Taste test
Name the taste of 16 strips, from faint to strong. Taste fades slowly with age.
How to do it
- Sip water and swallow before each strip.
- Lay strip 1 on the middle of your tongue and close your mouth.
- After a few seconds, pick sweet, sour, salty or bitter, then go on to the next strip.
Your result
This uses a taste strip kit: 16 numbered strips. Platform Health can send one.
Do you have the 16 strips and a glass of water?
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What the research found
Taste strips are paper strips soaked in sweet, sour, salty or bitter at four strengths. In 537 adults with a normal sense of taste, scores fell with age and women scored higher than men. Clinics using the 16-strip version treat fewer than 9 right as a reduced sense of taste.
Studied in: 537 adults aged 18 to 87 with a normal sense of taste.
- Landis BN et al. "Taste Strips": a rapid, lateralized, gustatory bedside identification test based on impregnated filter papers. J Neurol. 2009;256(2):242-8. PubMed
- Liu DT et al. Bitter taste perception of the human tongue mediated by quinine and caffeine impregnated taste strips. Ann Otol Rhinol Laryngol. 2020;129(8):813-20. PubMed