Life’s not fair: Some folks are “super tasters”

There’s no equality at the dinner table, it seems.
Some people have splendid palettes, sniffing out subtle differences in flavor. Others just try to figure out how much ketchup to put on a hot dog.
Why the difference? Is it a myth? A mystery? A birthright? We asked Padma Lakshmi (shown here), who should know.
“She has one of the most refined palettes I’ve ever cooked for,” Sol Han, an acclaimed chef, says on the debut of “America’s Culinary Cup,” at 9:30 p.m. Wednesday (March 4) on CBS.
And that might be a real, scientific thing. She’s been told by a scientist at the Seattle Science Museum that there are biological differences.
“Being a ‘super taster’ means, I was told, that you have additional taste buds that others may not,” she told the Television Critics Association. “Bitter notes are easier to detect.”
Some researchers have said that about one-fourth of people are super tasters, about half are average and the other fourth are at the bottom. They’ve also found a higher percentage of super tasters among females and people from Asia, Africa and South America.
That fits Lakshmi, who’s had other advantages. “A lot of it is just travel,”sahe said. “And maybe coming from one culture and living in another.”
She was born in India and at 4 moved to the U.S., where her mom (an oncology nurse) had already settled. At 7, she was sent back to India for a year; at 21, she became a model, traveling Europe and beyond.
That’s the image of Lakshmi we usually see — a 5-foot-9 beauty, towering above the world in her heels, while wearing elegant gowns. We assume she’s had an easy life, which may be way off.
She has said she was molested by her step-uncle at 7, raped by her boyfriend at 16 and bullied as an outsider in school. At 14, she was hospitalized twice, for a lifelong illness and after a car crash. At 28, she was married to Salman Rushdie, the author who faced death threats.
On the flip side, there was the high-flying life of a model. She went to fine places, ate fine food … then turned that into a career.
“I didn’t go to culinary school, and I’m not a chef,” Lakshmi said. “(In college) I studied American literature and theater, and I started out as an actor.”
She did land some TV roles, including being cast twice as a princess — in the “Ten Commandments” reboot and in an eventful “Star Trek: Enterprise” episode in which she was kidnapped, eventually knocking out one of her captors and making love to Commander Tucker.
But those roles (in 2006 and 2002) came after her food career was starting.
“It was as surprising to me as anyone else,” Lakshmi said. “It was after I wrote that first cookbook.”
That was “Easy Exotic,” which won an international “best first book” prize in 1999. It led to talk-show appearances and more. She hosted “Top Chef” for 18 seasons and produced and hosted Hulu’s one-season “Taste the Nation.”
That’s when the president of CBS Entertainment pushed for a fresh take on a food show. “Amy Reisenbach made a very good case to me,” Lakshmi said. Also, “I thought that the genre was ready for a shake-up.”
CBS has given her its best reality-show spot — with the 50th “Survivor” as a lead-in — and a strong budget. The kitchen is high-end; so is the prize.
“A million dollars is a lot of money,” said producer Susan Rovner. It was enough to draw award-winning chefs, including seven with Michelin stars.
Now they offer their food to Lakshmi and to chefs Michael Cimarusti and Wylie Defresne … all of them, one assumes, super tasters.