But no one likes a really intense bitter." A little bitter green mixed with something - a lot of people like that. "What matters is the concentration," Bartoshuk said. Perhaps that skewing emerged based on the protection of a fetus (from poisonous foods) during pregnancy, Bartoshuk noted.Īrguments from evolution aside, many of us enjoy a touch of bitter in our gin and tonics, say, or acrid candies. Interestingly, women are more likely to be supertasters, at around 35 percent of the population compared with 15 percent of men. "A supertaster is safer in a new environment, because they can pick up those bitters," said Bartoshuk, "but a nontaster eats better in a safe environment, because they like more foods." These early humans would have found less of the food palatable in a given area compared with dull-tongued nontasters. The supertasters' ability came at a price, though. In the process, they also alerted nontasters what vegetation to avoid. Those individuals with mutations that enabled heightened bitterness sensitivity - the first supertasters - stood a good chance of avoiding death by plant poisoning. Many plants contain defensive toxins that taste bitter to the mammalian tongue. When our nomadic ancestors roamed into a new environment, they had to figure out which native plants there were safe to eat, Bartoshuk said. But evolution offers a possible explanation for the variance. Researchers still do not know which genes determine fungiform papillae number or why the counts vary so wildly. "Others are just polka-dotted and don't have that many." "If you look at a bunch of tongues, some are covered with fungiform papillae," said Bartoshuk. In a 6-millimeter diameter circle, which is "about the size of a hole punch," Bartoshuk said, supertasters can have as many as 60 fungiform papillae packed into the small space nontasters can have as few as five.
The application of blue food coloring makes the papillae easier to count. Touch receptors in the fungiform papillae also help us "feel" our food's texture and temperature. Nestled within the walls of these tiny bumps are our taste receptors, called taste buds, which register the five currently recognized tastes: bitterness, saltiness, sourness, sweetness and umami (savoriness). The tally of little mushroom-shaped projections on the tongue, called fungiform papillae, reveals a person's tasting prowess or deficit. To complicate matters, some people who have a heightened sensation of other flavors can lack the PROP receptor.Ī better way to identify a supertaster, then, is to simply look inside his or her mouth. Historically, the term "supertaster" - coined by Bartoshuk in 1991 - referred to people who reported a powerful bitter taste when a chemical called propylthiouracil (PROP) was placed on their tongues.įurther research has shown that the PROP receptor is just one of at least 25 receptors for bitterness. "Biology is not destiny - it predisposes you, but we're humans and we make choices," said Hayes. Yet supertasters can learn to overcome or compensate for their biologically built-in tendencies for picky eating. Expressed in the parlance of childhood, we eat the yummy and avoid the yucky. These sensations matter because how foods taste to us influences our individual eating behaviors.
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