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Genes be crazy
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this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2026
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I never knew about this. Is this the same gene which makes people like/dislike bitter foods?
Years ago at a place I worked at, food manufacturers, the R&D team did a taste workshop. 5 cups of flavours, salt, bitter, water, umami, sweet. The bitter one just tasted of water to me. They called it "bitter blind"
Probably makes you easier to poison. I will keep that in mind.
I can smell ants and it's a pretty weird smell, but I don't get any of the bitter food problems that some people have with certain vegetables.
With the exception of mushrooms. For some reason mushrooms spark that same sensitivity to ant scents, it's a similar sickly scent and makes me think of decay and loamy undergrowth and is very unappetizing so I've never enjoyed mushrooms.
That's about the closest descriptor I can think of as well. Ants are more metallic to my scent than mushies but that’s it.
I tried truffles once and that came closer to tasting the way ants smell than regular mushrooms. As you said, more metallic, sharper and more "alien." People seem to like truffle a lot, I guess I will save money in my life by not having that indulgence.
I haven’t tried truffles.
Funnily enough I like mushrooms. The smell of ants never used to bother me that much either; finding out it’s selective is intriguing.
There’s a couple different chemical compounds that can activate your bitter receptors (caffeine for instance) but there are a few bitter chemicals like Phenylthiocarbamide (PTC) or N-Propylthiouracil (PROP) that have been linked to variations in a specific gene (TAS2R38). Where I used to work we used PROP strips you’d just put on your tongue to categorize participants into tasters, non-tasters, and potential super-tasters. If it tasted like nothing, you didn’t have the genetic variant. If it tasted like bitterness, it could either be not that bad or, for example in my experience, it’s really really terrible and takes some effort to remove from the tongue.