Do you know what umami is? Well, umami is a Japanese word that means delicious  or savory, but which has been used in recent years to delineate the so-called “fifth” taste. In all, the tastes that our taste buds can perceive are six : sweet, salty, sour, bitter, umami and fat (another recent discovery). It is clear that none of us would say of a food we eat “is umami”, also because it is difficult for Westerners to define a food in this way , even if we all have it present, in reality, when we eat Chinese or Japanese or when we eat some ready meals, often freeze-dried, some vegetables and cheeses. Umami is in fact a sweetish-sapid flavor or (Dario Bressanini proposes to call it that, savory) which corresponds to monosodic glutamate or, mainly (but not necessarily): it is the aftertaste of Parmesan , some mushrooms, some molasses, soy sauce.

In general, all foods rich in proteins have this as an identifying taste: they are in fact neither sweet nor salty nor acid, they are umami. Here, you will be anxious to ask yourself what all this has to do with the diet: well, the foods that taste of umami make you lose weight . Foods with glutamate or a similar flavor, according to a group of researchers from the University of Sussex, have a taste that easily satisfies the palate and is more filling. If we want to experience it, we have to enrich our diet with glutamate-based foods (or glutamic acid): Parmigiano Reggiano (how much can you eat ?, which actually satisfies me immediately), Roquefort, soy sauce (using it instead salt).If we used soy sauce instead of salt (or often), our dishes would be more filling!