I once had a fancy-pants wine guy tell me that I had an “extraordinary palate”. While that sounds like a good thing, turns out that being able to detect the nuances in different foods has a downside: being a so-called “supertaster” may make you more likely to overdo it on salt, according to a new study from the University of Connecticut.
You’d think that being flavor-sensitive would make a person find too much salt overwhelming, but as it turns out, the opposite is true, say U of C researchers. They asked 87 healthy men and women to sample salty foods (like chips and pretzels) over the course of several weeks and found that certain some people were seemingly pre-disposed to dislike low-salt items and favor salty fare instead.
The reason? Researchers say that sensitive palates may not only enjoy the taste of salt, but also actually rely on it to drown out subtle flavors, such as bitterness, that your average person may not pick up on. As study author John Hayes describes it, “Cheese is a wonderful blend of dairy flavors from fermented milk, but also bitter tastes from ripening that are blocked by salt. A supertaster finds low-salt cheese unpleasant because the bitterness is too pronounced.”
In my totally unscientific opinion, I’m guessing that if you’re a supertaster who needs to cut back on salt (as most Americans do–sob!), you may have to try a lot of different low sodium options. Fortunately, you’ve literally got millions to choose from: from lychee to lentils, most unprocessed food is naturally low in salt–and tastier than the low-sodium processed stuff, too.
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Camille
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I don’t know if I’m a supertaster, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I was. I have a really good sense of smell (seriously, this is more curse than blessing). The other day, my fiancé tried to trick me by asking which conditioner he had used. He had actually mixed 2…and I guessed them both! As smell is so closely linked to taste, it might make sense if I also had a good sense of taste. And, I do like my food extra-salty. Luckily, cooking my own food usually means consuming less of all the bad stuff–salt, calories, chemicals, etc.
Lauren, I’m the same way with scent–to the point that I have a hard time being around people who wear more than a tiny bit of cologne or perfume! I bet your taste/scent sensitivities go hand-in-hand.
Does seem to fit with some of the better restaurants more clearly calling out the different items on the menu which are “savory”