Good and Bad News: Religious Needs Are Unmet

Rabbi Ari Lamm

Americans' participation in organized religion has never been lower, but Rabbi Ari Lamm believes that

The Prospects of American Religion Have Never Been Higher

A recent Gallup poll included some grim news: Less than 50% of Americans belong to a religious community such as a church or a synagogue, the lowest since the organization began asking the question in 1937. As an Orthodox rabbi, I might feel gloomy about the future of my profession. But the prospects of American religion have never been brighter....

This isn’t news for those of us who have dedicated our lives to the rabbinate or priesthood. The reasons for the decline in synagogue and church attendance range from the changing nature of cities to competition with digital communication. Congregating with others in a physical space is a cornerstone of most faiths—I happily do it three times daily—but there’s much more to religion than sitting quietly on a wooden bench and listening to a sermon.

Seen this way, the new Gallup survey should be read not as an obituary but an opportunity. Religion is ripe for disruption, to borrow a term from Silicon Valley: Plenty of Americans still love the product—just not its current platform.

For centuries critics have claimed that organized religion diverts attention from the fundamental teachings of faith. Churches and synagogues had placed their priorities on soul-numbing procedures, meetings, fund-raising, and socializing.

Lately the emphasis has been on social justice, global warming, systemic racism, and other issues, which, however important, make churches just another political advocacy group. That's not what most people want from their religion.

People attend religious services because they want a spot of religion. Yet worshipers hear too much about climate change, systemic racism and transgender rights and not enough about Abraham, Sarah and Isaac or Luke, Matthew and John. Treating religion like the Academy Awards or the National Basketball Association—which also don’t draw the same attention they used to—has left Americans suspicious about traditional faith. This can be rectified by focusing on what business-school types call the core offering.

Your humble blogger has posted frequently on how the Episcopal Church seems to pursue social justice over spreading the Word in its public pronouncements. Since I composed the above in 2012, it has only become more involved in partisan politics.

COVID-19 upended worship-as-usual and caused churches to initiate or improve virtual services. It offers them a chance to reset. Will my church and other religions seize the opportunity to turn away from the path they were on and go back to basics? Rabbi Lamm is hopeful.

Father Mike Schmitz’s “Bible in a Year” became one of the most downloaded shows in Apple’s podcast app. Tens of thousands of Jews who hadn’t been to a shul in years now tune in weekly to listen to “Unorthodox,” the world’s most popular Jewish podcast. This is as an invitation to every rabbi, priest and minister in America to do as good spiritual shepherds have always done and come meet their flock where they graze...

Services offered during the pandemic were just that—religious services. They were not, as so many felt compelled to offer before the pandemic struck, social gatherings with thin religious veneers. For decades houses of worship had flourished with the American suburb, serving as a focal point of communal life. In Jewish circles, this is known as “a shul with a pool,” suggesting that congregants should see the synagogue as the destination for everything, from Sunday school to a quick swim. This model is fading, and organizations that focus on the heart of the matter—the prayers and rituals and rites—are likely to reap the rewards.

Church conventions that I've attended have always been more about politics than the spiritual needs of the members. Perhaps some of the passion has dissipated now that the Federal and State governments are controlled by politicians whom the church agrees with. So I'm hopeful.

May Day, 2021

(HVB photo)

May Day festivities in Hawaii were cancelled last year, but--can you feel it?--there are signs of revival everywhere. Schools, churches, and other groups are having virtual celebrations, and vaccinated families and friends are having low-key gatherings.

There will be flower leis made, given, and received this year, many more than 2020 but not as many as 2022.

Your humble blogger prefers Hawaii's May Day to the Marxist version. To me receiving a lei with a kiss is more worthwhile than marching with a raised fist, but however you choose to spend it, dear reader, have a wonderful May Day.

Phat Food

If you're going to eat beets, you may as well eat Phat Beets.

Beets are on the list of desirable foods because of their high vitamin, mineral, and fiber content, but frankly I don't much care for the unseasoned taste. Pickling with lemon juice, vinegar, brown sugar, onions, ginger, and other spices makes every hard vegetable (e.g., carrots, cauliflower, cucumber) palatable, even tasty. Also--and this may be psychosomatic--I get indigestion when beets are not pickled.

So, more phat beets for me.

Don't Disturb Grandpa While He's Sleeping

(Washington School of Medicine illustration)

At last July's check-up I asked the doctor why I have to get up in the middle of the night to relieve myself. His response: as men age, the prostate enlarges and presses against the bladder; it's all quite natural and nothing to worry about.

