Food Tasting

Food Taster's Guide to Ingested Poisons

Overview

A food taster is an individual that ingests food to be served to someone else to confirm that it is safe to eat or drink and does not contain toxins or poisons. The person to whom the food is going to be served is usually an important person, such as an emperor, or anyone that could possibly be under threat of assassination or harm.
The safety of the food is determined by observing whether or not the food taster subsequently becomes ill. Food tasting is not be entirely effective against slow-acting poisons that take a long time to show any visible symptoms, although detection of the poison through the senses can help keep slow-acting poisons away from their intended victim.

Basic Rules

Vary Habits: A highly trained and experienced assassin knows to watch the food taster or its victim for habits, such where the taster selects their testing piece from or whether or not the taster swirls their drink before sipping. Food tasters are pushed to vary their eating and drinking habits.

Always stir drinks prior to sipping. This ensures that poisons settled at the basin of the glass are brought close to the surface
Always cut and select pieces from varying sides of the food. For instance, never eat only from the left side of a dish. Sample randomly.

Using the Senses:
The senses are the food taster's few tools to uncovering poison. As such, those who have a poor sense of smell or dull taste buds will not easily find employment as a food taster. It is also essential that a food taster know the tastes and smells of foods without the added poisons so that they may better identify differences in these foods. Often a food taster will be given tastes of foods popular with the employer or their guests to become better acquainted with them.

Smell: Most poisons have a smell to them that can allow a taster to identify them almost immediately. Smelling for poison is a simple process: Simply hold the food close to the nose and smell the food or drink in question.
Taste: As with smell, poisons can usually be distinguished by taste. There are several methods of tasting: Simply taking a bite or sip, blocking out the sense of smell, or rolling a liquid over the tongue.
- Blocking Out Sense of Smell: Pinching the nose blocks out the smell and eliminates all flavors save for bitter, sweet, sour, and salt. Not all poisons can be recognized by this method and this should not be the only method employed by the food taster. This method should be employed if the food or drink has a particularly strong smell to it.
- Tongue Roll: Rolling the liquid over the tongue can result in uncovering a taste previously hidden. For instance, a drink tasting of orange citrus may suddenly taste sour when rolling the liquid around the mouth.
Sight: Sight is rarely employed for uncovering poisons in a person's food or drink. However, food tasters at higher levels (Master and Grandmaster) are often capable of spotting poisons by sight. Smell and taste are the preferred methods.

Informing of a Poison: Not all poisons work immediately, but in the instance where the onset of poisoning is immediate, informing another individual in the room what poison the food taster believes they just ingested is of great importance. Doing so allows others to narrow of the scope of who may have provided the poison, allowing them to locate the perpetrator. This is drilled into food tasters at the beginning of their training and it is expected that they accomplish this even when in the throes of death.
Various Poisons Taught: While the most important poisons to spot are those that kill, it is important to note that other poisons can be just as dangerous if it has a detrimental affect to the victim's actions and thinking. This is the prime reason why a varying number of poisons are taught to a food taster.

Types of Poisons

Ingested poisons: Ingested poisons are those that use the blood stream to carry them to their destination in the body. Thus, any poison that is to be ingested is classified as such. What is not realized is that the same poison might then be absorbed into the blood stream on different outer surfaces other than the intestinal wall. The lips or inside of the eyelids are only two examples where ingested poisons might also have a chance of being absorbed. The rate at which these poisons react is slow compared to other types as it takes a considerable amount of time for the substance to make its way towards its final goal. These are the poisons that food tasters are trained to notice.

Insinuative poisons: Insinuative (or integrative) poisons are those that are combined with other objects to enhance their effectiveness in penetrating the victims defenses. Normally this is done with a weapon of sorts. Some Contact and Ingested poisons fit this list as well, but are disqualified as their mechanisms, once inside the body, deviate from the standard proceedings. The life expectancy of these poisons depends highly on the skill of the creator and what conditions the poison is put under after it has been exposed to the environment. Insinuative poisons possess great danger for the benefactor as well as the recipient. Only the slightest scratch can send either of them into a pain-ridden death, as has happened all to many times.

Contact poisons: Contact (or absorption) poisons are absorbed through the skin. These do not necessarily have to be absorbed by the touch of fingers, but rather the connection of the poison to any part of exposed skin. Anyone who is capable of getting in close proximity of his or her victim to touch exposed skin is usually successful with this poison.

Inhalant poisons: Many of these poisons are side branches of Ingested poisons, the determining factor being their inability to pass into the blood. Inhalant poisons often are capable of transporting substances across the body, often affecting the lungs, mouth, throat, or nasal cavity immediately. A poison in the gaseous phase would be preferred or a fine powder blown into the victim’s face. Caution has to be observed, as these poisons will affect anybody in range.