My Results of Supertaster Tests

My husband asked me what was so good about being a supertaster. Well, more things can be too sweet to them, or more things can be too bitter. Vegetables, in fact, taste bitter to a supertaster, so they avoid them, and thus are more susceptible to cancers, and it is proven that they have more cancerous colon polyps than non-tasters.

However, besides bragging rights, supertasters can be skinnier, especially women in their 40s, because they are more sensitive to sugar and dairy fats, which leads them to not crave junky foods. They also eat less, so there could be less heart disease.

But the real thing to remember about all this is that different people have different tastes, and that really matters in the wine, beer, and cider world. A supertaster and all of their ability to taste might really dislike a drink that a regular and non-taster love. Remember John Cleese’s Wine for the Confused? He had blind taste tests between six wines asking people which one was worth $5 and which one was worth $200, and the group had no consensus. So one person’s $5 bottle is another person’s $200 bottle, and vice versa. While Mike Steinberger was learning if he was a supertaster or not, he said , “I also had a conversation with Tim Hanni, a Napa-based master of wine who has done extensive research into the science of taste—research that has convinced him that wine criticism is pretty much worthless, given how much individual palates vary.”

So remember:

• Everyone had different tastes.
• Find out what you like.
• Don’t let people push you around on what to consume.
• Do use other people’s experience on what they tasted guide you.
• Don’t expect your tasting experience to be same as someone else’s because you are two different people.

As for me, well, I tried the dye experiment, but found it too difficult to count as the paper was either too far away to see though the hole, or it was getting wet from my tongue. So I went to http://supertastertest.com/ and purchased a test kit. It was a little piece of paper that you put on your tongue. According to the directions, a supertaster will find it to taste very bitter, a taster will find it to taste mildly bitter, and a non-taster will find it tastes like paper.

My husband said it tasted like paper, and therefore, he said he was “bitter tolerant.” I found the paper to taste bitter, but not in such a way that I was spitting it out, so I am just a “taster.”

Are You a Supertaster? Take a Supertaster Test

There are three main ways to test if one is a super taster – count taste buds or consume two products.

As I mentioned before, supertasters have more fungiform papillae type taste buds, which makes them a little more sensitive when tasting. These taste buds can be counted by swabbing your tongue with a cotton ball with blue food coloring. The fungiform papillae will not turn blue, but instead remain pink. From there, take a piece of paper with a hole cut out of it and count how many pink spots you see in that hole. Supertasters will have more than 30 papillae in that area. BBC Science and Nature shows a good example of this demonstration.

Another easy test to conduct is a Saccharin Test. Take one packet of saccharin (Sweet’N Low) and combine it with two-thirds of a cup of water, and then taste it. For some, there will be a dominate sweet taste, indicating that they are an undertaster, while others will notice a dominate bitter taste, indicating they are a supertaster. Those who find balance between sweet and bitter are regular tasters.

The last test is to consume PROP, which will be violently bitter to supertasters, bitter to regular tasters, and tasteless to undertasters.

I highly recommend reading wine critic Mike Steinberger’s journey to find out that he was one of the 5% of nontasters (not a supertaster) who could taste PROP. This resulted in more testing.

Sources:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supertaster
  
• http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/PersonalBest/story?id=2740603
  
• http://supertastertest.com/
  
• http://www.slate.com/id/2168768
  
• http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/body/articles/senses/tongue_experiment.shtml
  
• http://health.howstuffworks.com/taste4.htm
  

Supertaster

Supertasters are people who have a few more fungiform papillae type taste buds, which makes them a little more sensitive when tasting. One quarter of the population seems to be supertasters.

When I first heard of supertasters, it was in conjunction with drinking wine, and I thought, “Nope, I’m not one. I have such a hard time smelling and tasting things in wine that I can’t be.” Then I took a “Le Nez du Vin”: The Nose of Wine class. They said that supertasters avoid coffee because of the bitterness, which I do, so that got me looking into supertasters a little bit more.

Here is a list of foods supertasters avoid with comments about how supertasters taste in () when available, along with my reactions:

