“The Secret Powers of Taste” on Arte, through the prism of time and species

ARTE – SATURDAY AUGUST 31 AT 8:55 PM – DOCUMENTARY

To say that this two-part, fifty-two-minute documentary is teeming is an understatement. Complex without being complicated, The Secret Powers of Taste (2024), by Annamaria Talas, delves very broadly and very deeply into the history of animal and plant species. And this since the dawn of time, as the credits underline against a magmatic visual background and music that recalls 2001, Space Odyssey (1968), de Stanley Kubrick.

This odyssey, which takes as a recurring narrative element the image of the carrot and the stick, explains how sweet and bitter flavors have settled in the plant kingdom, to encourage an aperitif or repulsive relationship in animals, birds and other species – including human beings, who are also much discussed in the film by the Hungarian director living in Australia.

For example, Australian koalas: eucalyptus leaves are essential to their survival, even though they are one of the most toxic plants. But these marsupials have developed a resistance to these toxic substances that allows them “to break them down to make them harmlessexplains Japanese wildlife biologist Takashi Hayakawa. However, they use their bitter taste receptors to select leaves containing a lower concentration of poison.”.

Mysterious umami

In addition to the many recent discoveries presented in a lively and visual manner by various international scientists, there are some picturesque cases that nevertheless teach us a lot: for example, two researchers who went to explore the Peruvian Amazon discovered that ants were not only looking for sweet tastes. “We were invaded by themrecalls biologist Robert Dudley. They weren’t attacking us, they were only interested in the salt in our sweat.” A rare salt in their natural environment.

Another case, almost comical, revealed by the research work of the American ecologist Rob Dunn and what he called the “drunken monkey hypothesis”. This showed that some of them were looking for particularly ripe fruits or the fermented sap of raffia palms, which contain a lot of ethanol, and ended up exhibiting the behaviors well known to alcoholic humans: bothering their peers and then sleeping like a log… The sequences related to human eating behavior are just as fascinating, in particular the one devoted to umami, the fifth basic flavor (with sweet, sour, bitter and salty). The Japanese term, official and international since 1985, means “savory taste”, and it is with this that the French version of the documentary translates the Anglo-Saxon term savoury.

Scientifically, umami is now classified as monosodium glutamate. But its taste perception remains mysterious. For Rob Dunn, “rather than a flavor of its own, it is a signal that reinforces and modifies other aromas”. The commentary, however, provides a subtle and eloquent musical correspondence: “Like the double bass in an orchestra, umami highlights other aromas and amplifies the taste experience.”

Champagne and oysters

It is not commonly known that champagne – especially the great and old vintages – contains umami and that the best way to enhance it, as the Danish molecular gastronomy specialist Ole Mouritsen explains, is to consume it with oysters. Which is what the Danish writer Karen Blixen (1885-1962) did at the end of her life, after having part of her stomach removed, without being in the least aware of it.

Fascinating from start to finish, this high-flying documentary seems, on rare occasions, to be afraid of being too abstract and illustrates in images facts that do not need to be: in episode 1, when the salty taste is mentioned, we see an actor grimacing while swallowing a mouthful and then a sip of water in the process…

In episode 2, when comparing reactions to ibuprofen and olive oil—both of which contain a chemical that causes a tingling throat—it’s another actor’s turn to… cough on camera. But in a rather complex context, this kind of visual truism is ultimately quite hilarious.