Australian scientists claim they've stumbled upon a sixth sense, but not the kind where you see dead people. No, researchers "down under" have found a new flavor sense: fat.

Croissants are made mostly from flour, butter (a saturated fat), salt and sugar.Most chefs (and bakers) know that fat is an excellent vehicle for food flavors and has a highly appealing mouthfeel. A new study, however, suggests that along with sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami (essentially, the ability to detect protein), we can also actually taste fat itself.

In a study done by Dr. Russell Keast, which appears in the latest issue of the British Journal of Nutrition, a group of 33 people where given fatty acids found in common foods, mixed in with nonfat milk to disguise the telltale fat texture. All 33 could detect the fatty acids to at least a small degree.

Note from Raster Master: Not all fats are bad. The worst are Saturated and Trans fats. Saturated fats generally come from animals, Trans fats come from hydrogenated (chemically altered) fats. The best fats are the Essential Fatty acids (they generally come from plants or the ocean). All fats are high in calories, so it may be best to moderate them if you care about your health and well-being.

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When we were in grade school, many of us learned that there were four basic tastes: sweet, sour, salty and bitter. Now there's a new taste to learn and it's called umami (pronounced "oo-mommy"). Actually, while the term is new to us, it's not new to the Japanese, who have used the term to describe the "fifth taste" since the early 1900s. While there's no English word that's synonymous with umami, it's most often described as "savory".

Over 1,200 years ago, Asian cooks began adding a type of Sea Vegetable (Seaweed) found in the Pacific Ocean to their soup stocks. They had discovered that foods cooked in this seaweed broth simply tasted better.

What these chefs didn't know was that the broth's unique flavor enhancement quality was due to the high levels of naturally occurring glutamate in sea vegetables.

In 1908, the link between glutamate and sea vegetables was discovered. A professor at Tokyo Imperial University, Dr. Kikunae Ikeda, isolated glutamate from the sea vegetables and unlocked the secret of the plant's flavor-enhancing properties.

 Dr. Ikeda then went on to study various forms of glutamate, trying to find one that conveyed the umami taste and was also practical to produce commercially. He found that the sodium salt form, called monosodium glutamate, fit the bill: It provided umami and was easy for home cooks to use and store.

Monosodium glutamate, often referred to as "MSG", was first produced in Japan in 1909, and made its U.S. debut in 1917. Since then, food manufacturers and home cooks alike have used MSG to augment the flavor of a wide variety of foods.

Being able to distinguish the umami taste takes some practice because it's not as obvious as other tastes, such as sweet or bitter. For example, when tasting a homemade chicken broth made without salt or seasoning of any kind, you may find it bland and practically tasteless. If you added a small amount of monosodium glutamate to that same broth, the umami taste it provides may lead you to describe the "enhanced" broth as tasting "more like chicken" than the first broth.

This taste is not as simple as making something taste more salty (salt alone can do that). Rather, the umami taste is one of richness, fullness and complexity. Simply put, it just makes the food taste more delicious.

Glutamate's the key
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The amino acid, glutamate could well be called "nature's flavor enhancer" because it conveys the umami taste in foods. Glutamate is also well known among food and nutrition professionals as one of the most common "building blocks" of protein. As such, it's no surprise that most foods contain some amount of glutamate. Protein foods, such as meat, fish, cheese, milk and some vegetables are especially good sources of glutamate. Not coincidentally, these foods also have a lot of umami taste.

Adding umami to foods
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Recognizing that "Mother Nature" knows best, when food manufacturers add monosodium glutamate to foods, they use it in levels that are comparable to the glutamate levels found in natural foods. Generally, this means only a small amount is used: Usually between 0.1% and 0.8% of the food's weight.

Home cooks have it easier: They don't have to use any MSG.

You might be surprised to learn that, according to a 1995 USA Food and Drug Administration study, some foods naturally contain higher levels of glutamate than those typically added to foods during manufacturing. For example, the natural glutamate level in aged Parmesan cheese was found to be up to 10 times that found in chicken broth with added monosodium glutamate.

The flavour also comes in vegetarian form. It's the "meaty" taste especially present in juicy beefsteak tomatoes (the riper the better), sugar snap peas, grapefruit, tofu, Sea Vegetables, and shiitake mushrooms.

Note from Raster Master: At Bistro 150, we use sea vegetables to season our vegetable stocks and beans instead of salt or MSG. This gives the added benefits of Potasium, Calcium and Iodine. A very tasty soup is Miso soup with sea vegetables, tofu and shitake mushrooms. At Bistro 150, we use only organic sea vegetables from Maine Coast Sea Vegetables.

Maine Coast Sea Vegetables was born in 1971 over a pot of miso soup in the kitchen of Linnette and Shep Erhart overlooking Hog Bay. From two people producing 200 pounds in 1971, they now have over 30 people carefully handling around 100,000 pounds of sea vegetables annually.

Certified organic by OCI, their dried plants are tested for the absence of heavy metals, herbicides, pesticides, and microbiological contaminants. For some of the best recipes on the planet, using sea vegetables, visit their website.

:: Source: [Wikipedia, San Mateo, CA, USA]
:: Image Credit: [Hudson, Shag Photo, USA]
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