Can you separate oak tannins from seed tannins in a single sip? Know whether that’s tartaric or citric acid prickling your tongue? Find some wines undrinkably bitter or sharp, while those around you drink on unaware? Well, let’s hope you look good in tights; you may be a Supertaster. If you can’t do those things, don’t toss the Thighmaster yet. You still might have super powers; but it takes training to unleash them.
In experiments dating to the 1930s, scientists defined three categories of how people taste. Fifty percent of the population are tasters who perceive flavors in a normal way, twenty five percent are non-tasters and miss out on a lot, and the other twenty five percent are super-tasters.
Prepare to accept your lot. How well you taste is determined genetically. Researchers can classify you by giving you a chemical to taste called PROP (6-N-propylthiouracil). Non-tasters can’t distinguish it from water. Tasters perceive it as bitter, while super-tasters find it so revolting they gag, retch and usually quit the study.
You’d think super-tasting would make food and drink a garden of delights. Surely it describes the chefs and gourmands of the world. Actually, the talent is not all pleasant. Super-tasters find sweets twice as sweet and bitter foods twice as bitter. To them, fat is a tactile sensation and feels and tastes creamier. Bubbles in fizzy drinks are pricklier. Peppers and other hot foods seem pointlessly painful, like a slap in the face with every bite.
What happens to super-tasters outside the lab? They tend to reject bitter things. They find coffee unpleasant and are put off by broccoli, kale, and other bitter vegetables. They prefer orange juice to grapefruit. They like cream, cheese and butter. Scientists worry that these people won’t get enough cancer-preventing chemicals, since they don’t like to eat a wide variety of fruits and vegetables. There’s also concern with their penchant for fatty foods. Yet, paradoxically, super-tasters are the thinnest and healthiest group. Could be that since fat and sugar taste so intense they need less of it to feel sated.
What about the implications for wine tasting? You’d think a super-taster would have the advantage as a connoisseur. Not necessarily. Supers find alcohol, tannins and acids more irritating than tasters and nons do. But if they learn to get past the bitterness, they can develop very sophisticated palates.
Both overweight and alcoholism correlate with non-tasting. Seems like a pretty dirty trick; not only do you miss out on flavor, you get to be a statistic. What caused this design feature, anyway? Like many atavistic traits it once served an important role.
Back when distinguishing between poisonous and benign fruits was a life or death issue, being a super-taster was a distinct advantage. Non-tasters, in turn, stimulated the rest of the tribe’s appetite by going around pointing at everyone’s mammoth haunch and saying, “Are you going to eat that?” Pregnant super-tasters are especially sensitive to bitter foods, especially in the first trimester when the fetus is most vulnerable. That might explain why 35% of women fall into this category, versus only 10% of men.
How do you stack up? Here’s a simple home test. (“Simple” is used here as a writer’s convention. This actually makes a huge mess.) Stick a gummy notebook-paper hole-enforcer to the front of your tongue. Using a Q-tip, swab blue food coloring over the middle of the hole, where your tongue appears. The blue will sink down, leaving tiny red circles exposed. These are fungiform papillae, which contain your tastebuds. Count the little guys under a magnifying glass. Forty or more means you’re a super-taster. Twenty to forty, you’re a taster, and under twenty you’re a non-taster. If you don’t have a magnifying glass, Q-tips and blue food coloring handy, don’t complain to me about your sex life.
If you turn out to be a super-taster, what do you do, other than embroider an S on your shirt? Try not to reject too many vegetables. Salt helps counteract bitterness (which explains why chocolate, inherently bitter, tastes great over salty pretzels). Stop feeling weird about hating food that other people love. If your kid refuses to eat broccoli or spinach, don’t push it; could be he’s a super and they taste terrible to him. Look for equally nutritious substitutes he can stand.
As for wine, non-tasters need not despair; most wine appreciation comes through the nose anyway. And now you know: bad taste is a scientific condition, independent of the wearing of plaid golf pants.
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