For two decades, Gennaro Pellicia’s job has consisted of tasting the coffee beans that arrive at the Costa Coffee company in London to select only the best before they are roasted. So valuable is his work that they have even put a price on his keen sense of taste, insuring his tongue for a whopping 10 million pounds. Pellicia is among the group of people known assupercatadores, which includes al15% of the planet’s inhabitants. These individuals are distinguished from the rest in thathave more than 400 taste buds per square centimeter of tongue. At the opposite pole are the non-tasters (25% of the population), who have only 96 papillae per square centimeter. The rest (50%) are defined as average tasters.
Being a super catcher has both health benefits and drawbacks. As Linda Bartoshuk of the University of Florida demonstrated in 2005, the sensitivity of super-tasters to bitter taste prevents them from eating many vegetables rich in flavonoids necessary to prevent cancer, especially colon cancer. However, as these individualsperceive the bitterness of nicotine more intensely than ordinary mortals, they also tend to smoke less. Also, while most people never disgust a cake, some supertasters findcertain foods that are too sweet, and even reject foods with excess fat, which would explain whysuper-tasting women tend to be thinner and have less cholesterolthan the non-tasters.
