How many flavors do you feel throughout the day? Stop to try to count, from breakfast to that snack before bed. It's coffee, juice, bread and butter, cheeses, jellies, rice, beans, meat, chicken, pasta, cake, salads, fruits... It seems like a lot to just define between sweet, salty, bitter or sour, doesn't it? Well, know that scientists think so too and after a lot of research, they finally managed to discover the starch, known as the sixth flavor. The fifth is umami, also recently discovered and little known.
Umami is a Japanese word that means “tasteful and pleasant taste”, the taste is defined as something delicious. Because it is a relative concept, it is a flavor that scientists still have some difficulty explaining and spreading among people. But they say it would be the taste that breast milk brings to babies, as it is the only food they need and are aware of. Later in life, we would have this feeling with foods rich in monosodium glutamate such as tomatoes, meats in general, strong cheeses and soy sauce.
Starch, on the other hand, is the most recent discovery and is the name given to the taste we feel when we eat. carbohydrates in general, as it would be the specific flavor of foods that contain starch. Breads, potatoes, rice, pasta and oatmeal would be the main foods that give us the feeling of starch in our mouths. The discovery can be considered late because the starch, in contact with saliva, makes our brain confused and feel a sweet taste.
To discover this taste, a study was carried out with several volunteers who proposed to try different types of starch after ingesting substances that blocked sugar in the taste. Caucasians related flavor to pasta, Asians to rice, and some to starch directly.
After these recent discoveries, scientists have already stated that they do not intend to stop and that the flavors we know tend to increase more and more. At the moment, the issues of the metallic taste of blood, the taste of calcium and also the taste of fatty foods are being worked on. In this way, we will have an increasingly specific nomenclature for such a varied palate in the face of an infinite range of flavors.
- Text written by Roberta Lopes from the Eu Sem Fronteiras Team.
