Taste: Surprising Stories and Science About Why Food Tastes Good by Barb Stuckey Read Free Book Online

possessed.
    “Of course I do,” I said, not at all sure at this point if I did.
    “You must know that I’m only going to tell you this for your own good. I mean, since you’re writing this book about taste and all.”
    Then he said, “When you went to the bathroom while I was in the taste tasting lab with Jennifer, she told me something about you.”
    My heart stopped beating. I held my breath.
    “She told me I have more taste buds than you,” he said, looking somewhat sheepish, somewhat swaggering. The worst part about it was I knew he was right. Household taste bragging rights belong to Mr. Meat and Potatoes.
Blame Your Parents
    The third factor for taster type is genetics, which is also responsible for the traits you get from Mom and Dad. You may have the genes that allow you to taste something such as the bitter chemical PROP. Or you may not. It’s simple geneticsat work. For each trait, such as blue eyes or the ability to taste PROP, you get one gene from your mother and one from your father. If PROP tastes extremely bitter to you, it’s likely that both your PROP-tasting genes (one from Mom and one from Dad) are turned on. If you can’t taste it at all, it’s likely that both your PROP-tasting genes are turned off. And if you have a mild reaction to PROP, you may have one gene that’s on (the one from Mom or Dad) and one that’s off (the other one, from the other parent). In other words, you need at least one “PROP on” gene to react to the compound at all, but two copies of the gene in order to have a HyperTaster reaction to PROP. Keep in mind, however, that your reaction to PROP is not a universal indication of your reaction to other compounds. Just because you can’t taste PROP doesn’t mean you can’t taste PTC (phenylthiocarbamide, another bitter chemical), the bitterness in Brussels sprouts, or the bitterness in beer. In fact, “There are PROP nontasters who are Supertasters [HyperTasters],” says Bartoshuk, just to confound the matter.
    Your unique tongue anatomy and genetics combine in an interesting way that results in your own unique experience of food. If you have the genetic ability to taste PROP but a low density of taste buds, you may taste food very differently from someone with a high density of taste buds who cannot taste PROP. And how these traits affect your food choices is even more complicated when you layer on life experiences.
Measuring Taste
    Because of all this complexity, Bartoshuk defaults to a more straightforward test for identifying a HyperTaster: she simply asks how intense some things taste. When we were in Florida, we sampled popcorn, lasagna, peanut butter, and grape jelly. But herein lies the rub. How in the world do you measure this? What would happen if you gave both Roger and me a plate of roasted butternut squash (with sage and brown butter, please) and asked us to rate it? How would you know that his perception of bitterness is the same as my perception of bitterness? Or sweetness? Or saltiness?
    The fact is that perception occurs in the mind. As a result, it is virtually impossible to measure accurately. Take the perception of beauty. How pretty is Angelina Jolie? How beautiful is the city of Paris? There is no definitive answer to either of these questions. The answer varies with the individual. Asking about someone’s perception of food is similarly complicated. Each person is biased(and informed) by his own anatomy, genetics, and life experience. Taste perception is in the mouth and brain of the beholder.
    The solution, says Bartoshuk, is to peg taste intensity to something that we can measure, such as sound. She conducted an experiment that started with a can of Coca-Cola, a product with a standardized recipe (or formula, as we say in the food development business) for the United States market. Because of this, a Coke in your neighborhood, city, or state will taste exactly the same as a Coke in mine (though it is different in Mexico, where Coke is