Second, while we don't have a questionnaire at this point, you can ask the person a couple of questions about the person's food likes and dislikes, and how much and in what way they think about food. Supertasters tend to have many strong food dislikes which are not aversions due to becoming sick after eating a given food. Supertasters can often talk about hating a food, and having trouble finding prepared dishes they like on a restaurant menu. Supertasters are also able to tell whether a given ingredient is in a food. Medium tasters tend to like all foods, and to be more fussy about preparation.
Medium tasters tend to think a lot about food in an eager, positive way.
We have found that the students at Cornell's Hotel School who are planning to be chefs and restaurateurs are most likely to be medium tasters. They tend to think of foods in terms of properties such as healthfulness rather than taste, and they tend to be very attentive to the presentation of the food, and to the atmosphere of the place in which they are eating. They may like to eat, especially if they are lively people, who enjoy life in general. They are more dependent on smell than people of the other two groups, so a food has to smell good for them to really enjoy eating it. The reason for this differential sensitivity lies in the fact that the fungiform papillae also house the nerve endings which become irritated when you eat these foods.