What kind of taster are you?

My five-year-old kid: Why does this oatmeal taste different?

Me: What does it taste like? It tastes normal to me.

Kid: It tastes different. This oatmeal tastes like tacos.

I have no explanation for this. Except maybe that during shopping the oatmeal, walnuts, or raisins, which we buy in bulk at the natural-foods co-op, sat together, however briefly, with a baggie of cumin, or maybe coriander, also bought in bulk.

On her radio show, The Splendid Table, Lynne Rosetto Kasper has talked about people's differing levels of taste -- as in tastebuds. It has to do with the number of tastebuds you have on your tongue, according to Dr. Linda Bartoshuk, whom Kasper interviewed on the show. Foodies are generally "middle tasters." The rest of folks, nontasters and supertasters, are not as interested in food because they either don't taste enough flavor compounds to be excited or they taste so many it becomes overpowering.

To find out what kind of taster you are, Bartoshuk says you can try this simple test: Choose a color of food coloring that will contrast with your tongue, such as blue. Dip a Q-tip in the food coloring and wipe your tongue with it. Now for some counting. Here are the instructions as outlined in The Splendid Table's How to Eat Supper: "Take a loose-leaf reinforcement (the hole is 6 millimeters across) and place the edge of the hole on the midline of your tongue. Count the number of pink circles you see inside the hole (you may need a magnifying glass). Thirty or more indicate that you are a supertaster; five and below means you are a nontaster. Mediums are in between."

I think back to kiddo's babyhood, when, by choice, he ate mostly applesauce and rice cereal. As he grew, new foods were suspect, often limited to his outside interests. For instance, he loves fishing, so if you tell him part of his meal used to know how to swim? He will eat it. This is why our little table companion refuses chocolate milk but will eat anchovies and sardines straight from the tin.

I doubt I'm going to be allowed inside my boy's mouth with blue food coloring to do this experiment. But something tells me we have a supertaster on our hands.