#supertaster

[copperbadge]

Do you have thoughts on all-dressed chips?

I can't think if I've ever had all-dressed, I don't think I have. I'm familiar with them conceptually but they're not found in the US very often. I've definitely seen them like, available on store shelves once in a while (I think Lays sometimes does them seasonally) but I've generally assumed they'd suffer from Everything Bagel Syndrome.

I don't know how normal people encounter the everything bagel, or even just the Everything Bagel seasoning that for example Trader Joe's sells. Given the general enthusiasm for it, I suppose it's pretty popular, but I've never seen the point. Everything bagels just taste like onions to me -- onion is of course one of the toppings but it's so dominant that it's basically "crunchy texture from the sesame/poppy plus overwhelming onion". I don't know if it's that most people aren't aware that 90% of what they're tasting is onion, or if I'm over-tasting the onion because I'm a supertaster and that's a particular sensitivity of mine.

Onion's a nice flavor, I don't dislike it and I see why people go nuts for Everything if they don't realize it's onion. But whenever I encounter all-dressed or everything flavors, I just think, well, if I want that I'll just get onion flavor and skip the mess. It's only just occurring to me that I actually don't know if all-dressed would be the same. I'll have to keep an eye peeled and try them out.

Unless all-dressed also includes jalapeno flavor. Fuck that shit. :D

[whetstonefires]

Overly sensitive re: flavour, OR are you a Super Taster? I've loved that term since I read it in a textbook on the psychology of food and drink. It's like a superpower, except for all the ways it sucks

sdl;akjfs that might be the same thing? idk, i know there are some Supertaster benchmarks i don't hit, and i've followed the common trend of becoming more tolerant to bitterness etc with age.

but taste is complicated even as human sensory systems go, with there being first of all the five different types of basic chemoreceptor on the tongue, each of which can individually be particularly sensitive (detects smaller portions) or particularly 'loud' (data priority in brain; subject to training but to some extent hardwired) and then there's the more complex chemoreceptors in your nose which are also active in the food-tasting process, detecting all the more delicate nuances, which are also subject to varying strength and priority.

and then there's however your sensory processing system mixes and interprets those chemical readouts, in combination with texture feedback etc, and how well you filter that data.

so i assume that supertasting is an elaborate spectrum in its own right, which when superimposed on the autism one creates a universe of unique snowflakes with very specific food orders.

I definitely taste sour way more acutely than a lot of other people, which has caused me repeated conflicts with my dad's cooking, because what he thinks is the right amount of vinegar to get a sauce or something to really pop is, to me, enough vinegar that no other flavor remains in the dish, and it can only serve as a sort of pickle garnish. an unfortunate fate for the main dish lmao.

we feuded in an easygoing way over How To Properly Sautee Cabbage for years.

this is probably why i tend to dislike sourdough bread. the sour is loud enough that it obstructs the subtle pleasures of 'bread' flavor.

similarly for coffee. i need so much cream to lock up its bitterness before I can consume it comfortably. i can enjoy black tea without milk, though, as long as it's not oversteeped, and the main flavor there is certainly 'bitter,' and it's even some of the same tannins that are too much in coffee. so what's with that?

otoh when a thing is 'sour' 'sweet' and 'bitter' all at once and also mushy and wet, my mouth informs me emphatically and relentlessly that this is actually rotting vegetables and i need to spit it out right now, which doesn't strike me as a problem that arises from how well i'm detecting any of that.

third hand, someone helping me out here ig, i spent years frustrated about the subtle weird taste in my home-baked bread only to at last determine that it was 1) active dry yeast does not taste quite as nice as the live yeast professional bakeries often purchase in large cakes and 2) iodized table salt degrades at very high temperatures, creating a faint chemical tang, and these two factors were undermining the flavor of my loaves in a way no one else seemed able to detect. but maybe i was just paying more attention.

also fourth hand, for a couple months after my senses seemed to have otherwise more or less recovered from Covid the 'sweet' dial remained turned up weirdly high relative to the other major taste bands, and i don't think my salt tolerance has entirely reverted to this day.

[theonlybezo]

I don't know the prevalence of supertasting in the autistic community, but I am both autistic and a supertaster and one of the ways I exist is to measure and categorize everything so, without ado of any kind, here are my tolerance levels for various tastes.

Feel free to add your own, regardless of your autistic or supertaster status.

