system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Foods can be "too salty" or "too sweet," but can humans perceive "too umami"? If so, what does it taste like?
gpt
MSG is used as the benchmark for umami taste, as sugar is for sweet, salt is for salty, and coffee beans are for bitter.

Not because monosodium glutamate has a lot of "umaminess", but because it chemically is glutamate, binding to the glutamate receptors on your tongue that sense the umami taste.

I've tasted pure MSG as part of a taste panel education, and even pure, it's not a very strong reaction. Imagine eating a gob of salt, that's pretty nasty, a chunk of sugar, well that's kind of pleasant, a raw coffee bean, that's just horribly bitter. Subjectively, umami is on the low end of that scale, tasting strongly of itself, but it's not an unpleasant experience to eat it.

Now, tangentially, when we come to cooking, the best dishes are a balance of flavours, and if one specific flavour is too strong, it won't be considered properly "tasty".