Friday, August 29, 2008

Supertasting Does Not Taste Super

Ugh! Egads! That was so gross! Okay, it's not as bad as eating a vomit flavored jelly bean, but these strips of paper are nasty. They taste like powdered aspirin, or xanax swallowed too slowly... IF you're a supertaster, that is. Which, apparently, both Evan and I are.

Ever since I exceeded expectations in Erin's "Identify Skittle Colors by Taste" Test, I've not-so-secretly hoped that I was a supertaster. As soon as Evan found out that he could use supertasting as an excuse for hating vegetables, he's been hoping he's one as well. After trying and failing to properly execute a supertaster test involving blue food coloring and wax paper last week, Evan went ahead and ordered these strips. The subject puts a strip into his/her mouth for ten seconds. According to the instructions, a non-taster will taste nothing, a taster will taste a mildly bitter/bland flavor, and a supertaster will taste something very bitter. Both of our reactions were so strong that we immediately spit out the paper and slammed some water.

It seems unlikely that we would both turn out to be supertasters, but until we have better evidence that the tests are faulty, we're going to assume that they're not. We will also assume that being a supertaster makes one superior. And that our superiority qualifies us for something besides an aversion to vegetables, grapefruit juice, and dark chocolate, like a man-servant or possibly a silver plaque of some kind.

3 comments:

evan said...

my super (sensitive) powers include but are not limited to:

taste, touch, light, sound and feelings(arguably not a product of the concerted failures of the preceding four sensory relations-no real consistency outside of difficulty.)

i feel like a self-aware robot that is only concerned with how fat it is!

please eat your greens :(

Anonymous said...

Sounds like you both might have Asperger's Syndrome, or at least some form of ADD.

evan said...

nah. sounds like all the subtlety of a busted chainsaw. i don't have asperger's, truth is i saw something nasty in the woodshed!

fyi: a.d.d. and a.s. do not share such confused overlapping signs of an isolated or even comorbid nature that would ever lead a specialist to incorrectly evaluate months of private sessions, psychometric tests and a family case history. i could go over this material with you but find it more gratifying to demonstrate how one should veil his punches.

by the bye, ticker + time stamp + ip address does not equal anonymity. nor does using a friend's computer. :)