
How to tell if you are a supertaster - gpresot
http://nautil.us/issue/54/the-unspoken/how-to-tell-if-youre-a-supertaster
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Geekette
This is an article about beer with a small addendum about taste.

The author's analogy is based on a false premise of bitterness being
universally repulsive as a flavour. Within the group of those with heightened
tastebuds that can more accurately taste it, disdain for bitter is not
uniform. I.e. I've a much keener than average sense of taste and smell. I hate
beer because I dislike the basic essence, regardless of ingredient/flavour
variation, which is due to my dislike of bitters as a flavour group. However,
I know others who may be considered "supertasters" that _like_ bitter flavours
and go out of their way to consume certain foods of peculiar/distinct
bitterness. Likewise, some "supertasters" prefer sourness as their top
choices, etc. Edit: Similarly, "normal tasters" can like or dislike bitter (in
varying combinations and intensities) but dislike doesn't automatically equate
to stronger sense of taste/smell.

~~~
criley2
Bitterness is a naturally evolved reaction to unpalatable and dangerous foods.
It's not a false premise, it's merely the biological premise behind the
development of bitter receptors in the first place. We developed bitter
receptors to help us identify dangerous plantlife.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitter_taste_evolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitter_taste_evolution)
(Or for the biologists out there, random development of bitter reception was
naturally selected for as a trait which improve fitness). However some two
million to half a million years ago, we stopped depending on bitter reception
for survival as much because of meat eating and cooking. So it's not expressed
as strongly in people anymore.

So sure, some people enjoy bitter. But people do bad things. Alcohol is a
poison through and through and we as a species love it.

Doesn't mean it's not a poison! i.e. just because someone enjoys bitter
doesn't invalidate the fact that bitter is unpleasant and our natural
instinctual reaction to it is avoidance.

~~~
Geekette
_" just because someone enjoys bitter doesn't invalidate the fact that bitter
is unpleasant"_

If they enjoy the taste then it _cannot_ be deemed unpleasant. Taste is
subjective, therefore, not universal.

You also can't deem evolutionary usage that ceased millions of years ago as
basis for usage today and citing analogies employed around function/after-
effect to an argument about _preference_ is weak.

~~~
jcelerier
> If they enjoy the taste then it cannot be deemed unpleasant

why ? a lot of people have no problem enjoying unpleasant things, it doesn't
makes them less unpleasant

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ggambetta
> _Supertasters find beer incredibly bitter, [...] Suffice it to say, hard
> liquor is a no-no for supertasters. [...] unless they have been conditioned
> to drink beer, they more than likely will first and foremost consider both
> as just really bitter._

Huh. This might explain my extreme dislike for beer, and why I hate olives?
For some time I've believed it may be a genetic mutation similar to why some
people say cilantro tastes like soap.

~~~
amelius
I wonder if this means that super-tasters would be bad chef-cooks, when
cooking for not-super-tasters. Everything they make would be lacking in bitter
tastes.

Then I wonder if the best chef-cook would be the one with the same taste. I.e.
if I am a non-taster, then I need a non-taster chef-cook, etc.

Another thing I'm curious about is if this property is really that black-and-
white (or ternary) as the article suggests. Tasting bitter requires a certain
gene, but I guess there are other genes for other tastes, and also for smells,
etc.

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phibz
My wife gave me the paper strip super taster test. She is a vile, vile woman.
We also tried the counting method later. I recommend the strips so long as the
subject doesn't know the expected reaction. It's easier to do. Being a
supertaster is not a good thing necessarily. Earlier in life I avoided a lot
of foods. It was only after I forced myself to put up with the bitterness and
accept it'd always be there that I was able to branch out. One curious thing
I've found is that I have a very strong like of certain smells. Some of them
are smells others consider off putting or uncomfortable. Things like
cardboard, paper, certain glues, heavy mechanical grease, certain rubber
smells, skunk spray (yes the animal), the belts in bowling ball return chutes,
etc all smell intoxicating. The only other person I found with a similar
interest is also a super taster. I wonder if there is a correlation.

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zwieback
I don't think I'm a supertaster (for bitter) but it has to be said that a very
large percentage of IPAs is just really bad, among inexperienced microbrewers
there seems to be a race to max IBUs.

~~~
chadgeidel
Denverite here (lots of microbreweries in the area). This is obviously
anecdote, but it seems that the desire to max out the IBUs in Pale Ales and
India Pale Ales has run its course. I never was a big IPA fan and couldn't
even order a standard Pale Ale for years. I feel I can now safely order a Pale
Ale in most places that isn't super bitter.

