The Novel Corona Virus, I Can’t Smell or Taste, and Why Does Mint Taste Rotten?
I am sure that you are familiar with the novel coronavirus by now, that is if you’re not living under a rock. I am also quite sure that you or a loved one has contracted this sensational illness. But did you know that the symptoms of it are wide-ranging and depending on what variant of the virus you could even lose your smell or taste?
For a little backstory, I tested positive for the virus right before Christmas last year. I was convinced that I was having an allergy attack, or a sneezy cold and I had to blow my nose every two minutes, destroying copious amounts of Puffs PlusLotion Facial Tissue in the process. At the behest of my fiancée, I went to a drive-up clinic and got my nose swabbed to check if I had contracted Covid. After arriving home having distributed my sample, my fiancée then bundled me up and sent me to bed with some tea and cold medicine. I was woken up promptly at 8:17 a.m. to be alerted that I had in fact tested positive and was told to stay home and get plenty of rest. Well, fast forward to a day later and I noticed that I couldn’t smell anything, and foods had zero taste…. no smell or taste! This lasted for at least two weeks before I started to gain my smell and taste back, but I would have phantom smells and tastes that made no sense whatsoever, my nose smelled like it was rotting from the inside and the taste of my mint toothpaste tasted rotten for about three months afterward. Thank goodness I had the luxury to describe my experience contracting the coronavirus as weird. So, you may be wondering why I shared this story, why it matters that eating McDonald’s with no taste or smell is still really satisfying (I’m looking at you, the new Crispy Chicken Sandwich). The reason I am sharing this is that anosmia (lack of smell) and ageusia (lack of smell) is extremely rare and has had some interesting but debilitating effects on those who rely on their smell and taste to perform their jobs. Sometimes people don’t regain these senses back in the same way, which I find both troubling and fascinating. I am also not the most exciting person, and this is one of the most exciting stories I enjoy telling anyone in my immediate locale.
How Do Smell and Taste Actually Work?
After doing some research and finding some nice explanations on my.clevelandclinic.org, I found out that smell and taste are very interconnected and work together to perceive smells and tastes. Losing a sense of smell can make you perceive that your taste is gone or at least very bland. For example, you probably have used the trick of plugging your nose to take some nasty medicine, this is a good example of this principle working together. As for your sense of smell, “molecules in the air activate your sense of smell (olfaction) these molecules enter your nose and mouth. They attach to receptor cells in nasal mucus membranes. The receptors send messages to your brain that tell you when something has a pleasant or foul aroma.” Kind of cool right? Well, what about taste? It is very similar in that “Molecules that dissolve in liquids activate your sense of taste (gustation). Tastebuds on your tongue has receptors that respond to substances. You also have receptors on the roof of your mouth and back of your throat. The receptors send messages to your brain that tell you when food or drink is sweet, salty, sour, bitter, or savory (umami).” That’s great my.clevelandclinic.org, but how do they work together? Why does the medicine trick work? They work together during eating when these molecules are picked up both by the nose and the mouth and then the combination of information sent to your brain is decoded as more complex flavors. So, when you’re pinching your nose to take nasty medicine your tongue must do all the work to then decode this nasty flavor resulting in a weakening of the offending flavor.
Okay, that’s great and all but why does the Coronavirus cause some people to lose their senses?
Great question anonymous reader, the Coronavirus is so novel that we don’t exactly know, but we do know that viral respiratory infections can cause these symptoms. According to the all-knowing my.cleveland.clinic.org, “Some viruses damage olfactory sensory neurons, nerves that help you smell. It may take months to recover from this damage.” but, one study suggests that it may not damage the neurons “Instead, it may affect cells that support these neurons. Once the infection goes away, the olfactory nerve starts working properly again.” Apparently, more than 8 in 10 people briefly lose their sense of smell and some of their sense of taste. Isn’t this just weird and cool? I am once again going to remark how lucky I was to experience this phenomenon as it truly was an interesting experience, and I am glad it didn’t lead to some other deadly symptoms that the coronavirus is known for. (Definitely watch out for food poisoning as if you can’t taste your food you can’t taste if it’s spoiled) I have a theory that if people don’t exhibit the more dangerous lung and chest symptoms of the Coronavirus they tend to get the funny smell/taste symptoms interestingly enough, the newer variants currently circulating have a lower incidence of anosmia and ageusia and it can be easy to tell if someone contracted the coronavirus early in the pandemic or later in the pandemic based on these symptoms.
Sommeliers, Ice-Cream Tasters, Coffee Gurus, and Weird Anecdotes From my Brother-In-Law
So, after experiencing these symptoms and finding a whole new world of tasteless texture-only foods, I couldn’t help but wonder how people whose careers rely on these senses were holding up. You may correctly assume that they got better and were fine, but it sometimes takes a long time, (Thinking back to my mint toothpaste tasting rotten for three months). I decided to dig up some interesting stories about how these individuals dealt with this experience.
