“It was black bean noodles with almonds and pieces of saffron and I was like, ‘I’m not eating this, it’s disgusting,'” said Sarah Yeats, 31, an emergency nurse from Atlantic Beach, Florida.
The couple works at a hospital in Jacksonville, Florida, and she hired Covid-19 at work and brought him home in August.
Like many people who contracted the coronavirus, they noticed shortly after the positive test that they had lost a lot of their sense of smell and taste.
For weeks, they tried to get any sensation they could muster in the food, dipping the chicken in lemon juice, throwing handfuls of fresh herbs into soups and salads and daring with textures in an attempt to bring some emotion to the table.
The day Sarah realized she no longer found acceptable pieces of saffron on top of pasta, she said, was when she realized that her palate might be recovering.
Anosmia – a condition known as “blindness to smell” or loss of smell – is a common symptom of Covid-19 (and other viruses) and can severely affect people’s ability to taste, since the senses are intertwined.
“It seems that the loss of smell or taste is some of the most specific indicator of Covid-19, in particular the initial indicators,” said CNN emergency physician and medical analyst Dr. Leana Wen. “Even without showing any other symptoms, including congestion, (Covid-19 patients) report that they cannot smell or taste.”
And although most people will recover their sense of smell or taste within a few days or weeks, Wen said, “there are still many who have not recovered their sense of smell after months.”
People still need to eat, of course, and are changing their meals as a result.
Putting new flavor combinations on the table
A few days after the positive test for the virus in mid-December, Althea Mullarkey, 53, suddenly realized that she could no longer smell the strong gardenia of her shampoo.
She ran around the house, sniffing everything she could find and realized that her sense of smell was gone.
The self-styled foodie who lives in Hudson Valley, New York, said she no longer likes the feeling of eggs in her mouth, as she can’t taste them. And she doesn’t want to waste her dull sense of taste on a good piece of blue cheese, an old favorite.
Recently, Mullarkey said, she ate leftover “spicy sweet coleslaw with pulled pork” for breakfast. Their special dinner became lemon dill hummus squeezed with more lemon, a side of pitted kalamata olives and a piece of roasted naan topped with spicy oil.
“I can taste the salt, pepper and lemon and I like the crunchy textures,” said Mullarkey, but none of the layers of flavors she loved to try in the kitchen are showing.
“Some sensations in our food – spicy pepper, mint – are things that we experience with the hot and cold sensors in our mouth,” she said. “You can get the acid, the heat and even the salty, but not the layers of things like cilantro and chipotle.”
Most of our sense of what we consider to be taste, said Becker, is not really taste.
“All the interesting things about our food that we use to identify things like cheese and fruit and chocolate and coffee are not made by mouth,” she said. “They ended up with our nose.”
“We don’t think it’s very common for people to really lose their sense of taste (with Covid-19). If you really puncture, it’s the olfactory function in your nose that isn’t working.”
This may explain why texture, color and even rituals related to cooking have become more important for some people now.
“Texture has become so much more important to me,” said Alex Yeats, 42. He and Sarah eat salmon several times a week because it has a fuller umami body and a better mouth feel than scaly white fish, which ” it just tastes dry. ”
“I wanted to make sure there was green in everything,” said Sarah. “Foods that are white and gray, they are so unpleasant now.”
Immersion in the processes of cooking and planning meals each week also helped her to maintain interest in food preparation. “Having Covid inspired us to use our raclette oven because it is a cooking process that makes it fun.”
When strange odors are a promising sign
Ghost smells are a common topic in Covid-19 online support groups.
Even months after the diagnosis, the couple smelled aviation fuel and cigarette smoke where there was none. Mullarkey said he smelled so much of phantom smoke and odors of ash that it almost made her vomit.
According to Becker, it is promising news.
“A lot of people get trash or smoke, something rotten or burning rubber,” said Becker of ghost smells his patients noticed. “It’s really disgusting, but it’s usually a good sign that things are trying to work themselves out. When recovery happens, sometimes the threads can cross.”
Although it is not yet known why people lose their sense of smell with Covid-19, Wen said that “it is believed that the coronavirus does not affect the nerve cells that control smell, but the cells around it”.
This is also considered good news for recovery, since support cells regenerate more easily than neurons.
“When the cells grow back, it may take some time and new training to get back to normal,” she said.
Olfactory training can help
Retraining your sense of smell is something that Kaya Cheshire – who said she is still losing 90% of her sense of smell since she contracted a mild case of Covid-19 last July – has been experimenting, along with the addition of many more herbs and spices than usual. for your food.
“It is so nostalgic to smell food being prepared,” she said. “Adding lemon or cloves and those aromatic things make everything better and make me feel like I’m not missing out so much – even though I know I am.”
At the suggestion of his doctor, Cheshire recently started “training smells”, using things like rose, lemon, cloves, garlic, eucalyptus and mint that have a very strong smell to train his brain.
“I’m trying to think about how things used to smell, so that I can remember them and recognize that smell again,” she said.
Becker said it is a tactic she recommends to patients, as there is no cure for anosmia.
“Retraining your brain to know the smell of things so you can remember is a little mysterious,” she said. “But using memory to train neurons can work in both directions. Memory can help you smell, and smell can help you remember.”
And you don’t need a sophisticated kit of essential oils, she said. “Just use the things you have to combine that smell with the memory of your smell.”
This can also be something aromatic and nostalgic for dinner.
Sarah Yeats – who has recovered most of her sense of smell and taste, but not all – recently made a bowl of ramen filled with cilantro and green onions in a rich broth.
“I’m trying to serve foods that look tastier and more beautiful,” she said.
For her husband, Alex, the dish was a form of memory in itself.
“Since I remember what it smells and tastes like, I can imagine it and it’s useful,” he said.