Though comforting, his statement didn't address the problem of going back to sleep (I stay awake till morning about a third of the time).

The importance of sleep has been confirmed by yet another study: [bold added]

People age 50 or 60 who regularly slept six hours or less each night were more likely than those who slept seven hours to be diagnosed with dementia, according to the study published Tuesday in the scientific journal Nature Communications.

Even after controlling for cardiac, metabolic and mental-health issues, the study researchers found that 50-year-olds who were sleeping six hours or less a night had a 22% higher risk of developing dementia later in life. Sixty-year-olds were 37% more likely to develop the disorder. The comparisons were with people who slept for seven hours each night.

What about the risk if one can go back to sleep after using the bathroom?

Studies have also shown that interruptions preventing people from getting a good night’s sleep are associated with higher dementia risk later on.

Past research also suggests that obesity, high systolic blood pressure and mental-health issues like depression increase the risk of sleep issues and dementia.

This research on inadequate sleep is keeping me up at night.

Paris Accord Target Met: Just Eliminate the NFL Draft

There was President Biden's "sweeping" tax-and-spend-initiatives speech to Congress last night. There were Apple's "historic" quarterly revenues ($89.6 billion) and profits ($23.6 billion) announced after the market's close yesterday.

But the most important news of the day, the preoccupation of millions of Americans for an entire month, is....which quarterback will the 49ers select with their #3 pick in the NFL draft? WSJ columnist Jason Gay puts it all in perspective: [bold added]

Draft metaphor (From images.squarespace-cdn.com)

Football’s draft, which kicks off Thursday night in Cleveland, is the biggest, most beautiful gas factory in all of sports, a monthslong blabby-blab blab-a-thon in which well-sourced experts, armchair fans and mediocre sports columnists at financial newspapers compete for the right to be wrong at least 50% of the time.

A power company could charge the nation with the hot air annually expelled in the weeks leading up to this event—who’s moving up; who’s moving down; who’s the hot pick; who’ll pull off a draft-day heist for the ages. Nobody really knows! And the jargon: You’re not an official draft guru unless you’re tossing off buzzy terms like “arm talent.” Arm talent! What does that even mean? Are the football cognoscenti now evaluating the skill of a solitary arm, disembodied from the rest of the human being, like The Thing in “The Addams Family?” Isn’t arm talent like, just, you know, throwing?

It doesn’t matter. Get it right, get it wrong, the draft is a huge deal, really an optimal event for these times, a windy feast of gossip, cherry-picked facts and baseless speculation—America’s second, third and fourth favorite past times, after screaming at each other on social media about pandemic face masks.

Your humble blogger has been a fan of the local teams, the 49ers and Raiders (until the Raiders moved to Las Vegas in January, 2020). However, a modicum of life balance had been achieved by avoiding fantasy football and the NFL Draft....until 33 days ago, when the 49ers gave up a Bezosian ransom in future draft picks to move up from #12 to #3 in the draft order. If one lingered on any sports channel or any sports page for a half-minute, one could not avoid the blather.

San Francisco, with Jimmy Garoppolo as its quarterback, has a loaded team which was in the Super Bowl only 14 months ago. Apparently the Niners think that Jimmy G. isn't good enough to lead the team long-term; to draft his replacement they made moves that disrupted the NFL eco-system like an asteroid strike.

The apotheosis (or is it the nadir?) was reached when a reporter asked Coach Kyle Shanahan if Jimmy Garoppolo would be the 49ers quarterback on the Sunday after today's draft. His answer: "I can't guarantee that anybody in the world will be alive Sunday." Wow, that's some heavy stuff you're smoking, man.



Again, WSJ columnist Jason Gay: With the third pick in the 2021 NFL draft, the San Francisco 49ers select Friedrich Nietzsche, from Leipzig University!

[Update: 37-year-old Aaron Rodgers, the reigning MVP of the league, wants to leave the Packers and is eyeing the 49ers. Thanks, Aaron, it sure was quiet before you said that.]

Aaron Rodgers wanted Packers to accept 49ers' trade offer. https://t.co/1VD1pgNHJ8

— ProFootballTalk (@ProFootballTalk) April 29, 2021

Maybe a Good Scolding Will Bring Them Back

Post-war Levittown, PA (photo: J Reps)

The suburbs boomed after World War II, and Progressives have been decrying them ever since. The latest harangue, by the Chroncile editorial page:

Editorial: No, Californians aren't fleeing for Texas. They're moving to unsustainable suburbs [bold added]

California isn’t shrinking. It’s growing unsustainably.

