Supertasters are thinner than nontasters.

Taste buds are little structures on your tongue that send information to your brain about the taste of food as you eat. Everyone has a different number of taste buds, though the average is about 10,000.

 Interestingly, the number of your taste buds has a profound effect on which foods you think will taste good and which foods you think will taste bad. And which foods you prefer strongly influences how heavy you become.

People are divided into taster types based on the number of taste buds they have on their tongue. The types are: nontaster, medium taster, and supertaster. About 25% of people are supertasters, 50% are medium tasters and 25% are nontasters.

Nontasters have very few taste buds. Supertasters have 10 times the number of taste buds as nontasters and have taste experiences at three to five times the level of the other taster types.

With their vast number of taste buds, supertasters are more sensitive to bitter, sweet and fat flavors. How does this help you stay thin? If you are sensitive to a taste, then you’ll stop eating it sooner because you’ll become over stimulated by the flavor. A supertaster may find sweets too sweet and stop eating. A supertaster may eat less of fatty foods like cream because it’s too greasy for them. It’s not hard to imagine how this helps keep your weight down.

A nontaster on the other hand will love fatty foods and sweets like cotton candy. They can eat anything and everything. It’s not hard to imagine how this helps you gain weight.

You can see how your taster type makes a difference in real life by a study testing to see if the different taster types could distinguish between a salad dressing with 40% fat and one with 10% fat. From a calorie point of view that’s a big difference.

They found medium tasters and supertasters could tell the difference between the two salad dressings, but the nontasters could not. More importantly, for weight loss purposes, the nontasters liked the higher fat dressing more. The medium tasters and supertasters liked either dressing.

Imagine what this means over a lifetime of eating. If you like either dressing, you can pick the lower fat dressing without losing any satisfaction from your meal. To experience the same amount of satisfaction, the nontaster picks the higher calorie dressing. Over a lifetime, all those simple decisions add up to a huge number of additional calories for the nontaster.

Surprisingly, your taste bud count is traceable to a single gene. A simple genetic difference in the number of taste buds you have can impact your weight. Amazing, isn’t it?

To Learn More

·        There is a test on our website to determine which kind of taster you are.