blue artichoke

For Christmas I got a really cool book from GC's parents called How Baking Works. I haven't read it yet, but I flipped through it and have read several sections. One particularly interesting thing I read was about supertasters, who are people with a heightened sense of taste. This is a genetic trait, like hair or eye color, and affects roughly 25% of the population (50% of people are medium tasters and 25% are low tasters). Supertasters can detect a wider range of tastes, especially bitter and spicy-hot foods. After reading a little more about supertasters, I can't say that they have an advantage over medium- or low-tasters, unless you happen to be noshing on wild plants and berries with unknown toxicity. In fact, in this modern age, it seems to be a disadvantage, as foods such as coffee, grapefruit juice, green tea, spinach, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, saccharin, and alcoholic beverages are problematic. I don't know for sure yet if I am a supertaster, but I can say that from that list, I only like spinach, cabbage and some alcohol. If it turns out that I am a supertaster, I'm considering taking up the cause to get disability status for out-of-work supertaster cooks, chefs, bakers, etc; or get Extreme Makeover: Home Edition to build a new house for us that has a Supertaster Friendly kitchen.

There's an easy supertaster identifying test: dab some blue food coloring on the tip of your tongue. The taste bud holders (called fungiform papillae) will stay pink and the rest of the tongue tip will turn blue. If you have lots of pink, you're a supertaster. What is "a lot" of pink? Look here for pictures of a supertaster tongue and a medium-taster tongue. I don't regularly travel with blue food coloring, so I'll have to wait until I return home to test my tongue for supertaster status. But you go on ahead and let me know if you're a supertaster. Go on...

Getting to Know All About You: So, are you a supertaster?

Here's a weird coincidence: I just posted this entry, checked my email and had a forwarded message from GC, originally from his boss, with a link to this article about supertasters in today's local newspaper. Huh.