An Easy at Home Test
Some people can see better than others with eagle-like vision. Some people can hear better than others, detecting subtle sounds as a dolphin detects the sounds of small fish swimming. And some people are more sensitive to taste than others. A recent post of [add link] discussed supertasters and their ability.
As a former science teacher, I wanted to experiment with a supertaster test and find out. Am I a supertaster? I had my doubts.
The flavor of the food we taste combines the five basic tastes: sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and the newest one, umami, which is a savory flavor. The complex flavors of our favorite foods blend these five basic tastes. It s like the range of colors we see around us in the world, which are a blend of the three basic colors of light for which our eyes have receptors: blue, red, and green. Taste has an evolutionary advantage for humans and animals. Ripe fruits taste sweet. Many toxic plants taste bitter. The ability to pick this up helps us find good food and avoid poisonous food.
Materials
To run this test, I ordered a super taster lab kit online from Amazon with four different types of test strips in vials: phenylthiourea (PTC), sodium benzoate, thiourea, and a control strip with no chemical. The kit also included an instruction sheet with clear directions. That’s all you need, and for less than $20, you get 100 test strips of each kind, enough for several classes or a big party.
Procedure
In my pretest of the materials, I tasted nothing on any of the strips. I assumed I was a normal taster with no special sensitivity. However, I later realized I had been drinking black coffee during the test. Did that make a difference?
For the test, I recruited two family members and a friend to join me. Though skeptical at first, they agreed to humor me. Since they had all heard of supertasters, I only needed to explain how we would proceed. We did four rounds, so everyone tasted each strip, including the control strip. To reduce the tendency for groups to agree, I mixed up who got what strip in what order. Everyone a test strip to touch their tongues and then note what they tasted. The results were fascinating.
Our Results
We had fun doing this test sitting around the dining room table and might repeat it at a dinner party — great conversation starter. The responses to the tasting were immediate and dramatic — all except for me. My daughter, my wife and our friend all made faces and exclaimed their disgust. I tasted two of the strips this time, but certainly not to the degree the others did.
This lab kit separates into people into four groups: normal tasters, standard supertasters, recessive supertasters, or dominant super tasters.
My daughter and our friend tasted all three chemicals, PTC, thiourea, and sodium benzoate. The PTC and the thiourea were bitter to them and the sodium benzoate had a sour citrusy taste for them. They are then dominant supertasters. My wife tasted both the PTC and the thiourea, as I did. However, she clearly tasted the chemicals much more intensely than I did.
What we learned
First, even with the same test strip, there is a range of sensitivity to the test chemical. Is there a relationship between the intensity of the taste and the number of taste buds on an individual’s tongue? This seems likely and might be a good follow-up test.
Also, the same chemical can have different tastes for different people. For our group, the tastes were relatively similar, though there was some variety. The written responses, however, varied widely in the richness of the descriptions. Two of our four participants wrote short sentences to describe their responses, and one person wrote long and very nuanced descriptions of how she experienced the taste. I tended toward two- or three-word minimalist descriptions.
Does this reflect a difference in the sensation experienced or in creative writing skills? I’ve often wondered how wine tasters experience tastes, like ‘earthy,’ ‘oaky,’ ‘smoky,’ and ‘rounded.’ My wife described how the taste of the strips changed, altering subtly for her within a few seconds. I’ve since learned that this change is what wine tasters often mean by ‘complex.’
Our informal test supports the idea that people experience the taste of a substance in many ways and in various intensities. We really do all live in our own unique universe of sensory experience. Our own taste palate senses a huge palette of colorful taste impressions.
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This post and the previous one are updates of previous posts in time for the Holiday Season when family and friends gather. Our friend Zeph reminded me that STEM activities can be even more fun with others.
A New York Times article inspired the original post and I’ve re-checked the facts for new knowledge. Please let me know of any errors or, even better, of your own learning about supertasters.
Want to read stories of young inventors and their inventions? Check out my book Teen Innovators: Nine Young People Engineering a Better World with Creative Inventions. Also, my new book Design Thinking: A Guide to Innovation will come soon.