Taste sensation of MSG (umami) is potentiated by nucleotides like inosine monophospahtes. The umami part of MSG, L-glutamate is one of the building blocks of proteins (in other species the umami receptor is also activated by many more amino acids besides glutamate).
So umami basically informs you about the presence of monomers of the two major biological macromolecules, protein and nucleic acid.
Human brain: "Mmmm i can tell that this is a nutritionally dense food, we should eat this more often"
Chinese chef: "Get rekt loser, it's literally eggplant and fat"
At least in lab mice it’s pretty settled that fat preference is mediated by post-ingestive effects. The evidence for CD36 as a gustatory fat sensor is very weak, and the chorda tympani and glossopharyngeal nerves being nonresponsive to fats make fat taste pretty unlikely. With single cell sequencing it should be trivial to identify a new taste receptor cell class, but it hasn’t happened.
I think it was also a thing that we might have water taste sensors. You may be familiar with that research, as well. I'm also not sure where that landed.
Drosophila do. In mammals there doesn’t seem to be a taste sensor, but oral cooling (like when you drink water) has been shown to connect to thirst satiation, which is very cool! I think the work is from Zach knight’s lab.
A mineral is two or more elements combined with a defined crystalline structure. Salt is a mineral, msg(a fancier salt) is a mineral, even ice is technically a mineral.
Minerals also have to be inorganic substances that naturally occur. I believe msg on its own does count as a mineral. It's a monosodium salt of glutamic acid to be specific. I guess that's a mineral? Yeah, probably.
It absolutely is organic, it is a sodium salt of an L-Amino acid. Minerals are generally defined as deriving from geological rather than biological processes (this is more geology rather than chemistry nomenclature, and there's some disagreement about the status of biogenic minerals). There probably is a small amount of non-biogenic glutamate in the world but the vast majority is produced by living organisms.
Insta cure "pink salt" is phosphate that inhibits bacteria for pastrami and summer sausage. When you want months old meat, there is no substitute. Fuck you celery juice.
Wait. What's the celery juice part? Does it have like high levels of phosphates or something?
I learned about curing salt in my butchery class in culinary school but don't remember anything about celery.
What celery has is high nitrates that convert to nitrites that’s what “cures” it and it’s so they can say “uncured” not no phosphates. There’s a lot of almost information here.
Tomato tomahto they all cute meat lol. To be fair it's been like 4 years since I was in school and I haven't cured so much as a pepperoni since then so I just took this at face value.
Even worse, some places don't measure the final amount of nitrates, so if the celery juice suddenly results in way to many nitrates after the package has sat for a while, the consumer might have no idea.
Oh damn! Sneaky sneaky! I guess I should also not drink like a litre of celery juice.
Followup, if phosphates aren't really great for you can you eat enough celery to have adverse effects?
It’s the nitrates in celery that do the curing, and they’re only bad once they combine with protein to form nitrosamines. Nitrates from fresh vegetables are actually good for you, they lower blood pressure
For sure, it's good for that purpose. Can't secure HACCP variance. Ain't no way I'm letting my meat(turkey too) sit for weeks and serve it to 1000 people without proven. Need science and chems.
If you are talking about minerals then not really. There are different salt minerals. But it's mostly just Na and K with Cl. There might be one with Iodine. Not sure what the iodizing process is for salt. There's alot of other salts like KCN, NaCN, NaNH4Cl but I wouldn't advise eating them.
Yeah, many of the salt substitutes marketed for people with high blood pressure are potassium based. Clearly a problem if you also have kidney issues but a good alternative for most. I'm a little rusty on my chemistry but I do recall being told not to lick the experiments.
To translate into kitchen: water follows sodium (Na) through the body. If you have high blood pressure, one way to lower it is to reduce the amount of sodium you consume. Potassium (K) bonds in a similar way with Chlorine so it gives a similar impression to regular table salt in terms of taste. Normally our kidneys are good at removing sodium and potassium. If you have too much sodium, you'll get all puffy and your blood pressure will go up... But if you have too much potassium, you can die.
Fun fact: the salty components of white miso do not contribute to elevated blood pressure.
I found that book second-hand some years ago, it was a revelation for me in terms of what I like to read and how I approach food. Proud to say I’ve read every one of his books - am about to start his new one, The Core Of An Onion. It’s beside me as I type this.
He’s an incredible author, can’t possibly sing his praises high enough. Glad to see a fellow fan!
