Eat Well, Live Well

Eat Well, Live Well.
This is the thinking that inspired
the umami seasoning AJI-NO-MOTO® more than 100 years ago.
In keeping with this original ideal, we continue to create products of
scientifically proven benefit in the interest of people's health.
Dr. Kikunae Ikeda
Saburosuke Suzuki II
Discoverer of the
umami taste
Founder of the
Ajinomoto Group
“ To create good, affordable seasonings
and turn simple but nutritiousfare into delicacies.”
Dr. Kikunae Ikeda,My Motivation for Inventing AJI-NO-MOTO. (Courtesy of Aozora Bunko)
Dr. Kikunae Ikeda discovers umami in 1908
The discovery began with boiled bean curd with dashi (broth) made from kombu, a
kind of kelp. While dining on kombu dashi, Dr. Ikeda became convinced that there
was another basic taste altogether different from sweet, salty, sour, and bitter, and
he began researching the composition of kombu dashi. Around the same time, Hiizu
Miyake, Japan's first doctor of medicine, hypothesized that "good taste stimulates
digestion." Dr. Ikeda was encouraged by this idea, and ultimately discovered that
glutamic acid, a kind of amino acid, was what gave kombu the distinctive taste he
had been searching for. He named the taste "umami," and proceeded to invent a
The glutamic acid
xtracted from kombu
by Dr. Kikunae
Ikeda (1908)
method for producing seasoning with glutamate as a key component.
Improve the nutrition of the Japanese people.
The original
AJI-NO-MOTO®
(1909)
When he went to study in Germany in 1899, Dr. Ikeda was surprised by German people's
physiques and general healthiness, which fostered in him the strong desire to "improve
the nutrition of the Japanese people." Another individual who shared in his dream was
Saburosuke Suzuki II, who launched a business venture to begin selling AJI-NO-MOTO®,
the world's first umami seasoning in 1909. The origins of the Ajinomoto Group lie in this
ideal: "Eat Well, Live Well."
Eat Well, Live Well
In 2000, researchers at the University of Miami reported the presence of umami
receptors on the tongue, and in 2006 Ajinomoto's Institute of Life Sciences discovered
that such receptors were also present in the stomach. The importance of glutamate ̶
not only to our sense of taste but also in the nutritional and physiological sense ̶ is
being demonstrated more and more through our recent research. Our "Eat Well, Live
Well" is actually an ideal that has been scientifically proven.
Today, the Ajinomoto Group continues to share this aspiration. We aim to contribute to
society in the fields of Food, AminoScience, and Pharmaceuticals and Health by further
pursuing the potential of amino acids that was found with the discovery of umami.
Dr. Ikeda's research notes
(1918‒1929)