Stuff You Should Know - Selects: How Umami Works!

Episode Date: November 26, 2022

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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to

believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 umami in your mouth. So we're going to go back to August 20th, 2015 and learn all about this new

taste profile. It's actually not new. How umami works. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart radio. Hey, I'm welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry, and so this is Stuff You Should Know. I thought 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 smell like a fish stock. Oh yeah? Yeah. You know, I did a Don't Be Dumb on Ketchup, the origin of ketchup. That was a 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 100. Oh no, I'm one of those people that's like, this guy's so dumb. What kind of, I don't get it. I can't 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 ketchup? Yes. 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 it salsa? No. What is it? Mayonnaise. Oh yes. Did you know that? No, but I love mayonnaise. Clearly you didn't. What kind? Dukes is your brand, right? Well, I'm Dukes, but I'm just,

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 are like, uh, because I don't like ketchup and people think I'm weird. Oh no, 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. Right. You just mean no ketchup? Yeah. You could put it in both. I'm not, I'm not opposed to it. No, it just, it, it, I've found, and it was a big surprise to me,

a really big surprise. Yes. 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. Right, because it's got more than tomatoes in it. Right. It's really, again, very surprising to me, even though I realize, of course, that tomato is made from, or ketchup is made from tomatoes. Partially. It's not like I haven't made that connection. Right. I 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 a french fry in a tomato. Well, no, I'm not opposed to ketchup. I'll still use ketchup. I hear you. Especially for

dipping fries. I'm cool with that. It's weird. I'm not down in ketchup here is what I'm trying to say. I just think that tomatoes are great on a burger, but I also like mayo too. 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. I don't know. I'm supposed to eat them like an apple or anything. If you've been doing that, I can understand why you don't like raw tomatoes. Some people do. Some people just slice them and eat them on a plate. Right. You're not just holding it in your hand and eating it like an apple. What kind of monster does that? That's what I'm saying. A monster. Kaiser Wilhelm II. Yeah, he was known. All right. So all of that to say

umami. Umami. Oh mama, this one's about umami. The fifth flavor. The fifth beetle. Out of what they now say is six. Fat. Oh, carbon dioxide is also one too. Oh really? We supposedly, they found receptors that are tailored specifically to sensing carbon dioxide on the tongue and that ultimately that makes it qualify as a taste. So they're going to 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 umami was isolated in the beginning of the 20th century and it wasn't for almost 80 years before the West finally accepted it. Yeah, part of the reason is because it was the research was written in

Japanese. Well, it's okay. That's maybe something to do with it. And part of the issue was that um umami is very mild in taste and when you have um high concentrations of it to increase that flavor you've got uh salty and sour mixed in. So I think it just confounded the West. They're like what? We get sour. Yeah. We get salty. We get sweet for sure. Why we even get bitter. But we don't get this other thing. Nope. And we're not going over five. So you better make this umami stuff good. That's what the West said. Dumb Western scientist and food scientist. So Chuck, I think we let the cat out of the bag a little bit. The Japanese are the ones who first discovered umami. That's right. Comes from the word umai, roughly translated as delicious.

Uh chefs, if you talk to a chef umami is a big hot thing right now. It really is. They'll say maybe it's like a mushroomy thing. It's like a earthy. It's it is very subtle. Like I said, it's musty. Yeah, musty, which doesn't sound appealing. No, but it also makes sweet different. That's umami'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 umami's big thing is synergizing. Yeah, it's a supporting cast member, almost. Yeah, it takes, yes, it is. It's like Bud Bundy. Okay. Not a leading guy, but you put him in an ensemble. He's going to 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 you spinning around, searching for a supporting cast member and ending up at Bud Bundy. Will you come back in 20 years and give me a million dollars and I will let you. Man, that 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, but it is almost like it's designed to interact with other flavors, especially salty and especially sweet. Agreed. And umami can even interact with itself. Whoa. And all of a sudden, it takes what was just like a ho-hum day and turns it into the greatest day of your life