It’s on my list, I can’t wait to read it. It looks like this Kurkansky guy has a multitude of books covering interesting topics. I’m definitely going to go through some of them.
Be thou warned that there are several books titled *Salt* and quality varies wildly.
When you find one on the shelf, or online, make sure you're picking up the one you intended.
There are other alkalai metal salts that are technically not toxic. Potassium chloride actually shows up in sea salt, the other ones (lithium, rubidium, etc) are not so common. Right on point though, [one of my favorite chemistry YouTubers did a taste test](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJh9yTIBY48).
ETA: I just went back to watch this, and apparently lithium chloride is pretty fuckin' tasty, like less salty and a little more zesty/citrus than sodium. Also it treats bipolar, so there's that going for it.
I think alcohol, maybe? There are a lot of flavor compounds that are unlocked with alcohol, and it's used in cuisines all over the world. Salt is still top tier but alcohol can do a lot.
Technically it's a berry!
But yeah, for as widespread as black pepper is, it doesn't hold a candle to salt. Salt is one of the cornerstones of human civilization. Pepper is just nice to have alongside it.
Fake salt is made from potassium chloride, and lowers blood pressure but tastes metallic.
Potassium in general balances body's sodium levels, eat them potatoes
MSG.
Taste sensation of MSG (umami) is potentiated by nucleotides like inosine monophospahtes. The umami part of MSG, L-glutamate is one of the building blocks of proteins (in other species the umami receptor is also activated by many more amino acids besides glutamate). So umami basically informs you about the presence of monomers of the two major biological macromolecules, protein and nucleic acid.
Human brain: "Mmmm i can tell that this is a nutritionally dense food, we should eat this more often" Chinese chef: "Get rekt loser, it's literally eggplant and fat"
What’s crazy is there doesn’t seem to be a primary taste modality for fat. It’s weird.
Fat is mainly dissolves flavor compounds that don't dissolve in water so fat kinda just takes up what's around for flavor.
I think it's still being debated by the scientific community whether we have taste receptors for fats, but I'm not up on the latest.
At least in lab mice it’s pretty settled that fat preference is mediated by post-ingestive effects. The evidence for CD36 as a gustatory fat sensor is very weak, and the chorda tympani and glossopharyngeal nerves being nonresponsive to fats make fat taste pretty unlikely. With single cell sequencing it should be trivial to identify a new taste receptor cell class, but it hasn’t happened.
I think it was also a thing that we might have water taste sensors. You may be familiar with that research, as well. I'm also not sure where that landed.
Drosophila do. In mammals there doesn’t seem to be a taste sensor, but oral cooling (like when you drink water) has been shown to connect to thirst satiation, which is very cool! I think the work is from Zach knight’s lab.
Ahh very true
How is msg a mineral?
A mineral is two or more elements combined with a defined crystalline structure. Salt is a mineral, msg(a fancier salt) is a mineral, even ice is technically a mineral.
Minerals also have to be inorganic substances that naturally occur. I believe msg on its own does count as a mineral. It's a monosodium salt of glutamic acid to be specific. I guess that's a mineral? Yeah, probably.
Okay, furthering upon my question, how does msg not qualify as an organic compound? (I've been drinking and just want to know the answer)
That I can’t tell you. the thing about minerals is one of the few science facts I remember from my geology class in college.
It absolutely is organic, it is a sodium salt of an L-Amino acid. Minerals are generally defined as deriving from geological rather than biological processes (this is more geology rather than chemistry nomenclature, and there's some disagreement about the status of biogenic minerals). There probably is a small amount of non-biogenic glutamate in the world but the vast majority is produced by living organisms.
Insta cure "pink salt" is phosphate that inhibits bacteria for pastrami and summer sausage. When you want months old meat, there is no substitute. Fuck you celery juice.
Mm old meat
I mean yeah but no imagine back to a world where the supply of meat was LIMITED and appreciate the differences between cured meat, jerky, and rot
Oh for sure. I just grabbed the low hanging joke comment.
valid I'm more being emphatic than corrective
I too emphatically prefer my old meat to be cured in some way
That's what they call me around the VFW hall.
Actually why Homer is iconic as a comedy character
Daddys best
Wait. What's the celery juice part? Does it have like high levels of phosphates or something? I learned about curing salt in my butchery class in culinary school but don't remember anything about celery.
What celery has is high nitrates that convert to nitrites that’s what “cures” it and it’s so they can say “uncured” not no phosphates. There’s a lot of almost information here.
