NPR's All Things Considered featured an interview with Victoria Lee alongside historian of food science Sarah Tracy in a segment headlined "Why it took nearly 100 years for umami to be globally accepted as a distinct flavor." It was excerpted from an episode of NPR's Short Wave podcast, headlined "Taste Buddies: The Origins of Umami." A Japanese chemist identified umami in the early 1900s, but it took a century for his work to be translated into English. The episode examined why it took so long for umami to be recognized as the fifth taste.
Lee talked about why flavor research was an important part of nutrition science in Japan following World War I. She also explained how it was strategic for some Japanese nutrition researchers to focus on areas that would be specific to or culturally resonant in Japan.
Listen to the interview on NPR's All Things Considered .
Lee recently published The Arts of the Microbial World: Fermentation Science in Twentieth-Century Japan (University of Chicago Press, 2021). Tracy is the author of the forthcoming book, Delicious: A History of Monosodium Glutamate, Umami, and the Dysphoric Sublime (University of California Press).