I fucking love how hard Kikkoman is selling Umami.
 

The commercials are great and they really work to get the message across. To add to it they are doing a lot of product placement and in show education work across numerous cooking shows. Even those not on food network. Though like this weeks "next iron chef" revolved around it - not just kikkoman but Umami education as well. It was the focal point in last nights good eats as well and again tons of Umami education.

If you happen to watch other cooking shows not on food network, you will hear more and more chefs talking about it. Not just Asian or Japanese chefs and cooks eiter.

Just love it. Love how they are doing it.

You are making me hungry!

LOL your hungry. Fuck I am starving.

what is Umami? never heard of it

Thought I was the only one who was noticing this. :)

Damn, I haven't watched TV in a long time, I'll have to find lastnights episode of Good Eats, one of my favorite shows of all time.

It is your 5th taste.

You know:
1. Sweet
2. Salty
3. Sour
4. Bitter

5. Umami

It was all about making Miso soup.

Though he covered other things you can do with those Japanese ingredients, dashi, miso paste, nori, and silken tofu.

i love miso...

and yeah, umami was in a challenge earlier this season on top chef as well.

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

Yup. Been showing up everywhere. The in show ads so to speak really lock it into peoples head, plus you can not fast forward past them.

Funny thing is I had to read this thread about 3 times before realizing you weren't saying UMiami as in University of Miami... :Oh crap

LOL.

What is more funny is besides it being the 5th taste which makes 100% sense why it is. Once people figure out what it is related to, they will yell and say it is a giant conspiracy, or just flip out.

Need more replies.

it gives the judges an easy out - 'not enough umami'

Because having 4 tastes isn't enough... we need to have a 5th one so someone can run around making money off it or something...

Nah, all of the tastes we do have make perfect sense evolution wise. They had no reason to just make one up. Though people will indeed make money. Nobody really has a lock on it. Being found already in a ton of foods. Just will help with the marketing of certain foods.

Again we had the following:
Sweet - means sugar, easy quick energy. Perfect reason why breast milk is sweet and kids love sweets. Biologically programed to seek it out.
Salty - means salt, body needs salt to properly function. No salt in our diet we die.
Sour - means vitamins, body really needs them to function. Example how so many people got sick or died of scurvy, brining along limes other citrus and that was no more.
Bitter - means warning, most poisons and things we should not eat are bitter. Sure we seem to develop an "acquired" taste to bitter latter on in life. Still makes perfect sense it was a warning sense (taste).

One more was missing to represent another item we need to for our bodies to properly function.
Umami - means assorted amino acids, body needs them for metabolism, to create proteins which again without them in our diet we die.

There is still the hidden LOL and semi smack in the face to some people.

Until the whole "umami" thing became the rage, I've always heard of that taste being called "savory." Makes me wonder if the word "umami" was invented by Kikkoman as a marketing ploy, since they could have just used "savory" to mean the same thing. But then again, Kikkoman probably wouldn't sell as much soy sauce and MSG if they didn't use a Japanese word to promote it.

Savory is also fair, translation may even mean that. The dude that originally discovered the taste of glutamate called it umami about a half century ago. That was just part of the selling I mentioned or marketing it.

You did post the slap so to speak. If we have receptors to locate glutamate, that would indicate that our body either needs it or is warned against it. Considering it was located in items high in amino acids, odds are we need it. Which would mean msg is fine since that is just the name of the actual chemical. That also means that odds are the hate and accusations about msg are bull shit. Especially since nobody bitches about msg effects after eating a big bowl of pasta Alfredo but would bitch over a bowl of Chinese food.