with one bite of shiitake mushroom. With some hot umami on umami action. So it is nothing new, obviously. It's not like you can just identify a new taste. It's been around. The Romans and the Greeks before them enjoyed something called garam, and that is a sauce that, boy, you want to talk about how you find something weird food-wise. Yeah. They were gutting fish and they said, let's take this fish guts and blood and let's salt it and leave it out in the sun for three months. And see what happens. And then you have to eat it. No, you eat it. No, you. 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. This is good stuff. This is delicious. Garam means delicious in ancient Roman. I think so. And it is, that was umami personified because how umami was discovered in 1907, there was a brilliant chemist named Kikune Aikida. Is that right? Kikune, that AE, it's got an extra little pop to it. Gotcha. But yeah, you did it. Thank you. So he was a chemist and he worked at the Imperial University, I'm sorry, he was, yeah, he was a professor at the Imperial University of Tokyo and he was perplexed that he tasted something one day and said, this is not any 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 kombu, which is dried kelp. Yes, and there 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 miso, really, really big ingredient in Japanese cuisine. Right, and this guy was like, this little boy loves his dashi and I want to know exactly what is making it so wonderful. So since he was a chemist, he took I think something like 12 kilograms of dashi and boiled it down. Eight, 10 of them. Isolated some stuff. The first thing that came out were some obvious ones that he clearly discarded is not responsible for umami

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 a fact 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 a step. I don't make a terrible chemist. 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 you're right. He was like, well, I know these flavors and they're not what I've been experiencing on my tongue. No, they're old news. So he looked a little further and he found, well, wait a minute, what is this? It's glutamic acid. Yeah. 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. So he added some more stuff, came up with a chemical reaction and what popped out on the other end is what you and I call monosodium glutamate. MSG. And he figured out that it's not glutamic acid. It's not the salts, but it's actually glutamate. But then he figured out even further is like glutamate. That doesn't make any sense. 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 Umami its taste. Boom. So glutamate, I'm sorry, is an amino acid, right? Right. And that's one of the things that gives Umami its taste. It was the first thing that was discovered to give Umami its

taste. Yeah. And that was the kelp. So, you know, Dashi has his different components. So he had a student who said, you know what, let me get that, the dried tuna flakes. Bonito flakes. Yeah. Bonito. Well, delicious. There's different kinds, but Bonito's definitely one of them. And he says, let me identify these components and what he found was something called, you want to try that one? In a cyanate? 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 1960, another scientist named Akira Kuninaka. Nice. He worked for Yamasa, the famous soy sauce EA. And now you're just showing off. He was. And he went on to work in pharmaceuticals. It was interesting. Oh,

he's a 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 just chemistry. Sure. So he said, you know what, I can identify a third thing called guanailate. It's another nucleotide in those shiitake mushrooms you were talking about. Yeah. And it's not like just Bonito flakes, kombu and shiitake mushrooms are the only things that produce umami taste. Yeah. These are just the three things that those guys went to town and isolated different stuff out of, right? Yeah. I always want to see Bonita Applebomb when you say Bonita. Tribe called Quest. Yeah. After all these years. They keep making references, they keep making appearances in

episodes lately. Oh yeah, they have been, huh? You mentioned them in hula hoops. Yeah. This one, you can't remember which one we talked about, the scenario. Oh, what's a, what's a, what's a scenario? Right. You know what, my friend Justin, whom you also know, his mother actually left her wallet in El Segundo. No way. And he even called me. He was like, dude, guess what happened? My mother left her wallet in El Segundo. That'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. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so my husband, Michael, um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Uh-huh. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy.

You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangeh Shatikler and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're gonna get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it.

So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. So we have done an episode on taste that was great. It was great. It's called Taste and How It Works from July 2010. Highly recommended. Yeah, but we're gonna go over a little bit more here.

Well, yeah, I think if we're gonna talk about Umami, 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 when we're talking about 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 papillae. The papillae have taste buds on them, right? Yes, there are three main types of papillae. You have the fungi form, Yes. Mushroom shaped. Sure. The foliate, those are the ridges and grooves at the back of the tongue. Okay. And the circumvalate, and those are circular at the front end of the tongue.

