In comic books and on television, in movies and even in a Broadway musical, he’s the tights-and-cape-sporting superhero who came to us from the planet Krypton, arriving on Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men. (Yes, just men; Superman was born in the 1930s, the pre-feminism age.) These powers involved the ability to travel faster than a speeding bullet, hoist a locomotive one-handed, and leap tall buildings in a single bound. He also had super-intelligence, super-hearing, and X-ray vision. But nobody ever said anything about his ability to taste. Was the Man of Steel a supertaster?

About 25 percent of Americans, it turns out, are. These people have more fungiform papillae—the little mushroom-shaped lumps on your tongue