Cigar Science with Rob II: Ability to detect flavors

[bobbyg29-cl]

Today, while I enjoy my Tatuaje Series P and coffee, I thought I would address a question that I think many smokers have when reading cigar reviews and talking with other smokers: why are some people better than others at picking up the subtle flavors in a cigar? For those that are fans of DWSC another way of stating this might be: why does Dale detect so many more flavors than Bob?

Let’s consider three possible answers:
1)The smokers that describe all of these flavors are just making it all up to sound like a big shot connoisseur.

Although this does occur, particularly with the poseurs you often see at a bar, it can’t explain all of the individual differences in the ability to pick up flavors. First, if you read cigar reviews in magazines there is a fair amount of inter-reviewer reliability in blind reviews i.e., a lot of the same flavors are identified from reviewer to reviewer for a particular cigar. In the future, I am going to try to measure inter-reviewer reliability on CigarLive members with some blind reviews. As another piece of evidence, listeners of DWSC know that being a phony, big-shot does not fit Dale’s personality in the least. So let’s consider another alternative….

2)The smokers that describe all of these flavors have better memory for tastes, are better at accessing these memories, and are better at putting them into words.

This is definitely a large part of being able to detect flavors. Often when we are new to smoking cigars we experience the “tip of the tongue” phenomenon where we know that we recognize the flavor but just can’t quite put it into words.


Taste memory is also something that can definitely be improved with practice, just look at wine tasters. But let’s save this topic for later. The main answer I want to focus on now is….

3)The smokers that describe all of these flavors are different physiologically/anatomically in some way from an average smoker.

Research by Linda Bartoshuk and Yale University seems to provide strong support for this answer. In particular, it has been shown that there are large differences in the number and density of taste buds on the surface of the tongue and mouth from person to person. About 25% of the population have an abnormally large number of taste buds and have been dubbed “super-tasters”. You are more likely to be a “super-taster” if you are a woman: 35% of females are “super-tasters” vs. only 15% of males. “Super-tasters” get stronger sensations from sweet and bitter foods and get more burning/pain from spicy foods. For example, it has been shown that “super-tasters” tend to dislike grapefruit juice. Another 25% of the total population have an abnormally small number of taste buds and have been dubbed “non-tasters”. It has been shown that “non-tasters” can chug a glass of bitter liquid that makes a “super-taster” gag. The remaining 50% of people are “normal tasters”.


These differences have now been linked to the expression of one dominant allele (genetic code) on our DNA, called “T” for short. It works pretty much the same way as your eye color. People with two recessive alleles, tt, are “non-tasters”. People with one of each, Tt, are “normal tasters”. And people with two dominant alleles, TT, are “super-tasters”. So, like eye color, you are likely to have tasting traits that are similar, but not necessarily the same, as your family members.

How do you know if you are a “super-taster”? There is a fairly simple test that you can do to find out. For fun I thought I would try it on myself and my wife, Tyra. From our eating habits we went into this test with the assumption that I was a “non-taster” or “normal taster” while she is more likely a “super-taster”. I will eat just about anything including incredibly hot and spicy foods while she is more of a picky eater.

So here goes. WARNING: graphic tongue photos to follow

Super-taster Test:

What you will need:



-blue food coloring (available in the baking section of most grocery stories)
-cotton balls
-a piece of white paper with a 0.5” diameter circular hole cut in it
-a high resolution digital camera. Try using your macro feature.
-someone to take the photographs

Steps:
1)Dip a cotton ball in the food coloring and spread it all over the tip of your tongue. Swirl the coloring around in your mouth and then spit it out. Give you tongue a few seconds to dry.

2)Press the paper against the tip of your tongue so that your tongue sticks through the hole in the paper.

3)Have someone else take a picture. Or alternatively you can have them hold up a magnifying glass to it.

4)From the photo or using the magnifying glass count the total number of pinkish, blister-like bumps (see picture below) on your tongue that you can see through the hole in the paper. These are called fungiform papillae and each one has a taste-bud on top of it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taste_bud

Scoring:
-15 bumps or less = “non-taster”
-between 15 and 35 bumps = “normal taster”
-35 bumps or more = “super-taster”

Results:

Here is my photo. The large pink bumps are what we are looking for.




I have a total of roughly 22 papillae on the tip of my tongue (marked with black circles in the second image) which puts me at the low end of a “normal taster”. Note: the image I used to count was much clear than the one shown here.

Here is Tyra’s photo. You can see right away she has a lot more papillae…




..a total of roughly 34 which puts her on the right between a “normal” and “super-taster”. So it looks like our initial impressions based on our eating habits turned out to be pretty accurate.

What does this all mean?

Don’t trust any of my cigar reviews because my tongue is a deserted wasteland!!!

No, seriously, a good way to conceptualize this is to think of it in terms of vision….a “non-taster” or “normal taster” has a more blurry perception of flavor than a “super-taster”. As a “normal taster”, I will not be as sensitive to the fine details as an eagle-eyed “super-taster”. In other words they are eating and drinking in high-def while I am living in a standard digital world  In terms of cigars, I think the research would suggest that “super-tasters” would be more sensitive to the spicy/peppery flavors in some cigars and also the bitter ammonia flavors in some low-quality smokes. So being a “super-taster” is not always a good thing…you may be overpowered by some really strong cigars and be turned off by some acrid tasting ones that taste OK to a “non-taster”. And, of course, it goes without saying that you can enjoy cigars no make what type of taster you are.