I found a crazy article on Reuters detailing how a certain French winetaster has feared for her livelihood, her experiences retraining the palate, and even the French wine union advocating for sommeliers to be prioritized vaccines. The article follows Sophie Pallas, admonishing that she still has a tough time detecting pineapple in her Pyrenean white wine. (First world problem?) She described her initial loss of sense as just being able to taste the alcohol and acidity, the article even describes some wine-tasting students having to drop their program until they have regained their senses. As for the process of retraining the nose, Pallas “would raid her kitchen morning and evening and deeply inhale the scent of spices, vanilla pods, coffee beans — whatever she could lay her hands on” until her senses came back. The article interviewed another master sommelier who estimated that it would take him six months to fully regain his expertise. Imagine being six months out of your job and passion, potentially being destroyed financially and emotionally. How would you ever face your friends if you couldn’t discern between a 1999 Chateau and some local swill found in the market? Humilation!
In my quest to find a juicy anecdote about a master Häagen-Dazs ice cream taster who had undergone similar trauma, I fell short, even resorting to seemingly silly keywords, such as “Coronavirus ice cream “resulting in a Bloomberg article about a Chinese city that reportedly found coronavirus contaminated ice cream. Understanding my limitations and refusal to interview anyone myself for this journal article, I moved on to the coffee guru search to see if I could blatantly reference someone else’s interview about a struggling barista and his quest back to a full nose palate. While I didn’t find a specific coffee guru I found a New York Times journal article about a celebrated Italian gourmand (Michele Crippa) renowned for his feats of gastronomy. The article boasts about him teaching “young chefs how to distinguish between Parmesan cheeses of different ages — and between milk extracted at different altitudes.” He discerned “the scent of champagne in raw Nicaraguan coffee beans and tasted traces of green peas in a blend from Kenya.” And how he tragically lost his smell and taste finding his morning cup of coffee to just taste hot water. When he regained his sense of smell it wasn’t quite the same. (Much like mine) Spoiled milk would taste fine to him and vanilla was for him disgusting, and his peaches tasted like basil. I wondered to myself how mint was for him and if there are similarities in how we would discern these things, although I do admit I have few similarities to a gourmand. Anyway, the article goes on to explain how Crippa has taken it upon himself to retrain fellow gourmands and professionals who utilize these senses back to working order. When establishing this program, he consulted “sensorial analysis experts who train winemakers and truffle hunters.” Crippa and his associates are utilizing the help of food science professors “who believe that the sense of smell is connected to the hypothalamus, the part of the brain that plays a crucial role in controlling emotions.” And with this knowledge they are using their old memories of smell to help reactive the neural pathways disrupted by the virus. After reading this article I realized my joking tone about the plight of these professional tasters is maybe not fully appropriate as it has affected hundreds if not thousands of professionals who use their taste and smell in their work, just thinking about how many kitchens have been in turmoil because of this is enough to give pause to any joking journalist. In addition, I have swapped countless anecdotes with coworkers and loved ones who have complained of eggs tasting horrible and peaches tasting too sour, a particular example I am fond of is my brother-in-law confessing that his sweat started smelling like red onions after his own bout. He also recently contracted the newer variant and with somewhat anecdotal evidence to my theory, he didn’t experience any sense of loss this time but rather had some minor cold symptoms.
Conclusive Thoughts, Recap, and Big Thanks!
In conclusion, it is sometimes very cool and at the same time inconvenient to experience a lack of smell and taste. We learned how these senses work together in the body to achieve taste, smell, and flavor. In addition to learning about our senses, we found out how the Coronavirus attacks these senses very similar to a viral respiratory infection, how real people have dealt with these challenges, and finally how to potentially rehabilitate these senses even faster. You even potentially were entertained by reading this article which would make me very happy. I encourage you the reader to share your coronavirus smell and taste impairments, especially if they are weird and made you rethink how a certain food tastes when you regain that sense. Also, if you think the idea of someone losing these senses in their professional career is funny, shame on you, I hope you have a grand dream of becoming a prized owner of a mushroom-themed restaurant (a mushroom food factory if you will) and forever lose the ability to taste said mushrooms, and not only can you not taste mushrooms but your significant other tragically informs you that they have never enjoyed mushrooms in the slightest bit since the inception of your mushroom food factory. And then your head chef in the mushroom food factory has an unexplainable one-in-a-million delayed onset allergic reaction to mushrooms and must quit immediately or risk sudden death. This has thus left you in sudden and long-term turmoil for the foreseeable future.
I hope that this doesn’t happen to you and that you never actually contract the Coronavirus, but I do hope that this was eye-opening for both of us in teaching a lesson of empathy in the face of this wacky situation. Now you have a cool story to tell your friends…. that is if you have any.
Works Cited: MLA
Anonymous. (2022, March 9). Loss of taste and smell: Anosmia, loss of Smell & Covid-19. Cleveland Clinic. Retrieved July 14, 2022, from https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/symptoms/16708-loss-of-taste-and-smell#:~:text=With%20COVID%2D19%2C%20more%20than,directly%20damage%20olfactory%20sensory%20neurons.
Bubola, E. (2021, August 20). ‘super taster’ who lost sense of smell is helping Italians regain it. The New York Times. Retrieved July 14, 2022, from https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/20/world/europe/italy-coronavirus-sense-of-smell.html
Person, & Pineau, E. (2021, April 20). Senses dulled by covid-19, French wine tasters fear for livelihood. Reuters. Retrieved July 14, 2022, from https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/senses-dulled-by-covid-19-french-wine-tasters-fear-livelihood-2021-04-20/