[HN Gopher] Ammonium chloride tastes like nothing else. It may b...
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       Ammonium chloride tastes like nothing else. It may be the sixth
       basic taste
        
       Author : sohkamyung
       Score  : 17 points
       Date   : 2023-10-11 13:23 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (bigthink.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (bigthink.com)
        
       | ekianjo wrote:
       | > umami
       | 
       | Since when is umami a new real flavor and not just a marketing
       | term?
        
         | jessekv wrote:
         | 1908?
        
         | rokkamokka wrote:
         | It's just the name of the taste of monosodium glutamate, pretty
         | much.
        
           | dekhn wrote:
           | no. MSG is isolated, purified, and salt-bound form of
           | glutamate.
           | 
           | umami is more complex- it's usually a combination of several
           | amino acids and nucleosides. MSG on its own, or nucleosides
           | on their own barely taste like much, while umami is ... quite
           | rich.
        
         | didgeoridoo wrote:
         | LMWTFY:
         | 
         | > Umami was first scientifically identified in 1908 by Kikunae
         | Ikeda,[27][28] a professor of the Tokyo Imperial University. He
         | found that glutamate was responsible for the palatability of
         | the broth from kombu seaweed. He noticed that the taste of
         | kombu dashi was distinct from sweet, sour, bitter, and salty
         | and named it umami.[16]
         | 
         | > Professor Shintaro Kodama, a disciple of Ikeda, discovered in
         | 1913 that dried bonito flakes (a type of tuna) contained
         | another umami substance.[29] This was the ribonucleotide IMP.
         | In 1957, Akira Kuninaka realized that the ribonucleotide GMP
         | present in shiitake mushrooms also conferred the umami
         | taste.[30] One of Kuninaka's most important discoveries was the
         | synergistic effect between ribonucleotides and glutamate. When
         | foods rich in glutamate are combined with ingredients that have
         | ribonucleotides, the resulting taste intensity is higher than
         | would be expected from merely adding the intensity of the
         | individual ingredients.[14]
        
         | justinclift wrote:
         | Seems to be widely accepted in Japan (and not just recently),
         | at least according to some Japanese friends.
        
       | crazygringo wrote:
       | The article doesn't make clear why it should be considered a
       | sixth taste, as opposed to simply sour:
       | 
       | > _They found that ammonium chloride triggers a specific proton
       | channel called OTOP1 in sour taste receptor cells. This sates a
       | key requirement for a flavor to qualify as a primary taste._
       | 
       | That makes it sound like it's part of sour, not something new.
       | And that seems kind of confirmed, by the report of it being
       | "sharp and sour", before salmiak's other flavors also kicked in:
       | 
       | > _"The first time I sampled salmiak... I spit it out on a
       | Copenhagen street corner. It wasn't that this powerful little
       | pastille was bad. It's just that my taste buds had never quite
       | been lit up that way: smacked with a layer of sharp and sour salt
       | dust, then soothed by something bitter and caramel-sweet. It felt
       | simultaneously fascinating and... abusive? Or at least odd, like
       | a knocked funny bone."_
        
       | codedokode wrote:
       | Why human distinguishes so little flavours? I thought that tongue
       | is like a chemical laboratory detecting hundreds of different
       | substances. Also, why detect sweet or sour taste? Wouldn't it be
       | better to detect energy-rich and useful components (like meat or
       | fat) and poisonous/harmful (like mushrooms)?
        
         | PhasmaFelis wrote:
         | Sweet _is_ energy-rich. And sour /bitter are often poisonous.
        
           | codedokode wrote:
           | Is meat or fat, or cheese sweet? Usually sweet is the
           | harmful, unhealthy food like candies. Because of sweetness
           | children often prefer unhealthy food to healthy and useful.
        
             | mynameisvlad wrote:
             | Sweet is "the harmful, unhealthy food like candies" in
             | modern times but it's not like taste receptors only
             | developed 100 years ago based on candy and other modern
             | foods.
        
             | usea wrote:
             | Presumably our sense of taste is not adapted to a world of
             | abundance. In a world of scarcity, the problems caused by a
             | diet rich in sugar are a far off concern when you're
             | starving and looking for calories.
        
             | mrweiner wrote:
             | Fruit is sweet.
        
         | xen0 wrote:
         | That's what taste kind of does...
        
       | the-dude wrote:
       | 3 days ago : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37808088
        
       | cmiller1 wrote:
       | There are other candidates for true "flavors" that our tongues
       | may contain receptors for that are currently being researched.
       | 
       | Kokumi - the presence of broken down amino acid chains common in
       | aged protein products such as blue cheese or dry aged beef
       | https://www.fooddive.com/news/kokumi-the-sensation-that-make...
       | 
       | Oleogustus - the presence of certain lipids that in small amounts
       | may make foods taste richer but may in fact be a way for us to
       | detect rancid fats that we shouldn't ingest
       | https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2015/Q3/research-co...
        
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       (page generated 2023-10-11 16:01 UTC)