Right, and then some papillae have a couple of taste buds. Some have hundreds of taste buds. And then when you look into the taste buds themselves, they have receptor cells. And what's interesting is when you think about a taste bud, you'd be like, oh, well, there's a salty taste bud, sweet taste bud, umami, umami, sweet, sour, bitter, fat, right? Carbon dioxide. So that's not the case. No. As a matter of fact, a taste bud has different receptor cells. And these different receptor cells can be tuned to accept or sense different types of taste. Yeah. Wasn't it the shape, if I remember correctly? Well, that was with smell. Oh. Smelling tastes are closely related. Right. And we should say that's a spoiler alert for

the taste episode. We're not 100% sure how we sense taste or smell. But yes, the predominant theory is that a specific type of odorant or taste molecule will interact with a specific type of receptor. And when it does, the chemical in that molecule, that food molecule, 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. Yeah. And it breaks it down, coats your tongue. And that's when that transduction, those electrical impulses are sent to the NST, the solitary tract of the brain, sorry, the nucleus of the solitary tract of the brain. Yeah. That's what all happens. That's when it puts all these different tastes together and says,

delicious. I like this. Or more to the point, that's probably going to 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 sight of it, the temperature of it, how it feels. Is it firm? Is it a little too gelatinous? These are all things that your brain takes into account, including things like memories that you've formed from having it before. Yeah. Cotton candy, when I was a kid, gives me great memories. Yeah. So that plays a part in flavor. Exactly. It releases some different aspect of it that only you can 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. Yeah. Or if it's one of your past lives. So that's kind of the science of taste. And with umami specifically, again, one of the things that the West was having trouble with is accepting that umami was a real thing, was that there wasn't any what's called psychophysical evidence that umami was its own taste. That's right. For a long time, they thought it was just a component of salty taste because monosodium glutamate is a type of salt, right? Yeah. It's a salt protein combination that makes MSG. And for many, many years, this was the only source of umami taste. But finally, in the 80s, once they had the first international symposium on umami, it was a real thing. I

bet that was a party. The, I'll bet it was too because it was in Hawaii. Sure. And the Japanese and Americans love Hawaii. So I'll bet everybody was partying down there. They started to do studies in the early 80s and they found, oh, actually no, 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 toward accepting or sensing umami tastes. That's right. Those are the G protein coupled receptors, GPCRs. And that is for sweet, bitter, and umami. And sour and salty, those are 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 has a positive charge or a negative charge, if it's a positive ion and has

a 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 as far as relating that to a taste, it's just sort of, I can think of as mayonnaise. Well, that's the whole thing. It's like you said, it's like, it's like your brain just turns to mayonnaise. Yeah. It's, transduction is taking in a chemical and turning it into an electrical charge. Yeah. I just think that's endlessly fascinating. Oh, sure. The senses and how they work, it's like, it's amazing. But not just that electricity and electrical generation. Like, remember that episode? Electricity? Maybe one of our best, if you ask me. Agreed. All right. So what we have here are three kinds of

receptor cells that they know are, that respond to this combination that makes up what MSG is. I'm sorry, what umami is. It's that inocinate, the guanylate and the MSG. And what they think is that they actually hold on to these compounds, hold on longer, which is why you get these interesting combinations when you have like cheese with an apple or cheese on an apple pie. Right. It takes sweet and like doesn't just make it sweeter, it makes it like sweet in a different way, right? Yeah, exactly. And the same thing again, when you mix together different types of either amino acids or nucleic acids that create an umami taste, they magnify this umami-ness of this, this meatiness of the whole thing. And also with, I believe, salty too. Yeah. Umami and salty mixed

together. The fact that it hangs onto that molecule longer and it just leaves that charge going, then that sweet can come and go, but it's affected by it. Food science is so interesting. It is. And we're going to talk a little more about food science and evolution right after this. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And

you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India,

it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart

Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. So here's one thing I didn't get. 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 and 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, maybe dangerous to eat that might be poisonous. And of course, there's exceptions to all of this. Those are pretty good general rules when it comes to evolution. Right. That that was the evolution explanation for the sense of taste, right? Yeah. But what I don't get is, where in here does it explain the evolutionary method of