Dense urban centers like San Francisco and Los Angeles are seeing outmigration. But smaller, car-dependent cities like Fresno and suburban and exurban communities — often in fire country — are booming. In the tiny city of Lathrop, 9 miles south of Stockton, a new 5,000-acre community is in the works that will include 11,000 single-family homes. Home sales in Sacramento’s suburbs are also exploding, as well as in drought and wildfire-prone Sonoma County and Southern California’s Inland Empire and desert communities.

Newfound work-from-home options for high-paid office workers are driving some of this movement. But these migration patterns were already in place long before COVID-19 untethered these workers’ housing from their jobs.

Rental prices may have come down slightly in San Francisco, but they’re hardly affordable. Los Angeles remains impenetrable as well. People are chasing the California dream where they can afford it. And right now that’s in the distant ’burbs.

There’s an old-fashioned word for this pattern of migration and development: It’s called sprawl. And it’s kneecapping the state’s climate change fight.

Of course, it doesn’t have to be this way. Big California cities still have room to grow. We need them to if the state is going to have a sustainable future. Dense housing near jobs, transit and entertainment has a much lower carbon footprint than car-centric suburban homes.

But the path to get us there is iffy. California may not be growing as fast as it used to, but its future doesn’t look much different than its past: suburban and unsustainable.

No, Progressives, your scare tactics won't work ("drought","fire country"), not to mention your sniffing at the plebes ("sprawl", "unsustainable"). And what's with the suburbs fostering climate change? Sacramento, which you control, has ordered us all into electric cars in a few years, so transportation won't be a source of bogeyman carbon.

It's your emptying cities which frighten us with homeless encampments, rampant burglary, drugs, usurious rents, filthy mass-transit, filthy streets, and labyrinthine regulations, which all come with extra taxes for the privilege of living and working in your precious highrises.

As COVID-19 taught us, we don't need to go to the City for leisure. As more employers move out, we won't have to go to the City for work, either.

Looks Like Wood

An iron horse that looks like wood

A cool Tuesday morning was an excellent time for a stroll to Starbucks. I had always driven past the new condo developments and had not noticed the sculpture by the side entrance to one of the buildings.

The seahorse had been placed without any attempt to show it off; the brown fence wasn't the optimal background, IMHO, but what does this left-brained numbers guy know about esthetics?

There was no sign, hence no name for the work or clue who the artist was. The seahorse itself was an iron alloy painted brown, which is an inspired choice as the creeping rust blends with the fading color.

Finishing his coffee and rumination about unimportant questions that he will never seek the answers to, the humble blogger rises from the outdoor table at Starbucks to head home.

San Francisco Has a Font (and I Don't Care)

Added to the list of things that I never knew were needed: San Francisco finally has its own font.

The old embossed typeface

The font is inspired by San Francisco’s old embossed street signs, distinctive black-on-white steel markers that began appearing in 1946 and were prevalent in the city in the 1960s and 1970s.

The bubbled-out letters can be seen in archive photos, movies such as “Bullitt” and “Vertigo,” and almost every episode of “The Streets of San Francisco.”

According to designer Ben Zotto

Fog City Gothic (photoshop)

The [old] typeface was embossed in metal, and what happens is the edges get softened, and they paint the sign on top so it looks different from different angles.

That’s what I wanted to capture. Bold and blockish, but soft around the edges. I called it Fog City Gothic hoping to evoke that feeling.

Eh, the San Francisco font is fine.

Your humble blogger knows what he doesn't like: at one extreme he shuns letters that are too squarish and on the other he always switches from fonts that have a lot of curly cues. Fog City Gothic falls within the vast middle that is acceptable, and some people like the designer obviously care, but I just don't.

The Totems of His Life

St. Francis in the Desert, Bellini, ca. 1470

Professor William Wallace, as art teachers are wont to do, asks us to pause and notice everything included in St. Francis in the Desert: [bold added]

A rocky escarpment dominates the right half of the picture, evoking—despite the painting’s current title—La Verna, the mountainous retreat in Central Tuscany where Francis received the stigmata (Christ’s wounds from the Crucifixion). A woven wattle gate closes the entrance to the saint’s dark grotto cell. A grape arbor shelters a well-constructed lectern desk and plank bench. Reading and meditation are aided by the clasped, leather-bound book; vigilant skull; thin reed cross; and a bell waiting to be jangled by its knotted string. The cast-off wooden clogs suggest we are on holy ground, prompting us to note Francis’s bare feet, and perhaps to search for evidence of the stigmata.

