It's been called one of the most powerful muscles in your body: your tongue!

Could your taste buds could be driving your food cravings? Some research supports that idea. There's even a quick test that could help you determine what kind of a taster you are.

There are three categories. Supertasters are those are people who don't like many vegetables because they taste too strong. Then there are undertasters: people whose palates are never satisfied, so they crave certain foods.


The majority of us fall into a category in between. But knowing which way you taste could provide valuable information if you're batting your weight!

"One candy bar leads to three with no problem!" admitted Steve Crouch, a St. Anthony's Medical Center Employee who agreed to help us with our story.

It could be chocolate, fries, maybe baked goods. For many of us, food cravings are more than just something to joke about. They're often so powerful, they can overrule our best intentions to lose weight and eat right.

The problem could be right on the tip of your tongue. Your tastebuds!

"I think the taste absolutely is a big factor. How many times when I'm talking with my patients and I say well why are you over fueling your body? Why are you overeating? And the answer is because I like the way the food tastes," said Cathy Feldmeier, a dietitian at St. Anthony's Medical Center.

Scientists at Rutgers University are studying how taste influences eating and body weight. They've identified three categories of tasters among Caucasians: about 25 percent of people are non or undertasters, 50 percent are medium tasters, and about 25 percent are supertasters. This last group of tasters have more taste buds on their tongues, tend to be picky eaters and in general are thinner. They may also avoid certain vegetables.

"So as a result many of those people weren't eating things like broccoli and brussel sprouts and a lot of those cruciferous vegetables that are so healthy because it just made them feel like they just didn't like the bitter taste," said Feldmeier.

Undertasters on the other hand, don't taste as much, and apparently, because their palates can't be satisfied, they're really at risk for craving foods.

"It seems to make sense. If you just aren't getting the intensity of the taste you probably keep craving more and more of that food," said Feldmeier.

How do you know which category you fall into? There are scientific tests, and then there's an at-home test that could give you some insight.

We asked two St. Anthony's Medical Center employees to take it. They mixed a packet of Sweet and Low, or saccharin, into four ounces of water. It's said that Supertasters will report a bitter taste. Undertasters: intense sweet.

That's what Janice AuBuchon tasted. She put herself into the undertaster category.

"I crave chocolate, food and I even crave when I'm not hungry right so that's pretty much right on actually," said AuBuchon.

Crouch also tasted intense sweet, meaning he could be an undertaster.

"I think that's accurate. I know I've had a couple of different situations where you have like, a piece of pie or a piece of cake and all of a sudden you've had four" said Crouch.

But taste is not the only factor that influences what you eat. Dr. Samuel Klein is director of the Center for Human Nutrition at Washington University School Of Medicine. He calls the new research on taste exciting. But he says regulation of food intake is a complicated human process, and most of the science points to behavior and genetics as major influences.

"It's social situations, conditions, trained and learned behaviors and it's really a chain, it's a link of one situation leads to abnother that leads to too much eating and it's important to try to break that link," said Dr. Klein.

Crouch and AuBuchon agree food regulation is a complex equation. But they also say knowing more about how they taste may get them to think more about what and how much they're eating in the future.

"It will make me more conscious when I do take that first candy bar, that I need to really watch that I don't have a second or a third and it may even eliminate me having the first one to begin with," said Crouch.