Abi, just one of the upwards of 1,000 test subjects of the Good Food Revolution Supertaster Project.
In the Spring of 2011 Good Food Revolution embarked upon a project that would take almost three years to see the light of day.
After filming well over 1,000 test subjects being pressured/coerced into placing a PTC strip upon their trepidatious tongues, this project was unceremoniously shelved due to its Sisyphean nature (simply crediting everyone correctly would have been a full time job in itself) and, to be quite frank, both of us at Good Food Revolution were both sick fed up of the whole thing.
Recently we stumbled across all of the old footage and realised that it was actually PURE GOLD.
It was time to revisit the Supertaster project again in a lighthearted manner. Even just to see how we all looked back then was fun in itself, and watching the varying reactions to the reagent across the course of the 45 minute piece is an almost hypnotic experience.
There’s also a bit of the Where’s Waldo about it too, seeing as we filmed so many people from all walks of life: Chefs, Sommeliers, Winemakers, Brewers, Journalists, Famous Band Members, Less Famous Band Members, Disc Jockeys, Television Personalities, Drummers, Gingers, World Renowned Artists, Authors, Pastry Chefs, Jakeys, Models… and a whole load of complete randoms we filmed all over the globe.
This week we speak to Jancis Robinson MW and Chef John Placko about the legitimacy and the science of the study… and then we’ll give you a quick snippet of the feature length video that we’ll be posting in the coming weeks.
It is essential to note here that the term supertaster is quite the misnomer, seeing as an individual’s sensitivity to PTC (Phenylthiocarbamide) bears little or no relation to their ability to taste, as is demonstrated in our exhaustive study.
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Edinburgh-born/Toronto-based Sommelier, consultant, writer, judge, and educator Jamie Drummond is the Director of Programs/Editor of Good Food Revolution… And that took a while.
