I suspect I’m a supertaster. I’m extremely sensitive to bitter flavors, to the point where I can’t eat olives or drink beer or coffee. It’s torture for me. My father always complained that I put too much sugar into the coffee I made for him, but whenever I tested it I couldn’t imagine how anyone was able to stand it without at least four spoonfuls. Every single person I know will swear to me that bell peppers are sweet, but in my mouth they taste a murderous bitter. Celery is out of the question for the same reason.
It is, yes. Doesn’t seem to be the whole story, though—according to my 23andMe data I have two dominant alleles at that site, but I don’t find bitter flavors particularly aversive.
I don’t know how high or low 23andme’s error rate is but it has to be taken into account. And of course, as always with genetics, environmental factors play a role.
And a couple thousand other genes with many many many variants apiece that affect some part of your nervous system from your tongue to your brain, or a variant of the gene that 23andme sees as a known variant from part of its sequence that the microarray binds to but has a rare or unique difference elsewhere in the same gene that isn’t in the catalog.
I suspect I’m a supertaster. I’m extremely sensitive to bitter flavors, to the point where I can’t eat olives or drink beer or coffee. It’s torture for me. My father always complained that I put too much sugar into the coffee I made for him, but whenever I tested it I couldn’t imagine how anyone was able to stand it without at least four spoonfuls. Every single person I know will swear to me that bell peppers are sweet, but in my mouth they taste a murderous bitter. Celery is out of the question for the same reason.
I am sure this can be tested by 23andme.
It is, yes. Doesn’t seem to be the whole story, though—according to my 23andMe data I have two dominant alleles at that site, but I don’t find bitter flavors particularly aversive.
I don’t know how high or low 23andme’s error rate is but it has to be taken into account. And of course, as always with genetics, environmental factors play a role.
And a couple thousand other genes with many many many variants apiece that affect some part of your nervous system from your tongue to your brain, or a variant of the gene that 23andme sees as a known variant from part of its sequence that the microarray binds to but has a rare or unique difference elsewhere in the same gene that isn’t in the catalog.