Are Women Better Tasters Than Men?

NPR:

If, like me, you’re an amateur taster of beer and wine, inevitably you’ve asked yourself why you don’t taste that hint of raspberry or note of pine bark that someone else says is there.

Genetics certainly have something to do with why we have different perceptions of tastes. Scientists have shown there’s a genetic component to how we experience bitter and sweet flavors, as we’ve reported. And “supertasters,” who seem to be born rather than made, are said to experience a lot of tastes more intensely.

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That said, Linda Bartoshuk, a professor at the University of Florida Center for Smell and Taste, has found that supertasting abilities are more common in women than in men. She tells The Salt it’s hard to come up with a good estimate. But in one study of 4,000 Americans, she found that 34 percent of them were supertasting women; by comparison, supertasting men were 22 percent of the study population.

Read the whole story: NPR