Umami as an ‘Alimentary’ Taste. A New Perspective on Taste Classification

Abstract

Applied taste research is increasingly focusing on the relationship with diet and health, and understanding the role the sense of taste plays in encouraging or discouraging consumption. The concept of basic tastes dates as far back 3000 years, where perception dominated classification with sweet, sour, salty, and bitter consistently featuring on basic taste lists throughout history. Advances in molecular biology and the recent discovery of taste receptors and ligands has increased the basic taste list to include umami and fat taste. There is potential for a plethora of other new basic tastes pending the discovery of taste receptors and ligands. Due to the possibility for an ever-growing list of basic tastes it is pertinent to critically evaluate whether new tastes, including umami, are suitably positioned with the four classic basic tastes (sweet, sour, salty, and bitter). The review critically examines the evidence that umami, and by inference other new tastes, fulfils the criteria for a basic taste, and proposes a subclass named ‘alimentary’ for tastes not meeting basic criteria.

Investigating the Relationships between Basic Tastes Sensitivities, Fattiness Sensitivity, and Food Liking in 11-Year-Old Children

“…There are five basic tastes-sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami-that, respectively, relate to different receptors and mechanisms of responses [27]. In addition, the taste of fat (also called oleogustus) has been suggested as the sixth taste modality [28], with a gustatory pathway devoted to the perception of lipids [29].…”

Sugar Reduction in Dairy Food: An Overview with Flavoured Milk as an Example

“…The sweetness profile of sugar depends upon the quality and type of sugar [ 52 ]. Sweet is one of the four basic tastes [ 53 ]. The chemical tastants for sweetness bind to taste receptor cells (TRC) in the oral cavity and activate the intracellular signaling elements [ 54 , 55 ].…”

“…In terms of perception, there are four dimensions of taste, i.e., quality, intensity, temporal, and spatial patterns [ 62 ]. The quality attribute describes the sensations of taste compounds into four basic tastes, i.e., sweet, sour, salty, and bitter [ 53 ]. The intensity of the taste compounds is influenced by their concentration.…”

Taste, Nutrition, and Health

“…Finally, Hartley, Liem, and Keast [13] re-examine the notion that umami qualifies as a basic taste. They argue that umami meets most of the criteria for a basic taste-it is elicited by a distinct class of stimuli (e.g., L-glutamate), it activates specific receptor(s), (e.g., T1R1/T1R3), etc., but it does not generate a unique taste quality.…”