• 4/6/2006
  • Hudson, NY
  • Mike Toner
  • Times Herald-Record (recordonline.com)

They’re right there on the tip of your tongue – taste buds. Scientists are learning that how many of those little fungiform papillae you have – and how they work – may play a role in whether you develop cancer, heart disease or diabetes.

“We live in different taste worlds and how things taste has a lot to do with whether we eat them or not,” Yale University psychologist Linda Bartoshuk told the American Chemical Society in Atlanta last week.

Although it was once thought that tastes for food were acquired, scientists now know that the world of taste is divided, partly by genetic differences, into three parts: supertasters, nontasters and everyone else.

Supertasters have about six times as many taste buds as nontasters, and scientists are beginning to learn how differences in their perception of taste, especially of fats and sweets, can effect a diet and health.

“Supertasters experience all tastes two to three times more intensely that the rest of us,” says Bartoshuk. “Because of that intensity, they tend not to like fat, and they don’t eat as much of it. They also tend to avoid highly salted foods. Not surprisingly, they are less likely to be obese and more likely to have lower rates of cardiovascular disease.”

Because supertasters also perceive sweetness more intensely, they are less likely to crave highly sweetened food and beverages. Less sugar means fewer calories, less weight and a reduced risk of diabetes.

Surveys show that chefs tend to be supertasters. Researchers aren’t sure why, but it also appears that women are more likely to be supertasters than men. And Asians, African-Americans and Hispanics are more likely to taste more intensely than other groups.

But it’s not all peaches and sweet cream for people with overactive taste buds. Because they are also supersensitive to bitterness, they tend to them shun bitter tasting things that can be good for them, like grapefruit juice, coffee and green tea.

And the proximity of the tongue’s pain receptors to their densely packed taste buds also make them more sensitive to the chili peppers and hot sauce.

“Supertasters also tend not to like fruits and vegetables containing flavinoids, compounds which they perceive as bitter, so they may face higher rates of diet-related cancers,” Bartoshuk says. “One study showed that supertasters over the age of 65 had higher rates of the kind of polyps that have been linked to colon cancer.”

Bartoshuk says less sensitivity to taste doesn’t impede someone’s ability to enjoy food. She counts herself among the 25 percent of the population classified as a “nontasters,” but she says she enjoys the same food most people do.

“We all get pleasure from food,” she says. “People like me just taste things less intensely. I never passed up anything in my life because it was too sweet.”

Less sensitive taste perception, she contends, is comparable to seeing the world in subtle pastels, instead of neon – different but still pleasurable.

Even supertasters sometimes get a chance to find out what life is like at the other end of the taste continuum.

Researchers have identified a wide range of factors that can temporarily or permanently impair a person’s sense of taste, including dental work, ear infections, head injury, chemotherapy and the consumption of antibiotics.

Bartoshuk’s research is being watched closely by the food and beverage industry, especially by companies that use artificial sweeteners. Nontasters, for instance, who needs lots of sugar to taste its sweetness, tend to look on artificially sweetened soft drinks as not sweet enough. Supertasters may find the same level of sweetener in a drink too strong.

“We are aware of these differences,” says Grant DuBois, a Coca-Cola Co. chemist who organized the chemical society symposium on the science of taste. “But we are a company that develops products the average consumer likes. There’s not much we can do to please the two extremes.”