"supertaster" news and stories

Remember the old potato chip slogan, "No one can eat just one"? Well, it turns out there may be a granule of scientific truth to that bit of advertising bravado -- for some of us, at least.

According to a study published this week in the journal Physiology & Behavior, some people appear to be genetically hardwired to enjoy saltier foods than others. So-called "supertasters" are people who experience all tastes more intensely (sweet, bitter, salty), and the participants in the study who were identified as supertasters reported eating saltier foods.

"Most of us like the taste of salt," said John Hayes, a food researcher at Penn State and one of the study's authors. "However, some individuals eat more salt, both because they like the taste of saltiness more, and also because it is needed to block other unpleasant tastes in food," such as bitterness.

Scientists who research the sense of taste divide people into three categories: nontasters, medium tasters and supertasters. These classifications are based on the perception of a compound known as 6-n-propylthiouracil (PROP, for short), which has a bitter taste that is perceptable to some, but not all, people. 25% of people, the nontasters, will register nothing when they taste the compound. To 50% of the population, the medium tasters, PROP will taste bitter, but not overly so. The remaining 25% of people are classified as supertasters and to them, the compound will taste intensely bitter. The classification of "super taster" does not mean that one's sense of taste is superior to another's, but that there is an increased level of sensitivity to various tastes on the tongue.

Supertasters have a much higher density of papillae, the small mushroom-like structures on the tongue that house taste buds, than medium and nontasters. Women are more likely to be supertasters than men are.