Remember learning about taste buds in elementary school? You have sweet, sour, bitter, and salty, right? Not anymore. Well, actually, not for a long time. We just haven’t known about it.

In 1907, Professor Kikunae Ikeda of Tokyo Imperial University hypothesized that a fifth, savory, taste exists. This taste was neither sweet, sour, bitter, nor salty. He described this as the taste sensation he felt when eating seaweed, tomatoes, fish, mushrooms, or meat. He named this taste “umami,” meaning delicious or yummy in Japanese.

Professor Ikeda then set out to prove his theory. He started with a broth, made from kombu, a type of seaweed found in Japanese cooking, and extracted crystals of the amino acid glutamate. After showing that glutamate was responsible for the savory sensation, he captured it in a seasoning. This was the birth of monosodium glutamate, or MSG for short.¹

Wondering why you never heard of umami?  Although it’s been documented since 1907, and perhaps recognized since ancient times, the notion didn’t venture out of Japan until 1985. No one believed the professor for a very long time. For hundreds of years, science had clearly stated that there were four tastes. In the 19th century, with the invention of the microscope, scientists had seen that the tongue only has four different types of taste buds. It was accepted as fact that our tongues are only able to recognize four flavors, end of story. Then along came Professor Ikeda with his notion of umami. He threw science for a loop.²

Umami is far from the only discovery that’s changed science as we know it. Between 1858 and 2004, 39 editions of Gray’s Anatomy were published. Has the human body evolved 39 times in 146 years? No, we just know a lot more. In fact, we know more about just about everything. Detailing the speed of knowledge gains is not yet an exact science. One estimate shows that total written knowledge in the world doubled between 1450 and 1750, and then doubled again between 1750 and 1900.  Knowledge again doubled between 1900 and 1950, and then doubled again from 1950 to 1975. With growing technology, available knowledge now doubles every few years.³

Chances are much of what you learned in school is no longer true. A hundred years ago, nurses-in-training learned that dust contained many poisonous germs. They were tested on their dusting technique. Early 20^th century nurses also learned how to prepare a cocoa cordial, made from cocoa, wine, sugar, and boiling water to ease patients’ chills.⁴ Obviously, you didn’t learn to be a nurse in 1904, but you can probably identify several things that you learned in school that are no longer thought to be true. How long will it take for most of what we hold true today to become outdated?

Information sometimes advances quicker than a textbook can be published. By the time the book hits the shelves, it’s already out of date. Keeping up with journal articles proves to be just as difficult. MEDLINE contains more than eleven million citations, with approximately 400,000 new articles added each year.⁵

How do we keep up?

From the world’s top health care providers to the top health information specialists, no one can fully grasp all of the new studies and health information floating around in cyberspace. Often, initial studies contradict each other. Before you start panicking from severe information overload, take a deep breath. There are ways to handle this information. Note: These strategies can be used to keep up with nursing information, but also information on hobbies and subjects in which you are interested.

• Be selective. Read only the best of the best. If you keep up with advances by reading articles, don’t bother trying to read every single one. Less important articles can cause a lot of noise. Instead, look for articles labeled meta analysis, meta evaluation, or best evidence. These papers take multiple studies and provide a comparison. You should be able to get nearly all of the necessary information from the abstract and the discussion.
• Question anything science based that is more than 5 years old. Keep searching for something newer.
• Become a specialist. There is no way you can know everything about, well, everything. Try to narrow your focus.  While it doesn’t hurt to have a lot of different interests, it’s a lot more manageable to know a lot about a select few topics.
• Keep up to date with the most relevant topics for your life. The Job Corps Health and Wellness website supplies a lot of this information.
• Take advantage of your continuing education. Conferences are a great place to learn what’s new. Sometimes it’s tempting to take whatever free and easy CEUs you can find, but it’s not always the most effective. Remember, furthering your education is the point to CEUs.
• Commit to lifetime learning. While the knowledge you already have in your mind is vastly important, it’s far more important to be able to adapt to the times. Shift your thinking from what you already know to what you could potentially learn. There’s a whole world out there!

¹  International Glutamate Information Service
²  Umami Information Center
³  The University of North Carolina- Greensboro. Dean’s Message.
4  Rienzi G. Looking Back, Looking Forward. Johns Hopkins School of Nursing.
5  Jerome RN et al. Information needs of clinical teams: analysis of questions received by the Clinical Informatics Consult Service. Bull Med Libr Asson. 2001:89(2);177-185.