Umami: the mystery of the fifth taste

[the button]

there was once the crow from below as well.

.... and a vest from the West.

 

[dwenfish]

Interesting article: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/recipes/article5896966.ece

*Plans on going all Blumenthal in his kitchen this weekend*

i read this as "the filth taste"....

 

[perplexis]

And exactly the same chance it could do something pleasant, then?

Let's consider the human body as a finely-balanced machine...
Let's ponder what happens when you perturb finely-balanced mechanisms.
A watch, say. Twizzling one of the cogs of a watch is unlikely to yield a more accurate timepiece.
Whatever, the review I cited above indicates that there's no conclusive evidence for MSG ingestion having the effect often ascribed to it. There are, however, a bunch of studies that show a significant effect of MSG causing headaches, flushes and other things associated with it anecdotally. BUT these are inconsistent.

But going back to your point- there's no reason why something that might have a deleterious effect would have the same chance of having a beneficial one (nor vice versa). You forget that a vast amount of the result of a thing might be null.

 

[DexterTCN]

...there's no reason why something that might have a deleterious effect would have the same chance of having a beneficial one (nor vice versa). You forget that a vast amount of the result of a thing might be null.

I didn't say beneficial, I said pleasant. (It is MSG, after all.)

I agree that the larger chance is of nothing much at all, though.