~~~
zwieback
You may be right. Even in hops-obsessed Oregon it's getting easier to get
drinkable microbrews again. There are brewers stepping up to the challenge of
making interesting lagers now.

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sambeau
A simple way I was taught by a geneticist was to drink a Diet Coke. If it is
sweet you are not a super-taster; if it is bitter you are.

For me all diet drinks taste very bitter like quinine or biting into a green
potato.

~~~
randallsquared
Surely they taste bitter for everyone at first? You may eventually come to
prefer that and find "regular" soda sickly sweet, as I do.

~~~
djur
Diet cola tasted sweet to me the few times I had it (I don't drink pop
generally). Couldn't imagine finding it bitter.

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k__
I took a DNA test that told me I could taste bitter and only 40% of the
population could taste it.

I never liked the bitter beers.

But I'm European and male, so I'm probably no supertaster

~~~
bicubic
Random English tip!

'I made a dna test' means that you have created a dna test. 'I took a dna
test' means you have performed a dna test on yourself.

'made' and 'performed' are the same word in a few European languages.

~~~
k__
Thank you :)

Yes, I'm German, we often simplify this:

    
    
        Ich machte einen DNS Test.
        I   made   a     DNA test.
    

Correct would be the passive form:

    
    
        Ich habe eine DNS Test machen lassen.
        

Which corresponds more to the English "took" I guess :)

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Kiro
> But they more than likely will not be able to tell the difference between a
> Columbia hopped beer and a Cascade hopped beer.

If that's the bar for a nontaster then I'm a super-nontaster. I did a beer
blind test once and even though I like beer I wrongly identified IPAs as lager
etc. I don't think I got a single one correct.

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vixen99
Unless you like and have access to certain beers, the article won't tell you
any such thing. Perhaps the book from which the piece is excerpted does.

~~~
mythrwy
Exactly. Title should be changed to "How to get a nice buzz while nominally
finding out if you are a supertaster".

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hellogoodbyeeee
My taste preferences have gone through a pretty radical change over the last
three years or so. I never liked spicy foods before, but I started to use
Sriracha which led me to search out other spicy foods. Now I feel very
unmotivated to go to any restaurant that doesn't offer a spicy food dish.

I know this is off topic, but it is be interested in hearing if others have
had similar experiences

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mixedmath
The answer to the title's question is in the last paragraph of the article.

> What is an effective technique for examining how many papillae someone has
> in a given area of the tongue? All of them involve darkening it, and the
> most enjoyable is to swirl red wine in the mouth and over the tongue. If
> done correctly, you will be able to see little lumps of tissue on the tongue
> that are the papillae. Next, take a piece of three-hole notebook paper. The
> punched holes are about 6 or so millimeters in diameter, and a piece of
> paper torn off with one of these holes can be placed over the darkened
> tongue. Now simply count the number of papillae you see in the punched hole.
> If you have fewer than 4 papillae, you are more than likely a nontaster,
> whereas from 4 to 8 papillae would suggest that you are a taster. Anything
> over 8 would indicate that you are a supertaster or a super-supertaster.

~~~
c128
The feeling is apparent with a bottle of El Dorado sipping run from Guyana.

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spodek
> _Rob DeSalle is curator of entomology in the Sackler Institute for
> Comparative Genomics at the American Museum of Natural History in New York
> City_

Nothing against the author, but when I see "Sackler," I think of that family's
contribution to the opioid epidemic, which I learned from through HN.

 _The Family That Built an Empire of Pain | The New Yorker_ :
[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/30/the-family-
tha...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/30/the-family-that-built-
an-empire-of-pain)

 _Who is to blame for the opioid epidemic? - Washington Post_ :
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/who-is-to-blame-
for-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/who-is-to-blame-for-the-
opioid-epidemic/2017/03/29/834c0024-14be-11e7-833c-503e1f6394c9_story.html)

 _Who Profits from the Opioid Crisis? Meet the Secretive ..._ :
[https://www.democracynow.org/2017/10/19/who_profits_from_the...](https://www.democracynow.org/2017/10/19/who_profits_from_the_opioid_crisis)

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rvooda
I read the title at first as "How to tell if you are superstar"

~~~
eggoa
Me too. It would be a completely believable title for an article upvoted on
Hacker News.

~~~
jeffshek
Same. I was then expecting the first comment to be "If you have to ask ..."

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petercooper
I did the technical way. I downloaded my genome from 23andme and looked for
the (I don't know the terminology) 'things' with the letters that indicate I
have the genes. Coupled with the physical evidence (I find beer and green
vegetables sour to the point of being vile), turns out I'm in the club..

