Supertaster test for children: step-by-step guide

What makes you a Supertaster? Here's the science bit!

It's all about your tongue. Or, more specifically, about the tastebuds on your tongue.

Not everyone has the same number of tastebuds, scientists have discovered.¹

And for the people who have more tastebuds than average – these are the Supertasters – foods can have much stronger flavours that they do for the rest of us. This means that Supertasters often have very strong likes and disklikes for certain foods. They particularly seem to find that broccoli, spinach, cabbage, grapefruit and dark chocolate all taste very bitter.

There is also a group of people (about 25% of us) who have fewer tastebuds than average. They're called Non-tasters and they tend to find the foods that Supertasters are so sensitive to a bit weak or bland.

Your tastebuds are on your tongue – in big, pink bumps called fungiform papillae. Each pink bump houses between 6 and 15 tastebuds, and each tastebud is made up about 150 receptors cells that each receptor senses a single flavour (sweet, salty, bitter, sour or umami).

The more fungiform papillae you have on your tongue, the more tastebuds you'll have – and the more likely you are to be a Supertaster.

Here’s how to do the Supertaster test:

How to discover if you're a Supertaster science experiment

You will need:

Blue food dye
Small dish or bowl
Cotton bud
Tissues
Small piece of card
Hole punch or scissors

Step 1: Preparing the Dye

Take your food dye and squirt a little into your dish. Then take your cotton bud, and dip it in to the dye, so it’s coated.

Step 2: Applying Dye to the Tongue

Ask your child to stick their tongue out and, using the dye-laden cotton bud, cover about a third of your child's tongue with the food dye. Warning: have your tissues handy, as there may be dribbling – not a day for wearing best clothes. The food dye will stain the rest of their tongue too (but it soon comes off).

Step 3: Observing Tongue Appearance

Your child's tongue should look now something like these pics.

Step 4: Using the Card Template

Make a hole in your card with a hole punch or a pair of scissors (if you use scissors, as we have here, take care not to make the hole any bigger than the size of hole a hole punch would make). Press the card with the hole in it over your child's tongue.

Step 5: Counting Taste Buds

Look carefully and see how many big bumps – just the big ones (which should look pink or a lighter blue), not the smaller (darker blue) ones – you can count on the part of their tongue that is poking through the hole. If you're finding it hard to see clearly, you could use a torch and a magnifying glass or your child could take a 'tongue selfie' and then zoom in on the bumps on your phone.

How many bumps did you count? Here’s what your total means:

You can identify what kind of tester your child is by the number of bumps you've counted:

Fewer than 15 bumps: your child is a Non-taster
15 to 30 bumps: your child is an average taster
30 bumps or more: your child is a Supertaster

References:

^{1. PTC/PROP Tasting: Anatomy, Psychophysics and Sex Effects. Bartoshuk. LM et al. Physiology & Behaviour 1994 Dec; 56(6): 1165-71. doi: 10.1016/0031-9384(94)90361-1}