‘An onion can make people cry, but there has never been a vegetable invented to make them laugh: Will ROGERS (A SUSPECTED PROP TASTER) If you scored 40 or higher on the PROP Test, chances are that you are what is known as a taster, and if you scored higher than 80, you may even be a supertaster. PROP is a naturally occurring chemical in food that’s only real importance is the bitterness of its taste. If you can taste it, you are genetically programmed to dislike important and health-promoting foods such as broccoli, spinach, Brussels sprouts, cabbage and grapefruit. As it turns out, liking these vegetables and fruits may be the odd quality, since up to 75 per cent of the world’s population are tasters and a mere 25 per cent non-tasters, that is, people who are insensitive to the bitterness of many of the foods that are so good for you.
When researchers have studied tasters and supertasters, they have found that, in general, both groups dislike Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, cabbage, radishes and grapefruit more than non-tasters. Other foods disliked by tasters include coffee, green tea and bitter beers. In addition, the group described as supertasters tend to dislike foods that are very sweet or that have a high fat content. This makes supertasters perhaps the pickiest eaters in the world.
Is there an association between your PROP-taster status and weight? It makes sense, but so far the studies are not conclusive. In some surveys, supertasters were thinner than non-tasters. Why would they be thinner? Since supertasters have many more food aversions than non-tasters, it is possible that they eat a very bland, unvaried diet, and diets with less variety have been associated with a lower BM!.
If how things taste is determined by your genes, you can’t be blamed for not eating your broccoli. Doctors and nutritionists have insisted that we all should eat a diet low in fat and high in fruits and vegetables. The fact that these foods don’t taste good to a significant portion of the population hasn’t really even been discussed. The genetic basis of taste is not a new discovery. In the 1930s, a chemist named A. L. Fox was working with a chemical very similar to PROP, and some of it accidentally became airborne. Fox’s colleague immediately noted and commented on the bitter taste of the airborne stuff, but Fox himself tasted nothing. That simple observation led to hundreds of family studies investigating the genetic varieties in the ability to taste PROP.
Since then, populations across the globe have been tested for this trait. In Western Africa, 97 per cent of the population are tasters. In India, only 60 per cent are. In the adult populations of the US and UK, 75 per cent are tasters. In general, the ability to taste PROP is strongest when you are younger and declines slowly with age. It’s more common in women than men. In women, the ability to taste PROP is influenced by sex hormones, so it fluctuates over the course of the menstrual cycle and in pregnancy.
Although exactly how this trait works is not well understood, there are measurable differences between tasters, non-tasters and supertasters. For one thing, tasters have more tastebuds than non-tasters, and supertasters have even more than tasters. And some researchers have found that there are different sensitivities to dif fervent types of bitterness even among tasters – that some of us may be more sensitive to the taste of quinine; others, to the taste of PROP. Current thinking is that there may be up to 60 different receptors just for the perception of bitterness.
This is an active area of research, simply because what we eat is important and many of the foods currently thought of as good for us (such as fruits and vegetables) are not widely consumed despite active encouragement. The reason doctors and nutritionists want you to eat these fruits and vegetables is that they contain disease-reducing chemicals that can help you stay healthy longer. In a number of population- based studies like the Harvard Nurses’ Study, higher consumption of fruits and vegetables was associated with lower rates of many cancers as well as lower rates of obesity and heart disease.
The goal of this research is to see if there is a biological and genetic reason for our eating habits and then try to fix it. So, if you hate broccoli, as does the former US president, George Bush pere, consider that this may be inherited. You can’t help it if you don’t like it; you got it from your mum or dad. On the other hand, research also indicates that sensitivity to bitterness is highest in young children, and this is the age when food preferences are determined. It is possible that the vegetable you hated as a child tastes pretty good now – but first you have to taste it.
The other thing to do, since fruits and vegetables are an important part of a diet and grossly underconsumed, is to actively look for ones you like. Too often, we are introduced to only a few vegetables before our mothers throw up their hands in despair and give up. We generalize from our experience with broccoli and spinach that we do not like vegetables. Let me encourage you to try other (non-bitter) vegetables and fruits. (A list of non-bitter fruits and vegetables is provided on article 280.) We live in a world where we can eat just about everything. Use this ability to expand your horizons vegetable-wise.
