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KnowHOW team explains: The saying ?tastes mostly differ? has some scientific basis after all. The same food items can produce profoundly different sensations ? pleasant or unpleasant ? for different people consuming it.
The taste buds are linked to the nerves that transmit sensations of taste, temperature and touch to the brain. Scientists have quantified how taste is determined by the number of taste buds and their distribution, affecting sensitivity to the major tastes ? sweet, sour, salty and bitter ? as well as to things like hot peppers and the fat content of food.
About 25 per cent of the world population are supertasters, blessed or cursed wi-th a heightened sensitivity because the concentration of their taste buds can be 100 ti-mes as great as the concentration in nontas-ters, who also make up about 25 per cent of the population. Regular tasters, about half of all people, fall somewhere in between.
Supertasters usually find sweet foods unpleasant, because sugar is twice as potent to their tastebuds. The same holds true for some strongly flavoured fruits and vegetables, like onions and grapefruit.
Taste differences are mostly genetically programmed, but can fluctuate with hormone levels. Also, damage to nerves in the brain can permanently or temporarily alter the sensation a food excites.
The question was sent by Aniruddha Hazra from Raiganj