So the bottom line is that there are genetic differences in our “tasting anatomy” that will lead to individual differences in the ability to detect subtle flavors in a cigar. Next time we explore another possible difference… taste memory.

Further reading for those who may be interested:
http://www.sciencenews.org/pages/sn_...12_97/bob1.htm

Class dismissed…. teacher needs another cigar

Cheers,

Rob

[jdamelio]

Another FANTASTIC post Rob!!!! You should write a book on the subject. I am a realitivly new cigar smoker and have at times been able to pick out many flavors but at other times nada. It has been suggested that it is important to be well lubricated before and during a cigar excursion and in my limited experience it really has helped me.

Maybe a topic of interest in this thread could be training the nose and palette to pick up on certain flavors and smells. I saw in a wine magazine a little kit that you can buy that has a bunch of little sniffers that contain the oders of common wine flavors like blackberry, pepper... that helps you train your palette. Would be an interesting product to help cigar smokers as well who would like to develop a better sense.

Thanks again Rob,

--jd

[bobbyg29-cl]

Originally Posted by jdamelio

Another FANTASTIC post Rob!!!! You should write a book on the subject. I am a realitivly new cigar smoker and have at times been able to pick out many flavors but at other times nada. It has been suggested that it is important to be well lubricated before and during a cigar excursion and in my limited experience it really has helped me.

Maybe a topic of interest in this thread could be training the nose and palette to pick up on certain flavors and smells. I saw in a wine magazine a little kit that you can buy that has a bunch of little sniffers that contain the oders of common wine flavors like blackberry, pepper... that helps you train your palette. Would be an interesting product to help cigar smokers as well who would like to develop a better sense.

Thanks again Rob,

--jd

Thanks jd!

I was definitely thinking of doing that at as a topic in the future. I made up a homemade version of a flavor kit one time for class...so maybe I will try and do one for cigar flavors

[kass]

Great post, thanks for sharing!

[Dogwatch Dale-cl]

Wonderful post Rob, and thanks for being so kind to me! I often worry that folks will think I just make that stuff up since Bob doesn't always get the same tastes I do.

I'm going to have to try this now. I've always thought I'm just a "normal" taster, but with a trained memory of flavors. Ever since Bob first brought the concept of "super tasters" up, I've been wondering how we can test for it.

So.....how long did it take to get rid of the blue food dye from your mouths....?

[WarHorse-cl]

Very informative Rob. I have also seen that scents are tied to tastes and saw an experiment one time where a person with a closed nose couldn't distinguish between a minced onion and a minced orange.....think that has anything else to do with it?? Maybe both my tongue and my sniffer stink....so to speak.

[bobbyg29-cl]

Originally Posted by Dogwatch Dale

Wonderful post Rob, and thanks for being so kind to me! I often worry that folks will think I just make that stuff up since Bob doesn't always get the same tastes I do.

I'm going to have to try this now. I've always thought I'm just a "normal" taster, but with a trained memory of flavors. Ever since Bob first brought the concept of "super tasters" up, I've been wondering how we can test for it.

So.....how long did it take to get rid of the blue food dye from your mouths....?

Thanks Dale!

It actually took quite a while to get it to come off my tongue and fingers. I didn't try really hard to get rid of it though. Definitely don't do it just before you are going to go out in public

[bobbyg29-cl]

Originally Posted by Smokin in Iraq

Very informative Rob. I have also seen that scents are tied to tastes and saw an experiment one time where a person with a closed nose couldn't distinguish between a minced onion and a minced orange.....think that has anything else to do with it?? Maybe both my tongue and my sniffer stink....so to speak.

Thanks! Yes, definitely Ted! I actually talked a little bit about that in my first "science post":

http://www.cigarlive.com/forum/t2234...-with-rob.html

[siepattu-cl]

Again a lesson in a class of it's own!
Some very informative and highly useful fact based science.
Thank you!

[mills]

This is great! Unfortunately I'm weak in both areas 2 and 3. I can't pick up much, and when I do, I have a hard time remembering/describing it. I still dig cigars though.

[Tristan-cl]

Great. Now the whole forum is going to have blue tongues for the next half of the week. Nice work.

[Stogie]

All I can say is "Wow". This is on another level to say the least!

[ldostlund]

intersting, but at the same time, that was freakin sick looking. If I saw close up pictures of my wifes tongue, I know it would pop into my head at the most inoportune time!!

[Shelby07]

Being the analytical SOB that I am, this has raised a question.

If our sense of smell has a large part in determining what we "taste" and our taste buds are limited to 4 basic sensations, how is it that those with denser taste buds can pick up more of the "subtle" flavors. It almost suggests that the amount of taste buds we have has something to do with our sense of smell or that taste is very dependent on the interaction of the 4 tastes.

[alanf]

Wow, you beat me to it. I was going to post something like this. I became interested in this topic not so much because of cigars but a personal experience. I have always thought that cilantro tasted like soap and I couldn't understand why people liked it. In fact, the first time I had something with cilantro in it, I thought the "help" spilled some soap in the salsa! It turns out that there is a recessive gene that controls how cilantro is tasted. This finding caused me to do some research into taste and found out about "super tasters" and the other items you posted here.

Thanks for the great post.