A Thought-Provoking “Superpower”
TW: Food, disordered eating
Earlier this week, for once in my life, I wanted to taste something bitter.
I had just received my supertaster test kit designed to tell me if I am one of a small percentage of people with a higher number and sensitivity of taste buds. I’d wondered for a while if I fell into this group because I seem to be a lot more sensitive to certain tastes and textures than other people in my life, even to the point of liking certain colors of the same foods better than others when my friends and family can’t tell the difference.
I also wanted to take the test because, after years of working on my emetophobia - the main source of my picky eating when I was a kid - I’m now willing to try more new foods than before, although I’m still a picky eater. I’m a vegetarian who doesn’t eat a good number of vegetables because I find them distasteful (looking at you, broccoli’s texture and brussels sprouts’ taste) and I still have many picky preferences.
In other words, I’m a picky eater whether or not I’m concerned that a certain food will make me throw up, and that really only gets me about a few foods (specifically, hummus, cuisines from regions of the world that I haven’t tried before, and any accidental exposure to meat because I think my stomach isn’t used to it).
I wanted to see if there was a biological reason for my picky eating for one major reason: Even though I’ve gotten to the point where my main source of obsessions and compulsions as a child is not a big part of my life, I am still very ashamed when I’m out with my friends (in non-COVID times) and still eat like a stereotypical child. I felt like it was part mental illness, part habit, and part something else I couldn’t quite identify. But for many foods, like tofu, it’s not that I’m afraid of the food - it’s that the texture and taste bother me to a degree that my friends and family don’t notice.
So I ordered the test strip, and since it’s genetic, I offered my mom the spare strip that came with the kit. We tried them in the kitchen one night before dinner because, if you are a supertaster, the paper tastes very bitter, and it would be nice to wash it down with something different. Mom put hers on her tongue first, and said she noticed no taste at all, no aftertaste, nothing.
As I looked down at the paper in my hand, I wondered what I really wanted. I wanted to be a supertaster because it would help explain some of my food quirks that aren’t OCD-related and might give me a fun fact to share at the dinner table instead of feeling ashamed or embarrassed about my food preferences. On the other hand, if I wasn’t a supertaster, that would take away an excuse and might spur me to try even more foods.
It didn’t take me long to identify the taste of the paper - which tasted, to me, like the most bitter mixed greens I’d ever had - and promptly spit it out. After chugging some water to get rid of the taste, I was happy. I even took a smiling selfie with the soggy test strip and the sheet of facts about supertasters because it made me feel like I was a picky eater for something other than my fault - something I’d never felt before.
Even with all the work I’ve done here over the last couple of years and the therapy I’ve gone through my whole life, I still saw a physical reason for disliking certain foods as being more valid than a mental one. It’s part of the stigma that’s become internalized inside me even though I try so hard to be positive about mental health. Even so, I still saw the last time I accidentally ate meat and panicked for hours as less legitimate, as if some part of me still saw that as a choice.
I thought I could be stronger than that, but with something like taste buds or a food allergy, I have no control, so I don’t feel weak.
I don’t see it as a character flaw to find the taste of mixed greens too strong to eat, especially if it means I can get some of my favorite Caesar salad with plain lettuce. It feels like a harmless preference to choose milk chocolate over dark or pick broccoli out of my lo mein. It’s like my nut allergy - I didn’t choose it. But whenever I see myself as giving in to an obsessive thought, I see it as a choice, even if it’s not - and then I see a negative reflection on both myself and my strength.
Taking the supertaster test - and finding my gustatory “superpower” - has been an interesting thought experiment in addition to the actual scientific test.
It made me realize how much I’ve held onto the idea of a “physical” condition like being a supertaster having more legitimacy even though OCD is technically a physical condition of a chemical imbalance in the brain.
It made me rethink how I try new foods - if I try something and hate the taste instead of fear it, I don’t have to do exposure therapy on myself to try to make myself like it.
And I’m allowed to be picky without being ashamed of myself, because if I look at how far I’ve come from the days of only eating plain cereal for breakfast, plain bagels for lunch and plain pasta for dinner, I’ve made tremendous changes to my eating habits that have really helped my quality of life.
Ever since I was little, I’ve known I’d never be an adventurous eater. But as an adult, and with these new results in hand, I feel more confident eating the foods I’ve learned to love and not doubting my validity as a person for having preferences in addition to obsessions.
Ellie, a writer new to the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.