It All Starts with Mother’s Milk

Human breast milk is rich in free glutamic acid, which makes up more than half of the free amino acids in the milk. It is at least ten times as rich in free glutamate as cow’s milk. In addition, mother’s milk has a small quantity of inosinate, which enhances its umami taste. Breast milk from chimpanzees has even more free glutamate than that from humans, whereas milk from lower primates has only twice as much glutamate as cow’s milk. Apparently there is no correlation between the growth rate of a species and the glutamate content in the breast milk.