• Burssel sprouts, cabbage, and kale –not part of my normal diet so I couldn’t really say
• Coffee (too bitter) – smells nice, but I need a ton of sugar and cream to drink it. And very little coffee.
• Dark chocolate – I don’t like it, and will consume only milk chocolate. I won’t touch chocolate chip cookies due to the semi-sweet chips used. And I will hardly eat baked chocolate, such as a cholocate cake or brownies, but it does help to have some milk to wash it down.
• Hoppy beer (too bitter) – yup, that’s me!
• Grapefruit juice – won’t touch it
• Green tea – it is okay, but I would much rather have black tea
• Spinach – I like it as a 50/50 mix with lettuce, but straight spinach sometimes tastes, well, dirty to me. However, there are certain lettuces I won’t eat, either, because they are too bitter. I won’t eat Iceberg lettuce because, well, I’m picky.
• Soy products – not part of my normal diet so I couldn’t really say
• Carbonation – sometimes soda is overcarbonated and annoys my nose, but carbonated beer and cider doesn’t bother me
• Chili peppers (burn is more intense) – I can handle them in moderate doses
• Tonic water (more bitter) – I love gin, but I won’t drink it with tonic water, but 7-up instead
• Olives (salt is more intense) – I like black olives, but not green
• Sugary foods (sickening sweet vs no such thing as too sweet for regular tasters) – I do have issues with too sweet, but mostly too rich. So this is a toss up. I prefer fruity desserts, or even things like rolls, but not really cakes. However, I do like sweet tea.
• Frosting (yucky) – don’t care for it
• Saccharine (strong after taste) – I don’t remember
• Alcohol (too sharp – less of a chance of being an alcoholic) – well, I don’t like my alcohol dry, but I don’t consume a drink a day.
• Ginger (burn) – I like ginger
• Foods should be tepid – even if I did drink coffee, it is served way too hot for me.
• Different levels of milk fat (can tell) – We normally keep nonfat milk in the house, but I went to see the in-laws who had 2%, and it tasted sweeter and creamier to me. Same thing at restaurants. And I can tell the difference between goat’s milk and cow’s milk and their cheeses, and a lot of people can’t.
• Broccoli (don’t like when raw because it is bitter) – I’ve always avoided raw broccoli, but I love cooked broccoli.
• Fatty foods (undesirable due to texture) – okay, I like fat to a degree, but I probably don’t avoid it like they suggest supertasters do. For instance, I love cheese!
• This could explain why I don’t like 90% of beers – the hops make it too bitter for me.

Supertasters are also suppose to be skinnier, which any doctor would consider me on the heavy side.

Supertasters don’t care for vegetables, either, so they are more at risk for cancers and there is a link between supertasters having a higher number of colon polyps due to vegetable avoidance. Compared to my husband, to plays with his food rather than eating, I like my vegetables more cooked than him (though not took cooked), which reduces bitterness. I eat them because I know I should.

Sources:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supertaster
  
• http://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/18/science/chocolate-lover-or-broccoli-hater-answer-s-on-the-tip-of-your-tongue.html?sec=health&spon=&pagewanted
  
• http://www.slate.com/id/2168768/pagenum/all/#p2
  
• http://health.howstuffworks.com/taste4.htm
  

Class: Le Nez du Vin Part II

Last night was my second and last class for “Le Nez du Vin”: The Nose of Wine, offered by my local community college “Cooking & Wine School." It is a class designed to help improve one’s ability to identify smells in wine, with last night focusing on red wines.

Our lecture for the evening was about taste. Taste and smell are different senses in the fact that our bodies are having reactions to chemicals in order to sense. Another odd thing is that 75% of tasting is actually smelling. Together, they help us identify if something is safe to consume.

Recently, there is a group of people being identified as “supertasters.” About one quarter of the population seems to have more of the smaller taste buds, making them more sensitive to tasting things. There is a simple test of consuming a harmless chemical called propylthouracil (PROP), which will taste bitter to a supertaster, while a nontaster will taste nothing. I’ve always doubted that I was a supertaster, but they said that supertasters avoid coffee because it is too bitter, which I do. Looking at the list on Wikipedia, I also avoid grapefruit juice, only consume spinach in a lettuce mixture, I don’t care for soy, and I love gin but cannot handle tonic water. Maybe supertaster explains my aversion to goat’s milk products, when others cannot tell the difference? My instructors did indicate that sometimes supertasters avoid alcohol because it “burns,” so maybe I’m not a supertaster. I’ll have to try and find PROP and find out for sure.

Back to wine – besides actually tasting wine, there is also how it feels in the mouth, which can be broken up into a few categories:

• Body – sometimes thought of as thickness. Ideally, wine should be silky, not thin.
• Temperature – consuming any food cold masks flavors. If a vendor is having you taste refrigerator cold wine, then there are flaws that they are hiding.
• Texture
• Tannin – tannins create a bit of puckering. A little bit of tannins open up the taste buds, while a lot of tannins close down the taste buds, sometimes even leaving the mouth feeling dry. Initially, tannins are short chains which are not exactly pleasant tasting. As they age, they bond to make longer chains, which taste better.
• Alcohol

Somehow, I had a wine smelling reputation from the previous week, and it kind of spooked me when a clerk came in and said I was the one to beat, and I had never seen her before. Plus, I didn’t really think I was that good as I had a list go guide me before. Well, after last week’s 14/17 correct on smelling jars, it was decided not to give us a list of what smells there were to challenge me. I still ended up with a 14/17, with one very close one of being marionberry jam (a thornless blackberry hybrid developed at OSU in 1956), and I thought it was blueberry jam. I had a little harder time with the flaws, and said one was like plant rot, but more pleasant, and he said it was actually the water drained off of a can of mushrooms, so he was trying to get us to smell fungus.

When we started drinking the wines, I had a hard time, as all of them had a black pepper nose to me, and it was difficult to get past that to smell any fruit. Maybe I’m not a supertaster.