Professor Wallace goes on to comment about every object in the painting to foster an appreciation of the work. The artist's method is consistent with Renaissance portraiture, which not only depicted the individual but also his or her interests, life history, and/or status.

Francis of Assisi rejected his family's wealth (in the upper left "the world he left behind: a medieval town with arched gateways and crenellated walls") and embraced a life of absolute poverty. He preached a love of animals and all of God's creation. At great personal risk he visited and tried to convert the Sultan of Egypt in the midst of the Crusades. He founded the Franciscan Order, which continues to have enormous influence in the Catholic Church.

Giovanni Bellini had a lot of material to choose from when he rendered St. Francis and the totems of his life. Pre-COVID-19, St. Francis in the Desert would have merited scarcely a glance from your humble blogger. Now that priorities have changed, I can spend a little more time appreciating art.

Not Completely Woke

Calhoun College was renamed
after Grace Hopper, computer
scientist and USN rear admiral

In 2017 Yale renamed Calhoun College [one of its 14 residential colleges] because of "John C. Calhoun’s legacy as a white supremacist and a national leader who passionately promoted slavery."

In 2018 numerous Yale students and alumni "expressed outrage" against the nomination of alumnus Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court--not to mention tried to get Law Professor Amy Chua fired for her support of Justice Kavanaugh.

For the record your humble blogger agreed with the Calhoun change but was appalled at the way leftists went after Brett Kavanaugh on the uncorroborated recollections of a questionable witness.

The fact that the woke press, so diligent with digging into the past of non-Progressives, dropped the subject as soon as Brett Kavanaugh was sworn in, is a strong indicator that they knew the whole thing was a sham. Frankly, I'm still interested in finding out if there was something to the story, and, if there is not, who instigated and promulgated the fake narrative.

There's a distinct difference between marshalling facts to prevail in an argument--as in the case of Calhoun/Hopper--versus making up stuff in order to win the day. There's enough of the latter going on everywhere, and Yale students, especially the elite at Yale Law, ought to know better.

It was refreshing to discover, however, that Yale has remained true to liberal principles by honoring a distinguished alumnus even though his family is the epitome of the New England blue bloods that were instrumental in founding the country.

1948: Babe Ruth meets the future president

Headline: Yale Baseball Field Named in Honor of George Bush ’48

...historic Yale Field, which has hosted the likes of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Ted Williams, will be named George H.W. Bush '48 Field in honor of one its most accomplished alumni, George Herbert Walker Bush, who captained the Yale baseball team in his senior season...

Bush started his Eli career as a first baseman in 1945, after serving his country as a naval aviator during World War II — the youngest in the U.S. at that time. After remarkable service to his country, he returned to the baseball diamond and the classrooms of Yale.

He went on to earn a degree in economics in less than three years, and was elected captain of the baseball team in his senior season. Bush helped his teams to two College World Series, in 1947 and 1948.

After graduation, Bush began working in the Texas oil business, and, in 1966, was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, launching his career in public service. He served as ambassador to the United Nations and to China, and then as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Under President Ronald Reagan, he served two terms as vice president. In 1988, Bush was elected the 41st President of the United States.

It's good to know that George H.W. Bush's character and record of accomplishment triumphed over the disadvantage of his heritage.

Bottom Story of the Day

Our TP inventory

Last spring we were concerned about the Fear of Running Out. We and millions of others apparently have stopped worrying.

Drop in Toilet-Paper Demand Prompts Kimberly-Clark’s Worst Sales Drop in a Decade

It is a sharp reversal from 2020 when the world’s consumers, stuck at home and hyper focused on cleaning, drove a 6% increase in organic sales for the year as they loaded up on paper towels, cleaning products and other household staples. Consumer-tissue sales last year rose 14%...

Demand for toilet paper shot up in the outbreak’s initial weeks, doubling in the second week of March, and remained elevated throughout most of 2020. Americans spent more than $11 billion on toilet paper last year, up from $9 billion in a typical year, according to NielsenIQ. If the current pace holds, 2021 sales would be less than $9 billion.

We carry our stock of paper goods at higher levels than we used to and no longer wait for a sale to load up, partly because there are fewer sales anyway. This is the same psychology that makes us fill our gas tanks at the one-half mark instead of waiting for the needle to drop below a quarter-tank.

When Kimberly-Clark and Procter & Gamble start having sales on TP again, then we know we're back to normal.

