Supertaster, regular taster, or nontaster?

Hmm. I’m probably a taster or non-taster. I love dark chocolate and spinach and sprouts and cabbage. But I hate kale and Starbucks plain coffee will make me literally throw up. I’m usually OK with mildly bitter things, except for bitter melon. Ugh, that stuff is awful!

As for licorice, I don’t know- I like the Red Vines, but not the black ones? Haha.
I really like grapefruit but I’m pretty sure that’s a nurture thing. We had never-ending grapefruits when I was a teen.

I think cilantro tastes like soap and like it only when it’s cooked, not raw. Which is unfortunate because my mom put it on EVERYTHING.

I prefer green tea and oolongs. I’m OK with black teas but white is really subtle to me most days. I can’t stand rooibos or smokey teas though.

I am apparently a supertaster, but it’s difficult to tell because most placement quizzes rate you on your reaction, rather than what you taste. I taste all of these things strongly, but my reaction is often very positive. When a quiz asks me how I like my coffee, it tells me that I am a non-taster. When the quiz asks if coffee is bitter, it tells me that I am a super-taster. It is important to understand that not everybody reacts the same way to the same tastes.

Daniel Scott said it well in a response to post #20:
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I think the tasters concept is a broad one, and the general characteristics of each group are just that – general and common, but by no means universal. Supertasters, for example, are supposed to be very sensitive to food temperature. snip Thus, supertasters supposedly tend to prefer food tepid. Good god, no, my food must be HOT or COLD, nothing in between.

Also, I’m among the people who find cilantro to taste like metallic soap/lotion and smell like mold. I lovelovelove it, and always ask for extra at Mexican places. snip

I think it is perfectly possibly for someone to be considered a “supertaster” and love all things bitter. It’s just far less common.
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I think cilantro tastes soapy, metallic, bitter, and herb-y all at once. The first time I tasted it, it was absolutely overwhelming. I still managed to finish that bowl of soup because I forced myself to do it, but the strange thing is: it doesn’t taste nearly as strong to me anymore. Many flavors are like that: the potency of the taste, especially with negative flavors, goes down with exposure.

I find each individual bitter thing gradually becomes less bitter the more I taste them. Cocoa and grapefruit are barely bitter at all anymore, which makes sense because I liked them anyway and have eaten lots of dark chocolate and unsweetened grapefruit in my life. I also like bitter things sometimes—it varies, some bitter things I don’t like. And some bitter things I like sometimes. I miss bitter grapefruit, and I keep seeking more and more bitter beers; by now most IPAs are less bitter than I prefer.

Licorice has a strong unique flavor that completely overtakes my palate and makes me unable to taste anything else. I love it and I always have.

Alternative sweeteners (such as aspartame, sucralose, saccharin) have always had as much accompanying aftertastes as actual sweetness, and I’ve generally found them unpleasant. I have never wanted their actual sweetness, especially since there really isn’t very much of it.

I was given some pink medicine as a child—Amoxicillin I believe—it had an almost distinct and insufferably potent bubblegum flavor being completely smothered by the overpowering bitter taste. My siblings hated it. I pretended to like it (as I often did), but over time actually came to like it, and I missed it dearly when I was to stop taking it.

I find coffee is intensely bitter, and I like it for that. It also has a good, rich, earthy, chocolate-y flavor buried in there somewhere and maybe if I drink enough black coffee to lessen the bitterness, one day I can bring out the other taste.

I used to hate rye bread, but I found out it was the caraway seeds I hated. Today I kind of like them but I wouldn’t put them in bread.

I hated corned beef in part because of the peppercorns, but the whole thing was really a mess of unpleasant foods piled on top of one another, their varying levels of disgusting merging together as they stewed. Today I like it, though I won’t break an appointment to get any.

I find traditional German foods generally distasteful. I think their meats, though almost edible, are the worst cuts prepared in the worst way. But the meats are the most tolerable. Sauerkraut was one of the foods which as a kid I couldn’t muster up the willpower to pretend I liked it. I want that to change but so far no luck.

Spicy peppers don’t taste like anything to me, because the spiciness is entirely physical pain and nothing else. People say they tolerate the spiciness for the special flavors, but I may never experience what they’re tasting. Even the most mild peppers are pure pain. A single drop of Tabasco sauce is enough to ruin an entire plate of food. I try to endure spicy foods so as to not be a bother to others, but I don’t think I’ll ever come to enjoy them—and I even enjoy some forms of pain.

Shellfish have always had a fascinating and squicky texture which drew me in from the very beginning. As a young child I was simultaneously disgusted and enthralled by clams, oysters, mussels, etc. I have always loved them. I like seafood in general. Some of it has a squick factor that for some reason I like, but all of it is delicious regardless, and the textures and flavors are just perfect. Shrimp is simply amazing; it’s the food of the Gods.

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So I haven’t done the test but I’m pretty sure I’m a supertaster, despite that being the result I get LEAST often in taste quizzes. I think the quizzes need to be re-worded. They need to focus on what I experience, and not the way I feel about those experiences. Bitter taste is objective; positivity or negativity about bitter taste is subjective.