Hate broccoli? Spinach? Blame your genes

For you, tasting foods can be the equivalent of feeling objects with 50 fingers instead of five -- due to tiny genetic differences you share with fellow super-tasters.

The super-taster story goes back decades. In the early 1930s, a DuPont chemist named Arthur L. Fox was synthesizing a chemical called phenylthiocarbamide, or PTC, in his lab. While he was pouring the PTC into a bottle, a bit of it flew into the air -- and, apparently, right into the mouth of Fox's lab partner. The partner commented on how bitter the substance was -- yet Fox, who also got splashed, couldn't taste a thing. Fox later found that response to bitter taste runs in families.

These days, a related, but equally bitter, compound called 6-n-propylthiouracil (known as PROP for short) is used in research to determine sensitivity to bitter taste. About 25% of people (so-called super-tasters) find PROP unbearably bitter. Another 25% (nontasters) can't taste PROP at all. The remaining 50% just find PROP moderately repugnant.

Researchers have identified a taste gene, called TAS2R38, that's responsible for these differences in response to PROP as well as our perception of certain other foods. It all depends on what variant of the gene a person has. Scientists have also found that people with the super-taster version of the gene have a greater number of specialized structures, called fungiform papillae, on the tip of the tongue.

Women are more likely to be super-tasters than men. And, interestingly, many chefs are super-tasters. Most parents probably assume that their children are super-tasters, given that so many children have an aversion to vegetables. But although the desire for sweets or rejection of vegetables is certainly influenced by a child's genetic makeup, studies in children with various types of TAS2R38 gene have shown that cultural and economic forces also influence their taste preferences.