Celebrating National Science Week 2016 – Final Day – Supertasters!

It’s the last day of our Celebrating National Science Week experiments. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed writing them. This final experiment is very different from the previous experiments and takes a look at tastebuds and their role. Have you ever noticed that some people can identify very subtle tastes whereas other people cannot tell the difference between very different flavours? There is a very valid reason for that – tastebuds!

What are tastebuds?

Taste buds are tiny bumps found on your tongue that helps you determine the taste of your food or drink once they have been dissolved by your saliva. Without tastebuds, you cannot determine if something is sour, sweet, umami, bitter or salty. There are four types of tastebuds found in your mouth: Fungiform papillae, Filiform papillae, Foliate papillae and Circumvallate papillae. Only one of these tastebuds is relevant to this particular experiment – the fungiform papillae. You can tell them apart from the others based on their enlarged size and mushroom-like shape. They are also generally located in the centre on the tongue.

 

The Different Tasters

There are three types of people in the population based on their sensitivity to flavour: supertasters, normal and non-tasters. Supertasters are highly sensitive to flavours and can be able to distinguish between the most subtle of flavours. Imagine someone who can tell if there is a very small pinch of salt in their water. In terms of taste buds, supertasters may be identified by having more fungiform papillae than normal and non-tasters.

Non-tasters are the opposite. Their tastebuds are much less sensitive to flavour than the ‘normal’ population and sometimes cannot differentiate between salt water and sugared water! They have the least amount of fungiform papillae. Finally, the ‘normal’ population do not have any differentiating factors and are neither sensitive nor insensitive to taste.

Now its your turn to find out whether you which of the three you are. Are you a supertaster? Are you a non-taster? Or perhaps are you just a normal taster?

Supertasters Experiment
Note:This experiment requires two people.

 

Materials

• Four glasses of water
• A blindfold
• Some salt
• Some lemon juice
• Some sugar
• Eye dropper
• Blue food colouring

Instructions

1. Put a blindfold on one person.
2. The other person must use the eyedropper and add a drop of the salt, lemon juice and sugar into three different glasses. In the fourth glass, do not add anything. Do not tell the other person what is in each of the glasses but try to remember.
3. Let the blindfolded person try each of the glasses and decide which each of the one is. Correct their answers.
4. If they get all 4 answers right, they may be a Supertaster. Add a drop of blue food colouring onto their tongue to help count the number of taste buds they have. Usually, the more tastebuds they have, the higher the chance they have of being able to distinguish even the tiniests of flavours.
5. Change roles and repeat.

If you have any questions about this experiment, please feel free to leave a comment down below! Remember to ‘Like’ our Facebook page to keep updated on future articles, promotions, competitions and events. There’s bound to be a great read for anyone.

Catch up on the previous days