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nafex - Re: [NAFEX] supertasters?

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  • From: "Kieran &/or Donna" <holycow@frontiernet.net>
  • To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] supertasters?
  • Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2009 22:53:38 -0500

Let me clarify some things, or perhaps muddy the waters, depending on how you look at it. Supposedly what supertasters have is 2X as many taste buds as normal people. You can actually count the taste buds in a small area, the size of a paper punch hole, and wherever I read this years ago, the author told you what was "normal" and what was "supertaster". Supertasters find bitter foods too bitter, and can only deal with them, if at all, by eating them with fat so the bitterness mostly doesn't actually contact the tongue. (think cream sauce, which is how I like chicory. I'm not a supertaster, it's just bitter.) For supertasters, fats create moe of a sensation on the tongue. I first heard about all this from a native Tennessean who'd grown up in a family that loved turnip greens. While the rest of the family raved over them, they tasted bitter to her each and every time she was made to eat them. She finally figured out what was wrong when she heard about supertasters.
Bitterness in veggies depends on how well they are grown, and how long and how well or badly they have been stored. In general, fresh picked veggies are sweet, especially if grown on good soil with sufficient sunshine to make good brix levels. Right now we've had 2 weeks of almost continuous clouds, and the brix levels on everything in the garden are so low that tomato plants are succumbing to late blight, squashes to mildew, and even the weeds have yellow spots from diseases. The last of the tomatoes have nothing to recommend them. They lack flavor and sugar. No aphids though. I must repeat that to myself to deal with the gloom, no aphids. We have had so many dry autumns in which I could hardly get any fall greens up. I kept trying to grow daikon and the aphids would just suck it dry. Turnip plants would also be covered in a sort of downy layer of aphids. The fungus disease that normally keeps aphids in check cannot grow in hot dry weather.
It's important to keep in mind that food is also medicine, whether we intend it to be or not. Limonene in lemon, orange, and tangerine peels speeds up liver detoxification, as do sulfur containing vegetables. I just found out that the sulfur in brassicas and onions and garlic actually helps rebuild glutathione. Apparently it is my glutathione system that is my weakness in this modern chemical ridden world. I have been aware for years that my body really likes anything with sulfur in it. (know of any fruits with a lot of sulfur? I should grow them) DMSO smells just fine to me. Skunk smells ok, after the outdoor only dog has had about 5 minutes to offgas the worst of it. You might think I just have a terrible sense of smell, except I cannot bear anything with cheap perfume in it, even in minute quantities. I have never been tremendously fond of grapefruit, probably because it slows down liver detox. For a person with rapid Phase 1 detox and slow phase 2, ("toxic detoxifiers" who actually make toxins more toxic) limonene would probably be bad and grapefruit might be good. Limonene speeds up some phase 2 routes, but I think grapefruit slows down just about all liver detox. in general, when it comes to choosing real food, best let your cravings be your guide. Processed foods don't count, they are designed to bypass your body's good sense. Mind you, salt cravings are real and indicate sodium losses due to either sweating or stress. A friend says she puts salt on almost any fruit she eats, which implies low adrenals. Donna




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