Yesterday I tested my receptivity to 6-n-propylthiouracil (PROP), by touching a paper with the substance with my tongue. According to researchers, about 25 percent of people can’t taste PROP at all, 50 percent perceive it as somewhat bitter, and 25 percent find it horrifically bitter.
One tiny touch and I was running for Atlanta’s favorite beverage, coca-cola, to quench the flavor. It tasted wretched! The taste lingered for hours, but it was worth it to know that I am in the elite club of the supertasters.
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According to Linda Bartoshuk, a health psychologist at the University of Florida in Gainsville, supertasters more than usually sensitive to taste, and have more tastebuds on their tongues. This is good news for me, because supertasters have a lower risk of heart disease, roughly because they need less fat and sweet to please them. But it is also bad news—supertasters often find vegetables unpleasant because of their slight bitterness and texture, so they eat less of them and therefore have a higher risk of colon polyps.
Luckily, I can act as a living example that these kinds of generalizations, while often useful in public health, are by no means rigid sentences handed down by the almighty gene gods. I quite like vegetables.
Interestingly, Bartoshuk has found that chefs are more likely to be supertasters. And, she says, “Caucasian men win the international booby prize” for being non-tasters—those 25 percent that don’t taste PROP at all.
Bartoshuk herself is a non-taster. She put the whole PROP paper in her mouth, which made me cringe. She says she has never tasted anything that was “too sweet”. Meanwhile, when I am in the south I take my meals with “unsweet” iced tea, which is how you order it if you don’t want them to sugar it for you. Sweet tea, to me, tastes revoltingly sweet. So, are you a supertaster or a non-taster?
Read more about Bartoshuk’s work at www.nature.com/news/2001/010222/full/010222-13.html
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