Supertasting
This post is part of a series about rare perceptual abilities. Find the intro and updated list of articles here.
Thanks to a They Might Be Giants song, I learned of supertasting young. There exists variation in which compounds people can taste and how sensitive we are to each. A supertaster has particularly rare or heightened gustatory abilities.1
Really, "supertasting" is a blanket term. Per a 2012 review, the term conflates "general" supertasters with those who have a confirmed sensitivity to propylthiouracil (the go-to test in the prior 20 years). There seems to be a lot of overlap. Studies apparently support a learned component to general supertasting but also a physiological basis on the tongue itself.
On the mundane end, some people taste cilantro as bitter and soapy. This trait is genetic and varies by ancestry; for European descent, about one in six people tastes the culprit compound as bitter. I am not among them.
I do, however, taste PTC as bitter.2 While PTC doesn't occur in food, it's a bellwether for related compounds found in vegetables of the genus Brassica. I swear, I really do have an excuse for disliking cabbage and broccoli. This puts me in a majority globally. I suspect I am more sensitive than most people in that group, but it seems to have attenuated some since my teens.
- Scientific validation: Consensus
- Rarity: Common, depending on type
- My chances: Extremely low, except the most boring kind
Footnotes
This is distinct from psychological sensitivity as seen in autism. The autism-associated feature is about how the same signal from the tongue is processed. Of course, someone can have both at once.↩
Verified by PTC testing strips. We used them for a demonstration at the Museum of Science when I volunteered and worked there. I subjected myself to it weekly so visitors wouldn't have to be alone in their suffering.↩