Re-use and Re-cycle

Today we're recycling.

Herewith an excerpt from the Earth Day post 10 years ago:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Many in the community took to heart the admonition to "reduce, reuse, and recycle" by donating household articles in the "free-cycle" area, which was largely picked clean by day's end. Most items were in good condition, but attendees were on their good behavior and didn't appear to be overly grabby despite everything being free.

The church booth was crowded in the morning.

Community organizations such as our church were permitted to sell goods for fundraising purposes. (All our proceeds went to hunger and education charities.) Keeping in mind the 3 R's of Earth Day, we applied heavy discounts from the start because we didn't want to have anything left at the close. Children's books at 3 for $1 moved quickly, and everything else was between 50 cents and $2.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Like last year, Earth Day in-person festivities have been cancelled. Let's hope that we'll have something new to write about on Earth Day, 2022.

San Francisco: Not Knowing or Caring that Business is Melting Away

Though it's tempting to comment on the issues of the day, your humble blogger refrains because they're all very thorny and not amenable to quick takes in a blog post. Whether we're talking about racism in all its manifestations by every racial group, or climate change, or artificial intelligence, or the coronavirus, or illegal immigration, or the rise of imperial China, they'll take decades to resolve.

One thing is certain, our government will waste $trillions; there's little agreement on defining these problems and how solutions will be measured. [For example, is global warming fixed when North America is buried in snow? Or is police violence against Black Americans solved when there are zero Black deaths in a year? (there are obvious answers to that one, such as completely disarming the police or not trying to arrest Black suspects.) ]

Ice cream entrepreneur gets the cold shoulder

Back on planet Earth, millions of ordinary people are just trying to make a living, like Jason Yu, who wanted to open an ice cream shop in San Francisco: [bold added]

Yu was featured in this [SF Chronicle] column in October after spending 16 months and $150,000 trying to open Matcha n’ More at 20th and Valencia streets and having little to show for it...

But sadly, there will be no grand opening for Yu and his ice cream shop — and no sweet ending to his bitter tale. After another six months and another $50,000, Yu has abandoned his plans.

It's difficult to imagine an American city that has more obstacles to starting a business:

Yu’s plans sounded sweet back in late 2018 when he decided to open a shop serving green-tea-flavored soft serve ice cream. He spent several months searching for the perfect space and landed on the 20th Street site in June 2019, signing a lease for $7,300 a month. He hired an architect to draw up plans to upgrade the electrical and plumbing systems, build a front counter and install kitchen equipment. He planned no structural changes or modifications to the building’s exterior...

Yu won approval, but then got stuck in the city’s never-ending web of securing permits. The Department of Building Inspection’s online permit tracker shows Yu faced 15 hurdles to secure his permits including getting the sign-off from a host of departments. The last to weigh in was the Department of Public Health, which said in December its review was complete, but that Yu owed more money in permit fees before the department could give the OK.

That’s when Yu started having second thoughts. Even after spending $200,000 on rent, an architect, a lawyer, equipment and fees, he’d still need to pay at least $120,000 in construction on his space. And he knew he’d have to hold his grand opening in the middle of a pandemic when capacity is still limited.

Was it even worth it? He finally decided it wasn’t.

San Francisco won't change because the Progressives who dominate the City haven't worried about political competition for half a century, and the bureaucrats who are beholden to them know that they'll never be fired (unless they speak out against Progressive rule).

Normal is When Spam Sales Resume

One of the minor downsides of COVID-19 is that Costco no longer has sales on such essentials as toilet paper and cleaning supplies.

To certain households like mine another essential is Spam. Costco used to have a sale in March and September. This picture from five years ago (April 9, 2016) shows an eight-pack of Spam to be $19.99 - $5.00 = $14.99. Well, they still sell it for $19.99, but there hasn’t been a sale for a year and a half, before the pandemic.

We're down to sixteen (!) cans, the oldest of which expires in August, 2023. I suppose I can hold out a little longer before having to stock up on Spam at the retail price.

C'mon, vaccines, do your magic.

New Taste on the Block

Trader Joe's Umami seasoning

It took a hundred years for a "new" taste, umami, to be acknowledged by food science. [bold added]

In 1907, while enjoying a bowl of soup made with dashi broth and kombu seaweed, the Japanese chemist Kikunae Ikeda had an insight that would change the culinary world. He noticed a taste that wasn’t sweet, salty, sour or bitter.

Ikeda gave this hard-to-describe savory taste a name—umami—and went on to identify the specific amino acid that triggered it.

