Hey, I just dropped a blog out there about the recent discussions going on about umami, the 5th taste. It joins sweet, sour, bitter, and salty as a flavor we can taste and sometimes crave!

This forum thread is for us to discuss ways we've kicked it up a notch with regard to flavor by consciously using umami stuff in our best, healthiest foods.

Umami flavor is highly concentrated in parmesan cheese, and is also concentrated in meats (especially cured meats like ham or bacon), other hard cheeses, mushrooms (especially shitake--and especially dried), tomatoes and tomato products like sauces and ketchup, and more. Check out wikipedia.org for more info. Then try it out and post your faves!

Unami is very common in Japanese food. Looking at your list, I would avoid parmesan cheese, ham and bacon. They are saturated fat and are very difficult to get rid of unless you have alot of muscles. Hard cheese is a no-no. I'm not even sure if it's even food. I have a package of hard cheese, about a year old, that has no moles.