Supertaster!

This post is loooooong overdue, but it took me a while to figure out how to embed that song. Actually, embedding wasn't as difficult as finding a host for the tune (without violating copyrights).

Anyway, I'm a Supertaster! I've always known I was special and destined for great things. This just confirms it. Now I just need to figure out how to use my Supertaster abilities for good (or evil- I'm still undecided on that part). I mean, "With great power comes great responsibility," right?

From Wikipedia: "A supertaster is a person who experiences taste with far greater intensity than average...due to an increased number of fungiform papillae." That's right: fungiform papillae. I rule.

Let's look at some more of the things that make me extraordinary:

• Perceive all tastes as more intense than other taster types, particularly bitter tastes
• Tend to be fussy about their food and have strong food likes and dislikes
• Usually don't like coffee, grapefruit, cabbage, Brussels sprouts and spinach
• Have lots of papillae, the tiny bumps on the tongue that contain taste buds
• Around 25% of people are said to be supertasters

That third one is definitely true, except for spinach. I've actually grown to like spinach over the years.

If you'd like to find out how you rank on the Supertaster scale, there's a quick test you can take here. But don't get your hopes up. Not everyone can be a Supertaster like me. Only about 25% of the population in fact, so don't be too heart-broken if you don't make the cut to be among we privileged elite.

But this new knowledge about myself opens up so many questions! What am I to do with these strange and wonderful powers? What would happen to me if I went to one of those tasting parties where that weird berry (Synsepalum dulcificum) changes flavors? What should my crime-fighting costume look like? Who came up with the term "foodie," and why have they inflicted it upon us? Is it this decade's version of cigar smoking?

So, where do you rank on the supertaster scale! Maybe you could be my arch-nemesis.