You should have seen Vir (tabby-point Siamese) the day he stuck his nose into Steve's lunch and got a snootful of jalapeno cheddar cheese. He scrunched up his face, turned his head away, reared up on his hind legs, and made shooing motions with both front paws.
In what ways are you like a supertaster? I am one, and neither I nor any I've ever met has anywhere near your tolerance for spiciness or nightshades (tomato, eggplant, etc.)
Oddly enough, even though I'm definitely a supertaster (confirmed by a lab specializing in research into the 5 senses, even), due to sinus issues my sense of smell varies from little to none. Which makes me more than skeptical about the idea that if you can't smell, you can't really taste. If that were true, I'd be a whole lot thinner.
You've hit on the main ways in which I am not like a supertaster (and I think there's something about broccoli as well). The things that have made others speculate that I might be one are my ability to notice individual ingredients to a degree that apparently many people do not, a sensitivity to very subtle differences in flavour (not that I always care, but I tend to notice), and my trick of synthesizing flavour combinations in my mind and knowing what they'll taste like (usually) before actually combining real ingredients. I don't know whether my reaction to really expensive cognac constitutes a clue or not.[*]
Apparently there's a really simple test for supertaste, involving blue food colouring, a mirror, a magnifying glass, and a loose leaf reinforcing ring, but I haven't gotten around to doing that yet. If it turns out that I am a supertaster, then my fondness for nightshades and for SpIcY food in general will present rather a bit of a puzzle. But I have other hypotheses to explain my taste sensitivity if I'm not a supertaster (not that I have any idea how likely any of the hypotheses are to be correct).
For one thing, there's that whole "dominant sense" meme: according to that model, different people have different senses dominate, and this tends to be reflected in how they think and their choices of idioms and metaphors. IIRC, sight and sound are the most common. I'm not really sure which sense is my dominant one, but both touch and taste seem pretty important (and I do occasionally get puzzled looks when I say things like "her mind tastes nice"). For another, there are the experiences which may count as a form of synaesthesia (I do not experience the phenomena almost always given as examples of synaesthesia in magazine articles, but I do have cross-sensory perceptions -- something may "sound pink" or "feel prickly in my eyes" when I look at it or "taste bright"; I usually perceive the sensation as being "in" the correct sensory organ for the sense I'm objectively using, but the "wrong" sense for that organ (or rather, a combination of the expected sense and another) ... except that when a taste tickles, I feel it inside my head, not on my tongue). Or perhaps, despite how oblivious I can be about many things, I simply pay more attention to other things than most people do, and thus notice more of what I taste while others taste the same things and notice less of what they're tasting. (Consider Feynman's scent experiment, for example.) I don't know.
Have I described what happened when Perrine tasted palak paneer?
And oh yeah, frequent sinus issues here, too, with the corresponding variability in olfactory acuity. Yup. (For me it ranges from normal[**] to none, so I've got a wider variation of sensitivity than you do, but I'm familiar with the "can't smell what folks around me do" thing.)
[*] Sheepie gave me some really, really nice cognac once, and I started getting high on it really quickly -- as in, before any alcohol had hit my stomach, much less my bloodstream -- from simply the exquisite flavour alone.
[**] Er ... I guess. Though come to think of it, I don't really know for sure what normal olfaction is.
(no subject)
In what ways are you like a supertaster? I am one, and neither I nor any I've ever met has anywhere near your tolerance for spiciness or nightshades (tomato, eggplant, etc.)
Oddly enough, even though I'm definitely a supertaster (confirmed by a lab specializing in research into the 5 senses, even), due to sinus issues my sense of smell varies from little to none. Which makes me more than skeptical about the idea that if you can't smell, you can't really taste. If that were true, I'd be a whole lot thinner.
(no subject)
Apparently there's a really simple test for supertaste, involving blue food colouring, a mirror, a magnifying glass, and a loose leaf reinforcing ring, but I haven't gotten around to doing that yet. If it turns out that I am a supertaster, then my fondness for nightshades and for SpIcY food in general will present rather a bit of a puzzle. But I have other hypotheses to explain my taste sensitivity if I'm not a supertaster (not that I have any idea how likely any of the hypotheses are to be correct).
For one thing, there's that whole "dominant sense" meme: according to that model, different people have different senses dominate, and this tends to be reflected in how they think and their choices of idioms and metaphors. IIRC, sight and sound are the most common. I'm not really sure which sense is my dominant one, but both touch and taste seem pretty important (and I do occasionally get puzzled looks when I say things like "her mind tastes nice"). For another, there are the experiences which may count as a form of synaesthesia (I do not experience the phenomena almost always given as examples of synaesthesia in magazine articles, but I do have cross-sensory perceptions -- something may "sound pink" or "feel prickly in my eyes" when I look at it or "taste bright"; I usually perceive the sensation as being "in" the correct sensory organ for the sense I'm objectively using, but the "wrong" sense for that organ (or rather, a combination of the expected sense and another) ... except that when a taste tickles, I feel it inside my head, not on my tongue). Or perhaps, despite how oblivious I can be about many things, I simply pay more attention to other things than most people do, and thus notice more of what I taste while others taste the same things and notice less of what they're tasting. (Consider Feynman's scent experiment, for example.) I don't know.
Have I described what happened when Perrine tasted palak paneer?
And oh yeah, frequent sinus issues here, too, with the corresponding variability in olfactory acuity. Yup. (For me it ranges from normal[**] to none, so I've got a wider variation of sensitivity than you do, but I'm familiar with the "can't smell what folks around me do" thing.)
[**] Er ... I guess. Though come to think of it, I don't really know for sure what normal olfaction is.