how many taste buds do you have?

this is a very cool new thing for me to have discovered, so i’m sharing it with you.

most of us never really give a thought to the possible relationship between our taste buds and what we like. some of us like spicy food while others can’t stand anything even remotely too salty or sweet. could this have anything to do with our taste buds, those little microscopic bumps on our tongue?

recently i was having a conversation with a wine consultant and for the first time ever i heard what seemed bizarre yet logical. yes, we are all born differently, and apparently with a relatively different amount of taste buds. what we like, and how we like it, is completely related to the amount of little bumps on our tongue. how weird does that sound?

because i have always been inclined to rich and heavy wines, and always loved super spicy food, it made me wonder if i was an under-taster or not. someone with a low count of taste buds is referred to as a non-taster or under-taster, while someone with a high count is referred to as a super-taster. essentially the more taste buds you have, the more sensitive you are to flavours.

so how do you know how many taste buds you have? here is a simple test you can do to find out, which was first explained by this wine consultant i met, and reconfirmed on the doctor oz show with guest gary vaynerchuk. (if you don’t know gary, you must check his wine tv website)

here is what you will need to count your taste buds :

• some blue food colouring

• cotton buds (q-tips)

• reinforcement rings for hole-punched paper, or a thick hole-punched piece of paper

• a magnifier of some sort (glass or mirror)

then follow these few simple steps :

• using the q-tip, swab some food colouring over the tip of your tongue

• place a reinforcement ring on your tongue

• lastly count inside the hole area of the ring how many pink dots there are (these are your taste buds which do not turn blue). the magnifier will help for this part.

the result :

an under-taster will have fewer than 10 taste buds, an average taster about 20, and a super-taster will have over 30. here are some images (not very appealing) to see a visual of what i’m talking about: taste bud test. i also found the video clip of gary with doctor oz here.

and yes... it does feel a bit weird to put blue colouring on your tongue! but it is fun to understand our tasting behaviour, is it not? it sure confirmed a lot of things for me as i have less than 10! so spicy food and heavy wines, come to mama! :)