Before I introduce my topic, I
shall first tell you a little bit about me.
Striving to find my place in science, I enrolled at a university far
away from home. So many years later, here I am, a graduate student at a western
university researching taste. In the meanwhile, I thought it would be fun to
share the story of how I found out that I am a “supertaster” long before it
even occurred to me how in-depth I would grow to understand what it means to be
a “supertaster”.
I discovered that I am a “supertaster”
during a laboratory exercise in one of my undergraduate classes, and it was not
until too long ago that I decided to investigate why I am more sensible than other people to a particular tastant. Based on their ability to taste the
chemical 6-n-propylthiouracil (PTC), people can be classified as non-tasters,
medium tasters, and supertasters. Non-tasters find PTC tasteless, medium tasters describe taste qualities other than bitter, and supertasters find the taste of
PTC excruciatingly bitter and revolting. This difference in taste is dependent upon the
distribution of taste buds, onion-like structures formed by collections of taste
receptor cells, on the tongue. Taste buds
are found in distinguished zones of the tongue known as “papillae”, and there
are four types: fungiform, circumvallate, foliate, and filiform papillae. People
who are supertasters have high numbers of fungiform papillae compared to medium
and non-tasters. Interestingly enough, there is more to the story……
Is PTC the only chemical that categorizes people as tasteless, medium or supertasters? Is this test readily available, say, to parents dealing with a “picky” eater? This trait must have some evolutionary benefit for supertasters (as mentioned in another post; less incidence of alcohol consumption, less sugar and fat in-take and less obesity). The challenge is to find tasty ways to provide optimal nutrition for supertasters.
ReplyDeleteHi Lauren,
ReplyDeletePTC is not the only compound used to test for this condition. In fact,6-propyl-2-thiouracil (PROP),is the most widely used chemical compound because it is less toxic. PROP is not readily available to parents, however, you can use blue food coloring to count the number of taste buds on your child's tongue.
To do the test, you will need blue food coloring and a magnifying glass. Once you swab the food coloring on the tongue, the tongue will take up the dye but the gustatory papillae will remain pink. Delimitate a section of the tongue and count all the pink dots in that section. Have between 30-35 or more papillae classifies you as a supertaster.