umami? Like what role it played? I got this. You ready? Well, is it this part about cooking? Yes. Oh, it was very poorly stated. It really was. But it's really interesting. It is super interesting. Once you realize this, that so you said that umami 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 in evolution? No, but even before that, like if you look at it evolutionarily speaking, it's actually very old. Supposedly the receptors are very old, like 400 million years old or something like that. But the idea that we can taste umami or us tasting umami is very actually fairly recent because umami is released by cooking food. Yeah. Like if you eat a bunch of raw hamburger,

that's not going to be umami tasting. It's not going to taste very good. But you cook that hamburger and you have molecularly changed its composition. You've unlocked some of the proteins into its constituent amino acids and all of a sudden you've gotten umami taste. Yeah. It's like caramelizing an onion is completely different than the 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 our body. Well, you need other essential

amino acids and it figures that the best way to get amino acids is to cook or ferment food. Yeah. You want you need, you need fire. Because amino acids can be bound to proteins. Yeah. And we don't absorb them as well or our body spends a lot more energy breaking them down and digesting them than if we cook them or if we ferment them. So man invents fire, man starts to cook food, man advances more rapidly. Yes. That's one of the ideas that 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 break down our food a lot more easily and gain from it, absorb it and basically grow huge brains. That's awesome. That it came from cooking and where did we get ommami 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. Did it come across? No, it's totally makes sense. We learn how to cook food and that put us at the head of the evolutionary ladder. Right. And ommami taste comes from cooked or fermented food. Yeah. Very clear. What is not clear or maybe it is clear is MSG bad for you. A lot of people say it makes me dizzy or it makes my heart flutter or the MSG crash after you go to the Chinese food buffet. Well, there's actually something called Chinese food syndrome. Yeah. Not true. Apparently it's a myth. Supposedly. It's a culturally bound syndrome where like very few other cultures outside

of the United States or the West even think of the idea that MSG can make you sick and that it's apparently a psychosomatic 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 OD'd a little bit. Too much of anything can be a bad thing. Right. Could be all these things. But what science is saying is there is no evidence that MSG is bad for you quote unquote. Right. And apparently study after study found that people that MSG doesn't cause these things. Yeah. It's weird. So get off the couch, Lazy. You're just looking for an excuse to not cut the grass. And so MSG again, it has kind of a bad wrap here in

the U.S. But it's everywhere. And it was actually one of the first things that. Akita. Yeah. Professor Akita did was he figured out a way to patent extracting monosodium glutamate from wheat, which is where it's found much more abundantly than in like kelp. And package it into a seasoning. And he had no ill will. He was like, this is great. This can make that boring dish like taste better. Right. That healthy boring dish tastes better. Exactly. So it's not, it's ironic then that people think it's bad for you. And in fact, when he packaged it, he was like, this is going to be good for you. Yeah. It's going to make this thing that's good for you taste even better. And our country is going to be very healthy. Right. Yeah. But it's hard to find. You said it was

in everything, but it's disguised and ingredients. Yeah. Again, stealthily because MSG has a bad wrap 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. Yeah. Because remember it can be extracted from wheat. Sometimes they'll call it just natural flavors. Yeah. Because all these things are natural. Exactly. What else? Texturized vegetable protein. Yeah. Autolyzed yeast extract. Right. Yeah. Or just natural flavor. So if you see that, that can be a lot of things though. But just natural flavors? Sure. Yeah. You don't know what you're eating. No. But there are some upsides to using this MSG. It's actually, it actually can be used in the way

that Professor Akeda envisioned it, which is taking stuff and making it slightly healthier, actually. When you have, when you use certain, like a potassium chloride rather than sodium chloride to make MSG, you can actually replace the sodium in a dish. So if you have a sodium problem, you can use some of this stuff. Yeah. Or hey, how about that low-fat food that didn't taste so good and a little MSG? It tastes better. Right. Although recent medical research suggests that you should be not eating low-fat food, that regular 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 don't you, old person? Bring those taste buds

back to life. Right. You know? Yes. So Chuck, whether MSG is a bad rep or not, it's definitely all over the place. And it is making things taste good, in my opinion. Umami's here to stay. It is. But there's other ways to get an umami flavor out of food. And this article actually has some helpful tips for your cooking if you want to go and cook and get an umami taste. You ever been to umami burger? No, I haven't. It sounds awesome. It's good. I like it. It sounds like an LA. You can make one at home with some mushrooms. Yeah. Umami burger is a chain. 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 a little soy sauce. You don't even know what you're

