand on the beach. I was like, because
no one's ever done it. No, they really haven't You
ever go to the beach. You're laying there in the
hot sun, Like I could use an omelet every time
(32:03):
I think I just want my retirement job to be
very slow paced and not busy. You'll get to eat omelets.
You got anything else? Um, cooking with wine is a
good one too. Yeah, that's umami city. Um No, just
go forth and try o mommy, ng up your dishes
and you will be happy. You will be happy to
(32:24):
say us it's It'll be an indefinable quality, but you'll
know it's ummi. Yes to be something about it. I
can't put my finger on it. You'll say. This stuff
is ou my, which again means delicious roughly in Japanese.
If you want to know more about ou mommy, you
can type that word in the search bart how stuff
(32:46):
works dot com. Uh. And since I said, oh mommy,
it's time again for a listener mail, I'm just gonna
call this a nice, simple thank you from a listener.
Those are nice. Uh. Some into is nice, you know. Yeah.
It's from Meredith from Granite Falls, Minnesota. And she's just
thanking us because she has a boring summer job. She said,
(33:08):
I work at a hospital and I scan a bunch
of old files into an external hard drive. That's what
I do is I remove a lot of staples, stare
at the scanner and I wait for it to be
done over and over. Yeah. Can you imagine there? It's like, oh,
we need to digitize all these records. Let's hire someone
to do that. Yeah, so God bless you Meredith for
(33:31):
doing that. I found listening to eight hours of music
just wasn't doing the trick anymore. Then I discovered the
wonderful world of podcast, and you guys are my all
time faves. You guys are so funny, and I love
all the dumb jokes you make. I don't know if
they're dumb. I think like groundbreaking is a better way. Yeah. Uh,
they really make my day, guys. And even if I
don't understand all the tangents you go off on because
(33:52):
I'm only twenty one and don't understand most of these
references you make the movies or pop culture things from
decades gone by, I still enjoyed that the podcast is
more of a conversation between you guys than just strictly
reading from a script. Oh yeah, we don't even have
a script. Clearly, that would be the worst script ever. Um.
One of these days I'll have a real story to
(34:12):
share directly related to a recent show. But for now,
I just want to say thank you so much and
keep up the amazing work that is. Best wishes from Meredith. Meredith,
thank you. And she's a PostScript that says, I absolutely
love it when Josh Josh calls chuckers. Don't even know why.
It just makes him a smile every time. Nice and
it just has a rank chuckers. It's a fun word.
(34:34):
It is. It's like ou mommy. What we said mommy
a lot. I wonder how many times, I don't know,
we should have an ou mommy counter on the website. Yeah,
it would be cool. I don't know if we are
familiar with the technology that could do that though. And
at the end it just turns into a big pile
of salty dried fish cuts. I seriously am making some
(34:59):
top notch me so soup. I've been inspired to. You've
gotten pretty good everything. Yeah, yeah, I've gotten pretty good
at um hot and sour soup. But I make it
from a mix and just add some stuff to it.
This is I'm going to make from like dashi and
mi so from scratch. Well, I'm not gonna like ferment
the soybeans or anything like that. But you're gonna make
your own dashi. No, I'm gonna buy dashi. You should
(35:22):
make your own doshi. I'm not gonna make my own dosh.
You know how bad my apartment smell. If I like
fermented and then boiled down fish just to make the
stock you need, it's crazy. You need a spice kitchen.
I do need a spice kitchen, now that you mention it.
Um no, But I will let you know how the
miso soup turns out all right? Okay. If you want
to get in touch with us, you can tweet to
(35:43):
us at s y s K podcast. You can join
us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know.
You can send us an email The Stuff podcast a
house to works dot com, and as always, join us
at our home on the web. Stuff you Should Know
dot Com. Stuff you Should Know is a production and
of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts My Heart Radio,
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
(36:06):
you listen to your favorite shows. H
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