On my recent trip back to Australia I was fortunate enough to be invited by a friend of mine Professor Russell Keast to visit him in the Food Science department of the Deakin University. Russell was kind enough to give me a full tour of the university and showed me all the current testing that is taking place.

I will be reporting on several things which I observed over the next few posts.

One of the tests which Russell gave me was a taste sensitivity test, this test was using a compound called: n-6-propylthiouracil, or PROP. This is a compound which not many people can taste and others are born with a genetic sensitivity to. I was instructed to place the strip of paper in my mouth and leave it for a few seconds on my tongue. I didn’t know what I was expected to taste or feel but after about 1 second I had to take it out of my mouth as it tasted 100 times more bitter than grapefruit peel. After eating a chocolate I could finally get rid of the awful taste. Russell told me that when he puts it into his mouth all he can taste is paper, this is the same for most people. There are a lot of things which people can’t taste and this just demonstrates how obvious this can be, one of those things is namely truffle. I read a study about truffle where it said more than 40% of women and 50% of men can’t actually properly taste truffle, yet it is one of the most expensive ingredients. So a large % of these people are paying for Truffle without getting the full effect.

As this is a Genetic thing I took 2 tabs home to test both of my parents to see which one I got it from, the great news is that they both detected the compound, so I got a double dose