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Best in the World explore New Frontiers of Taste Cheltenham Festival of Science The New Frontiers of Taste event at this year's Cheltenham Festival of Science provides a unique opportunity for a dialogue with the world's leading explorers in the science of taste and the sensations associated with our fifth taste - umami. Taking part in this evening of sensory and culinary insight will be 3-star Chef and proprietor of the best restaurant in the world Heston Blumenthal, Edmund Rolls, Professor of Experimental Psychology at Oxford University and expert in the brain's response to taste, Ichiro Kubota, Head Chef of UMU, the first Kyoto-style Japanese restaurant in the UK, Stefan Gates, BBC presenter, food writer and gastronaut, and Xavier Chapelou and Jean-Louis Naveilan, French sommeliers whose goal is to change the way we think about saké! Professor Kathy Sykes will chair the event, with a mission to encourage active participation by the audience! International Glutamate Information Service, together with Umami Information Center, is delighted to be sponsoring this event. Despite being discovered almost 100 years ago, knowledge and understanding of umami is still in its infancy in the West. However, for taste scientists and some of the world's more innovative chefs umami provides opportunities to explore what makes some of our most distinctive food experiences pleasurable and exciting. Event and Booking Details New Frontiers of Taste About Umami Umami is term coined by a Japanese scientist almost 100 years ago, to describe the distinctive taste of the amino acid glutamate. The receptors which enable us to taste umami were identified as recently as 2002. Umami is now recognised as the fifth taste, quite distinct from sweet, sour, salt and bitter. Glutamate, one of the amino acid building blocks of protein, occurs naturally in virtually all protein containing foods. Essential for a healthy metabolism, glutamate is produced by our bodies and is found in abundance in mother's milk. In food, its role is to make food taste delicious. As foods ripen or mature the levels of glutamate rise making the food taste even better. Ripe tomatoes, mature cheese and cured ham are all rich in glutamate and the distinctive taste of umami. |