Health Care 101 Blog

Glutamates are found in the salts and ions that are coming from glutamic acid and they are the ones responsible for providing the umami or savory taste in many provisions. It is a non-essential amino acid. It is produced in most fermented or aged foods such as cheese, soy sauce, and even bean pastes. Hydrolyzed proteins also have components of these substances, in the form of yeast extracts. In order to confirm the natural properties of glutamates, there has been a comparison of its composition found in monosodium glutamate to that of other foods like tomatoes, mushrooms, leeks, and cabbages. The result was affirmative, being 100% identical.

With instances naturally occurring in food, the natural element of glutamates have been proven with the research done by Kikunae Ikeda, a professor at the Tokyo Imperial University, in 1908. The study was initiated in looking for an answer in the taste created from eating dashi with kombu seaweed. There is some kind of sweetness, which is not too salty or meaty, detected in the soup. He used the seaweed and extracted glutamic acid by aqueous extraction and crystallization. As brown crystals have been created, he tasted it and identified the distinct flavor as umami, the fifth taste that is apart from sweet, sour, salty, or bitter. As professor Ikeda became successful in the creation of glutamate in larger amounts, he patented a method of mass-producing the crystalline salt, thus naming it monosodium glutamate.

As mentioned, glutamate is an amino acid, which is naturally found in most living cells. They can be observed in the body as free or floating, while another form is bound, tied up in proteins. Of the two forms, free glutamates are the ones with the flavor-enhancing properties for food. Monosodium glutamates are not just for improving food taste; it also plays a key role in being a neurotransmitter, responsible for improving learning and memory retention. It also has a part in cellular metabolism, which helps in breaking down proteins and digesting it into amino acids. Due its functions in the body, including its purpose in improving the taste of food, glutamates are thus proven as natural amino acids.