London - It may seem perfectly logical that having a bumpy tongue makes you more sensitive to different tastes.
The theory has been used to explain why some of us just don’t like bitter or spicy flavours like Brussels sprouts or curry – and why some children are picky eaters.
But a study has shown that being a “super-taster” is determined by our genes and not having all those extra taste buds.
Researcher Nicole Garneau made the link after asking hundreds of museum visitors to stick out their tongues.
After rating their bumpiness, she checked their sensitivity to bitter chemicals and analysed their DNA for genes involved in detecting sharp tastes.
“There is a long-held belief that if you stick out your tongue and look at the bumps, then you can predict how sensitive you are to strong tastes,” she said.
“The commonly accepted theory has been that the more bumps you have, the more taste buds you have and therefore the more sensitive you are.”
Miss Garneau, of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science in the US, concluded: “No matter how we looked at the data, we couldn’t replicate this long-held assumption.”
Her results were reported in the journal Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience. - Daily Mail