Picture; Umami - how unbelievably lame

The trend in obsessive food culture is pretty uninspiring, it encourages people to waste their time (and inevitably money) believing they can be satisfied by what they put in their stomachs at the neglect of the world around them, outside of their own body. Sure it's good to eat healthy, good to eat nice food etc, but to let it dominate their lives as some people do is not a path to a full and happy existence. At it's base eating is just something we do to stay alive, I don't think nature intended it to be a platform for snobbish excessary and a replacement for actual interests and personality. Witness the arrival of 'Umami', the apparent 'Fifth' flavour, the lack of which has been the void at the centre of all our lives.