First Bite: How We Learn to Eat by Bee Wilson Page A
Authors: Bee Wilson
Tags: science, Food Science
Ads: Link
of the population cannot physically pick up on androstenone, one of the key aromas that make truffles such a luxury. If you served them a plate of sumptuous pappardelle with truffle shavings, they would have no idea why it was meant to cause such joy. A different minority has a heightened sensitivity to coriander leaf, making it taste soapy and gross, rather than herbal and fresh. And as Ottolenghi says, we vary hugely in our response to bitter tastes. All babies find bitterness somewhat horrible, which is probably a survival mechanism, given that in the wild, toxic substances tend to be bitter. The bitter response of a newborn includes arched lips, a protruding tongue, an expression of anger, and spitting: all pretty vivid signs that babies do not consider bitterness to be yummy. Over time, however, it is possible to learn to love bitter substances: witness the fact that the world’s two most popular beverages are coffee and beer.
Some learn to love bitterness; some tolerate it because they enjoy the buzz they get from a bottle of IPA or a cup of strong French press coffee; and some hardly taste it at all. Psychologist Linda Bartoshuk of Yale University was the first to use the term “supertaster” in the mid-1990s to refer to individuals with a heightened response to certain tastes, predominantly bitter ones (the phenomenon was first observed in the 1930s). Bartoshuk and colleagues found that there were significant genetic differences in the way we perceive bitterness. PROP (6-n-propylthiouracil) and PTC (phenylthioucarbamide) are chemical substances that either taste incredibly bitter or slightly bitter or of nothing at all, depending on whether you have the gene to taste them. Around half of us are medium tasters, a quarter are nontasters, and another quarter are supertasters. Women are more likely to be supertasters than men. Bartoshuk has shown that PROP supertasters have more taste buds on their tongues than nontasters. There’s a very simple way to self-diagnose whether you are a supertaster. Swab your tongue with a little blue food dye and place a hole-punch reinforcer ring on your tongue. Count how many pink bumps you can see inside the ring—these are the fungiform papillae, each containing three to five taste buds. If you have fewer than fifteen, you are a nontaster. If you have fifteen to thirty-five, you are a medium taster. If you can count more than thirty-five inside the ring, you are a supertaster.
Psychologists got excited about the concept of PROP tasting, because it seemed to hold out—at last—the genetic key to likes and dislikes. Could bitter sensitivity be the secret to why some people eat unhealthy diets with few or no vegetables? Is it because they lack a gene for sprouts? The world of flavor must be a very different place to PROP supertasters and nontasters, and it would appear obvious that this would translate into food habits. When seventy-one women and thirty-nine men were asked to taste asparagus, kale, and Brussels sprouts, the PROP supertasters did indeed find the vegetables to be more bitter and less sweet.
The surprising thing, however, is that, from a mass of research into PROP tasting, very little does point to genes determining food choices, either in children or adults. Over time, your PROP status is not a particularly strong predictor of what your likes and dislikes will be. If anything,PROP nontasters—the ones who can’t taste bitterness in the sprouts at all—are slightly more at risk of an unhealthy diet and weight than the PROP supertasters.
There’s clear evidence that PROP supertasters are more sensitive to certain flavors than medium tasters: the burn of chili, the warmth of cinnamon, the acrid glow of coffee, the rasp of alcohol, the aftertaste of sweeteners and grapefruit—all of these are perceived more strongly, often unpleasantly so. What is not so predictable is how this affects preferences. Given that supertasters perceive alcoholic drinks as more bitter,
Some learn to love bitterness; some tolerate it because they enjoy the buzz they get from a bottle of IPA or a cup of strong French press coffee; and some hardly taste it at all. Psychologist Linda Bartoshuk of Yale University was the first to use the term “supertaster” in the mid-1990s to refer to individuals with a heightened response to certain tastes, predominantly bitter ones (the phenomenon was first observed in the 1930s). Bartoshuk and colleagues found that there were significant genetic differences in the way we perceive bitterness. PROP (6-n-propylthiouracil) and PTC (phenylthioucarbamide) are chemical substances that either taste incredibly bitter or slightly bitter or of nothing at all, depending on whether you have the gene to taste them. Around half of us are medium tasters, a quarter are nontasters, and another quarter are supertasters. Women are more likely to be supertasters than men. Bartoshuk has shown that PROP supertasters have more taste buds on their tongues than nontasters. There’s a very simple way to self-diagnose whether you are a supertaster. Swab your tongue with a little blue food dye and place a hole-punch reinforcer ring on your tongue. Count how many pink bumps you can see inside the ring—these are the fungiform papillae, each containing three to five taste buds. If you have fewer than fifteen, you are a nontaster. If you have fifteen to thirty-five, you are a medium taster. If you can count more than thirty-five inside the ring, you are a supertaster.
Psychologists got excited about the concept of PROP tasting, because it seemed to hold out—at last—the genetic key to likes and dislikes. Could bitter sensitivity be the secret to why some people eat unhealthy diets with few or no vegetables? Is it because they lack a gene for sprouts? The world of flavor must be a very different place to PROP supertasters and nontasters, and it would appear obvious that this would translate into food habits. When seventy-one women and thirty-nine men were asked to taste asparagus, kale, and Brussels sprouts, the PROP supertasters did indeed find the vegetables to be more bitter and less sweet.
The surprising thing, however, is that, from a mass of research into PROP tasting, very little does point to genes determining food choices, either in children or adults. Over time, your PROP status is not a particularly strong predictor of what your likes and dislikes will be. If anything,PROP nontasters—the ones who can’t taste bitterness in the sprouts at all—are slightly more at risk of an unhealthy diet and weight than the PROP supertasters.
There’s clear evidence that PROP supertasters are more sensitive to certain flavors than medium tasters: the burn of chili, the warmth of cinnamon, the acrid glow of coffee, the rasp of alcohol, the aftertaste of sweeteners and grapefruit—all of these are perceived more strongly, often unpleasantly so. What is not so predictable is how this affects preferences. Given that supertasters perceive alcoholic drinks as more bitter,
Similar Books
