A patient going through a series of tests to measure her ability to detect and discriminate tastes and odors. Taste plays a crucial role in regulating our ingestion of foods and beverages. Deficits of these four basic taste sensations present serious problems because they can affect our desire to consume nutrients. For example, a taste deficit may lead to an unhealthy, dietary habit such as excess salt consumption or it can be linked to diseases or disorders including head trauma, cancer, diabetes, and obesity. By applying a dye to the tongue, the taste bud pores become visible and can be counted.
Results show that supertasters have many more taste buds than nontasters.
Women are more likely than men to be supertasters. Supertasters perceive more intense tastes from some bitter and sweet compounds than do nontasters. For example, caffeine, quinine, and ethanol taste more bitter while sugar and saccharin taste sweeter to a supertaster. This research is important because factors that affect taste can significantly influence nutritional intake and complicate clinical treatment. During the last decade, remarkable progress has been made in establishing the nature of changes that occur in the sense of taste with age.