Sweet: 7/10 (there is such a thing as too sweet but it'll take a lot to push me away)

Salty: 8/10 (I crave that mineral and even when I can feel it burning my lips, there are very few things that could be considered too salty for me)

Sour: 2/10 (I do not enjoy anything more sour than tomato ketchup)

Bitter: 1/10 (Bitterness absolutely ruins food for me. I cannot drink coffee or eat many vegetables because of this)

Spicy: 3/10 (I like a bit of tingle but anything that attacks the tongue or remains in the mouth for more than a few seconds is bad)

Earthy: 1/10 (This is probably a subcategory of bitter but anything like mushrooms is right out)

Fermented: 0/10 (included in this category is alcohol, kombucha, and any cheese in which mold is a feature. Anything that tastes of rot is not something I wish to experience)

[thequestionsofmychild]

Can I have a lolly?

The Challenges of Raising a Supertaster Child My son is a supertaster, he tastes every little ingredient in everything which is so overwhelming for him. This is why he sticks to plain, familiar things. We have a number of foods he eats and one of them is a spiral lolly from Aldi. He is (or was) currently having around 2-3 of these lollies a day. He absolutely loved them. Watching him eat one of…

[alvie-pines]

my sister has been sick lately, and whatever she had, i could smell it, and everyone acted like i was crazy.

the sickness broke today and she looked so surprised when she asked if she still smelled sick and i said no, not at all.

it was so strong i could smell it just sitting next to her at dinner... and its not new. i've always been able to smell when people are sick.

yall cant smell sickness??

[shock-centurion]

Does spice intolerance increase at night? Is that a thing?

Like I'm very weak to spice in general but there are meals that I'm like oof that's not completely comfy but it is also delicious om nom

But only when I eat them during the day

Like this uh banquet mega bowls dynamite penne and meatballs during the day is like. Yeah it's painful but it tastes good so I can push through and enjoy it right

But at night like right now

This is too much it just hurts like the pain blocks my ability to taste it

I'm over here eating the least sauced noodles only and wiping sauce off the meatballs like what is this is my brain like no it's eepy time no strong sensations

Or what

[delphinidin4]

Why does E6000 superglue smell like Dijon mustard?

[hooligankloobian]

girls when they period sync

[copperbadge]

Bought a couple bags of lay’s dill pickle flavored potato chips because Walmart was selling them for 2 bucks per and was the only flavor they’d ship to me. Thought of you when I was eating them. Spoiler alert: they do not, in fact, taste like dill pickles. More like less salty and less sour salt and vinegar chips.

I often do actually like dill pickle chips for precisely that reason -- I really like salt and vinegar chips but because of the supertaster thing they're often too intensely flavored for me.

Like, I have to eat Doritos weird so that the extra seasoning doesn't get on my lips and then burn my tongue when I lick it off. It's the dumbest fucking genetic quirk I have, I swear. I'd take an uptick in the ADHD if I could get rid of the damn supertasting.

Anyway usually dill pickle flavored chips don't have that weird rancid butter flavor that actual pickles have for me, and they're mellower than salt and vinegar chips, so I tend to enjoy them. But lately I've been making my own dill pickle cashews with Trader Joe's pickle seasoning, and those are perfect, so I am mostly content. :D

[randomwordzard]

my least favorite thing about food is how you take one bite and go "wow, this tastes so good!" but then after that first bite it just tastes the same. like am I the only one where the novelty is lost so quickly

[jaystarry]

i could be killed for this but frankly someone needs to speak the truth. all colors of bell pepper taste exactly the same with little to no variance

[mateushonrado]

Upcoming superhero/comic book films coming next month

Status Post #11643: Superman (2025) and The Fantastic Four: First Steps.

[wantonlywindswept]

it took three tries for me to find something edible for lunch today and i think that was so brave of me

also who the fuck makes spicy pasta sauce

[stagefoot]

At today’s meet-and-greet there was a container with strawberries and pineapple

And I love strawberries and I HATE pineapple (even more than I love strawberries) so I was like

[xcziel]

picky eater/supertaster update:

so far the Sneaky Peas system has been a success. best practice is 6-8 frozen peas washed down between every few bites of minute rice with campbell's golden mushroom soup straight out of the can (delicious to me for nostalgia reasons)

now if only i could figure some convenient way of rendering broccoli or like spinach into frozen easy-to-swallow form ...

[dragonraptyr]

Regarding Force Sensitivity and the recent discussions about Sabine: y'all, what if it's like the difference between being a Supertaster, and taking the time to develop your palate?