eating except that it tastes good. Right. You know? You're not like, hmm, I could detect the mushroom and seaweed in this burger. All right. It's just umami flavored. Umami. And you know what's interesting? There's this, I think it's called like umamiinformation.com or something like that. Really interesting site. But they point out that while you associate umami with Asian cooking, it's actually found all over the world. Sure. Like in Italy with tomato sauces. Yeah. And ketchup in the United States, in cheeses in Europe, in West Africa, they have something called oh, what is it called? Sambara, I think. It's kind of like a miso in West Africa. That sounds kind of delicious. Yeah. Sambala. That sounds good. I just like the sounds of it. Exactly. So it's

interesting that like people have been cooking with umami stuff long before we ever knew the word umami. And it's been around the world too. Caramelizing onions we mentioned in like butter. Right. Nothing better. What else? You can put Parmesan cheese rinds into a soup or stew and it'll umami that thing up. Oh, that's a good one. If you're making a stock, use bones of an animal. And supposedly. If you're not against that kind of thing. The guy who invented veal stock is reputed to have believed that there was a fifth taste that had yet been unidentified back in the 19th century. Because he's like, I've just boiled this calf and I'm on to something. There's something going on here besides the big four. Wow. Nobody believed him.

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 go to make an omelet, don't just throw 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. Yeah. You know? Yeah. I'm big on my omelets. I think everybody should watch internet roundup 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 throw them in there, like just the you're making very cute little hand gestures over there. Well, I always joke with Emily that I'm going to 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? Yeah. Every time. I think I just want my retirement job to be very slow-paced and not busy. Right. That's what I figured out. And you'll get to eat omelets. You got anything else? Cooking with wine is a good one too. Yeah. That's umami city. No, just go forth and try umami-ing up your dishes and you will be happy. You will be happy, say us. It'll be an indefinable quality, but you'll know it's umami. Yes. It should be something about it. I can't put my finger on it. You'll say this stuff is umai, which again means delicious, roughly,

in Japanese. Umai. If you want to know more about umami, you can type that word in the search bar at howstuffworks.com. And since I said umami, it's time again for a listener mail. I'm just going to call this a nice, simple thank you from a listener. Those are nice. Sometimes it is nice, you know? Yeah. This is from Meredith from Granite Falls, Minnesota, and she's just thanking us because she has a boring summer job. She said, I work at a hospital and I scan a bunch of old files into an external hard drive. So 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. Oh, yeah. Can you imagine there? It's like, oh, we need to digitize all these records. Let's hire someone to do that.

We're job creators. Yeah. So God bless you, Meredith, for 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. Now, you guys are so funny, and I love all the dumb jokes you make. I don't know if they're dumb. I think groundbreaking is a better way. Yeah. They really make my day, guys. And even if I don't understand all the tangents you go off on because I'm only 21 and don't understand most of these references you make to movies or pop culture things from decades gone by, I still enjoy 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. One of these days I'll have a real story to 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 has a post script that says I absolutely love it when Josh calls Chuckers. Don't even know why, just makes me smile every time. Nice. I think it just has a ring. Chuckers, it's a fun word. It is. It's like umami. Well, you said umami a lot. I wonder how many times. I don't know. We should have an umami counter on the website. Yeah, that'd 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 guts. I seriously am making some top-notch miso soup I've been inspired to. Oh, you're going to make it from your own stock and everything? Yeah, yeah. Whoa. I've gotten pretty good at um hot and sour soup. Yeah. But I make it from a mix and just add some stuff to it. This I'm going to make from like dashi and miso. From scratch? Well, I'm not going to like ferment the soy beans or anything like that. But you're going to make your own dashi? No, I'm going to buy dashi. You should make your own dashi. I'm not going to make my own dashi. Do you know how bad my apartment smell if I like ferment it and then boil down fish just to make the stock? You need this. Crazy. You need a spice kitchen. I do need a spice kitchen now that you mentioned it. Yeah.

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 us at syskpodcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.howstoveworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say

bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Shatikler and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find in major league baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.