Umami is more than just a cool word to say.

It’s also the last of the five basic tastes to be recognized by science and is produced primarily by glutamic acid. That’s an amino acid found in vegetables, meats, and animal-based products that creates the savory taste that your taste buds associate with protein-packed foods.

And therein lies the rub.

But it’s not that you eat too much protein-packed food, oh no. It’s a bit more complicated than that.

The complication’s created by food scientists who do a superb job of following the instruction issued from numerous food company executives: to make fake foods to fake out consumers’ taste buds. The double fake has left those execs waist-deep in dinero because of what it’s doing to the waists of so many food consumers.

Expanding them and keeping them that way.

The aim of last week’s column was to keep your waist from becoming one among them — or reducing the expansion if it’s already occurred. That objective led to an explanation of the protein leverage hypothesis: the belief that your body craves a certain amount of protein and that as a way to insure you get it, you continue to feel hungry until that amount is met, even if you’ve already eaten enough food to maintain your current weight.

Now don’t dismiss this idea simply because it’s called a hypothesis. That’s the way of the science world.

For in the eyes of science, experiments never really prove anything. They just refute or support a hypothesis.

With that said, here’s one experiment that certainly supports the protein leverage hypothesis, albeit in a roundabout way. Performed by researchers at the University of Sydney and published last May in Obesity Reviews, it focuses on whether or not drinking alcohol creates a craving for the savory taste of umami.

By examining data from the Australian National Nutrition and Physical Activity Survey, the researchers found it did. That more savory foods were consumed on the days Aussies consumed alcohol than on the days they didn’t.

They also discovered what may make that occur. That the consumption of alcohol creates an amplification of the FGF21 hormone which in turn may trigger the desire for savory foods.

Once again, the way of the science world dictates the use of the word “may” in both prior sentences. So it’s worth noting that a woman whose part of that world, Dana Hunnes, PhD, a senior clinical dietitian at UCLA Health, chooses the word “definitely” when Healthline asks her if food companies make ultra-processed foods (and some processed ones, too) with the clear intent of having the umami flavor — along with added sugars and fats — replace protein.

Which leads us back to the press release for the aforementioned study and how protein decoys are “effectively tricking the protein hunger system into seeking foods that taste like protein but do not deliver it.”

These are foods such as potato chips with added barbecue, cheddar cheese, or sour cream and onion flavor; cheese puffs and corn curls; flavored ramen noodles and other flavored noodle packets; instant sauces and gravy mixes; and frozen pizzas. As a result of the availability and ubiquity of these foods, you “may eat more of [them] leading to higher overall intake of fats, carbohydrates, and total energy.”

Which is exactly what was determined in the randomized crossover trial published in the April 2025 issue of Nature Metabolism and cited in last week’s column. It found when 21 healthy young adults were offered meals where 84 percent of the calories came from UPFs, they overate.

But more importantly, it also determined that they overate less when the UPF-heavy meals were higher in protein. In fact, they ate 44 percent less.

When this lessening is projected over the course of a year, it’s a 20.5-pound difference and, as I wrote last week, that’s not peanuts. Which’s why you’ll now read about a peanut butter par excellence.

While two tablespoons of typical peanut butter usually contains 200 calories with 144 of those calories coming from fat, the same amount the Creamy Peanut Butter produced by WiO SmartFoods — and technically a UPF — contains 31 calories with no fat. Yet in no way, shape, or form is it a UPF that’s a protein decoy, for it retains the same 7 grams of protein found in two tablespoons of normal PB.

That means 90 percent of its digestible calories are protein.

Sounds too good to be true, yet it tastes even better. Better than real PB, that is.

Now I was convinced of this, but didn’t trust my own taste buds, so I had a peanut butter lover take a blind taste test. I paired the Creamy Peanut Butter produced by WiO SmartFoods and the creamy version sold by ALDI and asked him what he thought.

He told me he preferred taste of what turned out to be the WiO SmartFoods sample. Moreover, he felt it was smoother, easier to spread, and —irony of all ironies — “had a fattier taste.”

The only downside to the Creamy Peanut Butter produced by WiO SmartFoods is the cost. It’s significantly more than typical peanut butter, but then again, it creates a significant caloric savings — and is anything but a protein decoy.