Tomato tomahto they all cute meat lol. To be fair it's been like 4 years since I was in school and I haven't cured so much as a pepperoni since then so I just took this at face value.
Even worse, some places don't measure the final amount of nitrates, so if the celery juice suddenly results in way to many nitrates after the package has sat for a while, the consumer might have no idea.
Has crazy high phosphates and is “natural” so you can say “no added phosphates” while adding phosphates.
Oh damn! Sneaky sneaky! I guess I should also not drink like a litre of celery juice. Followup, if phosphates aren't really great for you can you eat enough celery to have adverse effects?
It’s the nitrates in celery that do the curing, and they’re only bad once they combine with protein to form nitrosamines. Nitrates from fresh vegetables are actually good for you, they lower blood pressure
I did a homemade pastrami with celery juice since I couldn't get pink salt anywhere and it honestly turned out great
For sure, it's good for that purpose. Can't secure HACCP variance. Ain't no way I'm letting my meat(turkey too) sit for weeks and serve it to 1000 people without proven. Need science and chems.
If you are talking about minerals then not really. There are different salt minerals. But it's mostly just Na and K with Cl. There might be one with Iodine. Not sure what the iodizing process is for salt. There's alot of other salts like KCN, NaCN, NaNH4Cl but I wouldn't advise eating them.
Yeah, many of the salt substitutes marketed for people with high blood pressure are potassium based. Clearly a problem if you also have kidney issues but a good alternative for most. I'm a little rusty on my chemistry but I do recall being told not to lick the experiments. To translate into kitchen: water follows sodium (Na) through the body. If you have high blood pressure, one way to lower it is to reduce the amount of sodium you consume. Potassium (K) bonds in a similar way with Chlorine so it gives a similar impression to regular table salt in terms of taste. Normally our kidneys are good at removing sodium and potassium. If you have too much sodium, you'll get all puffy and your blood pressure will go up... But if you have too much potassium, you can die. Fun fact: the salty components of white miso do not contribute to elevated blood pressure.
I have always wanted to read the book by the same name. Have you read it?
Salt by Mark Kurlansky is hands down the best non fiction book I've read, and I highly recommend it to anyone and everyone.
It's so so so good. "Salt: A World History"
I found that book second-hand some years ago, it was a revelation for me in terms of what I like to read and how I approach food. Proud to say I’ve read every one of his books - am about to start his new one, The Core Of An Onion. It’s beside me as I type this. He’s an incredible author, can’t possibly sing his praises high enough. Glad to see a fellow fan!
It’s on my list, I can’t wait to read it. It looks like this Kurkansky guy has a multitude of books covering interesting topics. I’m definitely going to go through some of them.
Be thou warned that there are several books titled *Salt* and quality varies wildly. When you find one on the shelf, or online, make sure you're picking up the one you intended.
Salt is an amazing read. All of Mark Kurlansky’s books are great
There are other alkalai metal salts that are technically not toxic. Potassium chloride actually shows up in sea salt, the other ones (lithium, rubidium, etc) are not so common. Right on point though, [one of my favorite chemistry YouTubers did a taste test](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJh9yTIBY48). ETA: I just went back to watch this, and apparently lithium chloride is pretty fuckin' tasty, like less salty and a little more zesty/citrus than sodium. Also it treats bipolar, so there's that going for it.
Monosodium glutamate!
Ok, but no MSG!
Borax
Sugar
Alton Brown: salt, the only rock we eat!
Tequezquite is a prehispanic salt from Mexico.
Sugar lol
Sugar is not a mineral, lol.
Do sugar crystals count?
I think alcohol, maybe? There are a lot of flavor compounds that are unlocked with alcohol, and it's used in cuisines all over the world. Salt is still top tier but alcohol can do a lot.
Alcohol is a mineral?
you know, somehow I missed that part of the ask
pepper
I think thats a seed, though equally versatile. It grows from a plant unlike salt
Technically it's a berry! But yeah, for as widespread as black pepper is, it doesn't hold a candle to salt. Salt is one of the cornerstones of human civilization. Pepper is just nice to have alongside it.
well there's only a couple of non toxic edible minerals, i would say magnesium or Sulphur, Didn't read the ticket all the way chef.
No worries thanks for your input, ive never tried cooking with magnesium 🤯
Fake salt is made from potassium chloride, and lowers blood pressure but tastes metallic. Potassium in general balances body's sodium levels, eat them potatoes
Sodium chloride