She has also had 16 wellness books published by major publishers including the bestselling Easy GI Diet, The Macro Method, Quit Alcohol (For a Month) and Eat 5. Her books have sold over one million copies.
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Eating vegetables is a pretty essential part of living a healthy life. They are packed with vitamins and minerals we need, they contain lots of antioxidants that protect our body from ageing and damage from pollutants and other toxins – and they are low in calories, but fill you up which makes them very good if you’re trying to control your weight.
But what if you don’t like vegetables? Well, it might be that you just haven’t found one you like yet – or, you could be a supertaster.
What is a Supertaster?
When it comes to the ability to taste foods, humans are divided into three camps: 50 percent simply taste things normally, 25 percent have a lowered sense of taste and find it hard to detect tastes like sweet, sour, or bitter, and the other 25 percent are what science calls supertasters.
Supertasters have more taste buds on their tongues than average, and as such, they taste everything more intensely—fat is creamier, sugar is sweeter, and bitter tastes can be very intense.
Now, this has its positive side—supertasters tend to be thinner than non-tasters as they don’t need a lot of sweet or fatty things to satisfy them—but it’s also true that veggie dodging is more common in supertasters as they don’t like the bitter tastes that are found in many vegetables—especially super good for you ones like spinach, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and, our old friend, kale.
How to Tell if You’re a Supertaster?
All it takes is some blue food colouring. Here’s what to do…
- Drop a bit of blue food colouring on the front part of your tongue
- Rinse your mouth with water, spit it out, then swallow a few times
- Your tongue itself should now be blue, but on top of it you’ll see some pink, or lighter blue dots – each one of these contains 3-5 tastebuds.
- If you’re a supertaster however, you’ll see a lot of pink patches particularly concentrated at the front of your tongue. If you’re a non-taster, the tongue will look more polka dot – while a medium taster will be somewhere in between.
If you really want to get specific, punch a hole with a hole punch into a small piece of greaseproof paper and place this over the tip of your tongue.
Now, use a magnifying glass to count exactly how many dots you see—or take a picture on your phone and zoom in to count.
A true supertaster has about 30 dots in that area, a normal taster 15-30, a poor taster will have less than 15.
How to Make Veggies Taste Better to You
If you have determined that you’re a supertaster, the next question is, what do you do about it?
Well, let’s just say that altering the number of taste buds you have is not the answer. Instead, you need to decrease the intensity of bitterness in the veggies you eat to counteract your added sensitivity to them.
And there are a few different ways to do this…
- Roast your veggies – this can make them taste a bit sweeter and works well with things like parsnips and Brussels sprouts. Don’t burn them, though; that just makes them more bitter. Try this great recipe for Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Bacon to get you started.
- Blend them with something creamy – like ricotta cheese or quark – which cuts through the bitterness.
- Add some lemon – sourness also counteracts bitterness.
- So does salt, but don’t go mad – no-one needs to develop high blood pressure just to eat broccoli.
- Undercook them a bit. The more you cook bitter vegetables, the more bitter they become, so experiment with how long you cook them and find the perfect point for you.
So, there you have it – top tips to convert you from veggie hater to veggie lover. Find some more in our guide to learning to love vegetables, or in our piece on how to make salads more interesting.
Who is The Wellness Nerd?
My name is Helen Foster, and I’m a health journalist and wellness author. Publications I’ve written for include Women’s Health, Reader’s Digest, Body and Soul, Good Health at the Daily Mail, and more. I have also written 16 books on health and nutrition.
