Day 4 of Digest Super Week: The supertaster who researches supertasting

Professor Charles Spence Charles Spence: I study supertasters Everyone would like to be a supertaster, right? “Supertaster” is the name given to those individuals (roughly a quarter of the population) who are more sensitive than the rest to tastes, especially to the bitter taste in foods such as Brussels sprouts, endive salad, and coffee. It is worth noting that not everyone who you might imagine being a supertaster, is. Jeffrey Steingarten, for example, the famous North American food critic turned out to be a non-taster when I gave him a tasting strip (the simplest way to assess taster status in the lab). It turns out that some supertasters may have as many as 16 times more papillae on their tongues than some other non-tasters. Recently, researchers have shown that supertasters not only have an advantage when it comes to tasting (literally) the food. All those extra taste buds also give the supertaster an enhanced ability to experience the oral-somatosensory texture of foods as well. What is more, work from the Crossmodal Research Laboratory here in Oxford together with Unilever Research has also demonstrated that supertasters are also less likely than non-tasters to be misled when a food is coloured inappropriately. All of these findings kind of make sense, but the latest observation that has got the scientists really scratching their heads is why it should be that supertasters also appear to have enhanced olfactory abilities as well – this work from Gary Pickeri...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: Source Type: blogs