Sunday, September 7, 2014

Super Tasters vs. No Tasters

My son came home the other day talking about a science experiment they had done in class in which every student put a small piece of paper in his or her mouth and determined whether he/she was a "Super Taster," a "Taster" or a "No Taster." My son was in the group who found the paper taste aversive and spit in out immediately, putting him in the "Super Taster" category (which may at first seem counterintuitive).  Like many Super Tasters, who cannot tolerate strong tastes, the food my son likes tends to be quite "boring" or  bland: chicken, potatoes, hamburgers, tacos, cheese quesidillas, soup, pizza, peas, soft green beans, and corn. In contract, my daughter and I, the "No Tasters," like olives, pickles, calamari, escargot, mussels, clams, capers...and the list goes on and on. Often the stronger the taste, the better.

My son's story gave me the opportunity to talk to him about "hypersensitivity" and "hyposensitivity," and how someone can be "hyposensitive" in one area and be "sensory seeking" in another. For example, he might be super sensitive to taste and texture in his mouth, thus not like the touch and taste of many vegetables (especially broccoli!) and yet be "sensory seeking" in his sense of touch, and enjoy touching a variety of textures, which he also does. This is something I learned a long time ago when providing early intervention speech therapy services to babies and young children, which often involved feeding therapy with preemies who had difficulty tolerating different textures. For some children we needed to gradually increase texture and taste in the food. For others, who hated the bland baby food, we needed "big tastes" to be added to the food, like pickle juice or barbecue sauce.

This reminded me to go back to serving my son a variety of vegetables again and offer him ketchup on the side if that is what he needs to tolerate it. I also remembered that you sometimes have to eat a new food 20 to 25 times (or more) before you like it. Time to start that clock again!


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