Taste Bud Test Strips

Super Taster Test Strips

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Supertaster Genetics Lab Kits

Super Taster Test Strip Papers

Make your own super taster genetics lab kit with any combination of Indigo® PTC, thiourea, sodium benzoate & control test papers for taste testing. Use in biology lab experiments to identify the different genotypes by their distribution of dominant & recessive supertasting specific genes. Or, turn it into a fun activity. Your kids' food preferences could be genetic!

All Indigo® taste test papers come with 100 strips/vial and a minimum guaranteed 3 year shelf life. Full documentation is provided including a Stability Statement, Certificate of Analysis & SDS. Optional next day delivery for any quantity of most items.

Buy Indigo® test strips, the brand you can trust for accuracy & technical support. Call us on our toll free line for immediate assistance or e-mail us with your questions. 1 hour response is typical during business hours, M-F, slightly longer on weekends.

Indigo® Taste Test Strips

Human taste perception varies widely because of differences in receptor genetics, salivary chemistry, and the number of fungiform papillae on the tongue. Classroom-safe taste test strips provide a simple way to explore how these biological factors shape our perception of sweetness, saltiness, sourness, bitterness, and UMAMI, depending on the compound used. PTC, sodium benzoate, and thiourea activate different subsets of taste receptors, revealing how complex and individualized human taste truly is.

What is Supertasting?

While PTC is strongly bitter for individuals with active TAS2R38 receptors, sodium benzoate produces a diverse range of sensations, sweet, salty, sour, bitter, or even tasteless, depending on a person’s unique combination of taste receptors and saliva composition. Thiourea compounds activate a broader set of bitter receptors than PTC and generate highly variable responses as well. Together, these strips help students and researchers examine the biological, chemical, and genetic factors that drive taste variation.

Someone with "super taste" senses flavors more strongly than the average person. They have many more taste buds and are particularly sensitive to bitter foods such as broccoli, spinach, coffee, beer, and chocolate. This characteristic is inherited by roughly 25% of the population, more often in women. Use Indigo® taste test paper strips in your lab/class experiments or with your family or friends.

The reason for our supertasting ability is unclear but sensitivity to bitter compounds may relate to our recognizing potentially toxic plant alkaloids since this trait is in ~75% of people who taste PTC. This may also be of benefit in avoiding spoiled foods. Read Expiration Dates Are Meaningless & why we evolved a disgust response

See the Scientific American article: Super-Tasting Science: Find Out If You're a "Supertaster"!. It even includes instructions on how you can compare the number of taste buds on your tongue to that of your friends.

Description More Information Technical Instructions/Safety
Displaying 1 to 5 (of 5 products)
Supertaster Test Strips: Lab Experiment Pack

Supertaster Test Strips: Lab Experiment Pack
SKU: 33814-TASTE
$11.50USD or lower Each
PTC Paper Taste Test Strips for Genetics Labs

PTC Paper Taste Test Strips for Genetics Labs
SKU: 33814-PTC
$3.25USD or lower Each
Sodium Benzoate Taste Test Strips

Sodium Benzoate Taste Test Strips
SKU: 33814-NaB
$3.25USD or lower Each
Thiourea Taste Test Strips

Thiourea Taste Test Strips
SKU: 33814-TU
$3.25USD or lower Each
100 Control Paper Test Strips

100 Control Paper Test Strips
SKU: 33814-Ctl
$3.00USD or lower Each
More Information

Taste Receptors Beyond the Tongue: Role in Digestion

Taste receptors are not limited to the mouth. Bitter receptors (TAS2Rs) and sweet receptors (T1Rs) are found throughout the gastrointestinal tract. When activated, they influence the release of key digestive hormones:

  • CCK (Cholecystokinin): stimulates satiety and slows gastric emptying
  • GLP-1 (Glucagon-like Peptide-1): promotes insulin secretion and supports glucose control
  • Ghrelin: regulates hunger and meal initiation

Taste is not just a sensory experience, it is part of a much larger system guiding digestion, metabolism, appetite, and toxin avoidance.

Evolution & Taste: Why Variation Exists

Taste variation provides several evolutionary benefits:

  • Bitter taste evolved partly to detect plant alkaloids and toxins. Variation reduced the risk that an entire population would be susceptible to the same environmental hazards.
  • Sensitivity differences helped diversify diets and reduce competition for food resources.
  • Mixed sodium benzoate responses reflect the evolutionary overlap between early taste pathways for salts, acids, and natural preservatives.
  • Supertasters (with dense papillae) may avoid highly bitter foods, while nontasters may have historically eaten more plant-based diets.

These test strips illustrate these adaptive variations in a hands-on way.

Other Taste & Smell References

  1. Super-Tasters and Non-Tasters: Is it Better to Be Average? Smell & taste together produce what we perceive as flavor.
  2. Taste Molecules - The Molecular Basis of Taste. From the Science of Cooking.
  3. The King of Fruits Needs a Deodorant. The Durian fruit has several stinky compounds: ethyl-2-methylbutanoate, 1-(ethylsulfanyl)ethane-1-thiol, ethionine. What would a supertaster experience?
  4. Use our Indigo® Instruments 3D Molecule Model Builder to compare the chemical structures of all the taste strip chemicals: phenylthiocarbamide (PTC), thiourea, sodium benzoate & 6-n-propylthiouracil (PROP).

Indigo Taste Test Blogs

  1. PTC Taste Test Strips: Let's Talk Science Outreach
  2. Can Supertaster Testing Reduce Food Waste?

Electron Micrographs of Human Taste Buds

Don't know what a taste bud looks like? You may be able to see details such as the fungiform papillae in this scanning electron micrograph of a human tongue. Can you see the individual taste buds? Or, if you want to see if there is a physical correlation between taste test results & the number of taste buds, take a look with a 5-10-15X geology loupe.

Supertasters apparently have more of them. This accounts, in part, for the varied responses to the different compounds. PTC & sodium benzoate in particular produce, in decreasing frequency: bitter-salty; bitter-sweet; bitter-bitter; tasteless-salty. The only combination of tastes not observed for PTC-Na Benzoate is tasteless-bitter.

Technical

The Myths of Human Genetics is an interesting read. It discusses topics that range from eye and hair color to dimples, attached earlobes & more. The section PTC tasting: The myth, is one of the most detailed we have encountered and is instructive to anyone involved with teaching taste test genetics labs.

To quote the conclusion in brief: ""PTC tasting is largely determined by a single gene...(but) there are other genes or environmental factors that influence PTC tasting. As a result, there is a continuous range of PTC tasting, not absolute separation into tasters and non-tasters. PTC tasting would be a fascinating subject for an advanced genetics class, but it does not fit the one-gene, two-allele myth well enough to be used to demonstrate simple Mendelian genetics."

Indigo® taste test strips provide one of the simplest ways to explore how genetics, culture, evolution, and physiology shape human taste. Whether used in classrooms, research labs, or sensory evaluation programs, these strips make abstract biological concepts tangible and memorable.

Instructions/Safety

How to use:

  • Take a strip out of bottle
  • Stick out your tongue
  • Press it against your tongue
  • Record response

All test strips are white so to randomize your experiment, mark each type of strip with a unique color code. 2 Ink felt pens could be used to add stripes at one end such as: black/black, red/red, black/red, red/black. Another method (but we haven't tried ) would be to remove the strips & add some food dye to the vial. Put the strips back in & let them soak up the dye. Remove again & set them out to dry.