Scientists in Europe and the U.S. remained skeptical about whether umami really was a taste until a receptor for it was discovered on the tongue almost a century later, in 2000. Today, it is taken for granted by most scientists and chefs...

Now kokumi has come on the scene.

Trader Joe's umami seasoning and
garlic sprinkled on beef ribs:
maybe they'll have kokumi.

The newer taste, kokumi, is even harder to describe than umami, but it is potentially just as important for understanding how and why we enjoy food. In Japanese, the term koku describes foods that have the kind of mouthful “thickness” often imparted by fats—what English speakers might describe as rich. “It feels like a physical sensation,” says the culinary scientist Joshua Evans. It works “by coating the mouth and becoming more intense and being extended in time.” When asked what foods have koku, Japanese food experts list wild boar, adult wasps, duck eggs and aged sake, as well as long-simmered and fermented dishes.

Koku reflects a sensory experience most closely allied with touch, influenced by aromas and textures. Adding the Japanese suffix -mi, meaning taste, highlights the specific taste detected by the tongue. The precise nature of kokumi remains the subject of great debate among sensory scientists and chefs, in part because it can’t be detected on the palate on its own; rather, it modifies other tastes and flavors.

The earliest kokumi research focused on the contribution of garlic to foods. In 1990, Japanese scientist Yoichi Ueda discovered that if he added diluted garlic to two types of soups, people eating them would describe having more sensations associated with kokumi. Subsequent research isolated amino acids in the garlic that seemed to cause the effect, including glutathione.

A Japanese lab claims to have identified the taste receptor triggered by glutathione, and scientists elsewhere have discovered that glutathione and other compounds appear to trigger kokumi in yeasts and in other foods. These include long-cooked meats such as chicken in chicken broth; some cheeses, such as Blue Shropshire, Gouda and Parmesan; and fermented foods like beer, soy sauce and fish paste.

Some sensory scientists remain skeptical. Paul Breslin, a nutritional sciences professor at Rutgers University, contends that the term kokumi will be difficult to understand and use “until the scientific and nonscientific community can agree both on its definition and on the prototypical eliciting stimuli”—that is to say, until we know more.

For all the uncertainty, kokumi has two potentially important implications. The first relates to our understanding of human evolution; the second, human health—especially efforts to create foods with fewer calories but more flavor. In both cases, kokumi may provide a kind of missing link.

Our ancestors didn’t have to be able to give kokumi a name or know its chemical sources to enjoy it. Our own research suggests that one key to the adoption of fire by humans, and the invention and adoption of fermentation, was the flavor of cooked and fermented foods. It is known that humans (as well as dogs, gorillas and chimpanzees) prefer cooked foods over raw foods. Humans also tend to prefer many fermented foods relative to their raw counterparts. But it has long been unclear why.

One possibility is that humans evolved a preference for complex aromas and the experience they contribute to flavor. Uncooked meat and rotten meat that is full of pathogens both tend to have simpler aromas than cooked meat or meat that is fermented and full of beneficial fermentation microbes. It is also notable that cooked meats and fermented foods tend to have kokumi.

We might picture an ancient human ancestor holding up a piece of meat that has been cooked on the fire, pleased by its aromas but also by the rich mouthfeel of its kokumi. Our ancestors didn’t have to be able to give kokumi a name or know its chemical sources to enjoy it.

Chef-researchers employed by top restaurants, such as Nabila Rodríguez Valerón at Copenhagen’s award-winning Alchemist, are now eagerly experimenting with the ways in which kokumi could be featured in modern meals to make foods that taste rich but are low in fat. A recent study by Ciarán Forde at the Clinical Nutrition Research Center in Singapore discovered that if the amino acid associated with kokumi is added to beef broth, particularly in combination with umami flavors, consumers perceive the broth to be richer and to have more calories.

Many traditional recipes from cultures around the world appear to already take advantage of this kokumi effect. For example, adding onion and garlic to soup stock to give it a fuller, deeper flavor. Often recipes start with a step in which chopped onions are soaked in fat or oil, in effect amplifying the flavors of those fats and oils. Kokumi is a taste that asks us to think of food holistically.

At least it's organic

Cooking in fat and oil makes dishes taste better, though traditional food vocabulary--sweeter, saltier, etc.--is inadequate to describe what made the food more enjoyable. Now we know that it was umame and kokumi.

However, I'll probably pass on the wild boar and most definitely the adult wasps. (By the way, how did "Japanese food experts" know that adult wasps are redolent--food critic word--with kokumi?)