or does it?

I contracted COVID a couple of weeks ago; I don’t wish it on anyone.  I did not have to visit a doctor or the hospital, thankfully, but it was a tough week.  Around the 5th day, something extraordinary happened.  Maybe not extraordinary to the millions who have had COVID, but truly an existential crisis for me.  I lost all sense of smell and taste.  

I realize this has happened to many and most have recovered those senses fairly quickly.  Statistics say it can take up to a year - a year?  How am I to live, I asked. 

A bit of context is needed here.  I recently closed my retail culinary business after twelve marvelous years.  My focus, in this next phase of life, is, well,  food.  I planned this blog.  I am launching a YouTube cooking show. I plan to cook, cook, cook and share the bounty with friends.  I had no other plans - other than to visit new restaurants and attend local food events.   My entire life plan was based on cooking and eating.  So, as you can see, this was truly a crisis of Kierkegaardian proportions.  I was going to have to reinvent my entire life.

So, I did what I always do when I find myself in crisis.  I set out to learn everything I could about COVID diminished smell and taste.  This is my coping mechanism and it yielded some fascinating results. 

First, this condition has a name - olfactory dysfunction (loss of smell only is called anosmia). COVID damages the olfactory nerves and/or tissue in the nasal passage.  Without those nerves functioning, our taste is also affected. We can’t taste what we can’t smell.   

Science, we love science, is still testing and learning about olfactory dysfunction.  Some might experience olfactory nerve damage - a more serious outcome.  Others, and this is hopeful, experience tissue damage. Tissue turns over fairly quickly, so recovery could be short term.  Can you see my fingers crossed?

When we lose smell (both good and bad), it affects how well we are able to detect flavor. The flavor of food is the combined experience of smell and taste.  The palate has five basic taste senses - sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami/savory.  Sometimes, the palate can “sense” those tastes without the benefit of smell.  However, I learned that the olfactory (nasal) nerves and tissue are critical to detecting flavor (not just those isolated tastes on the tongue).  And what else do we get when we detect full blown flavor - pleasure!

After my need-for-control deep dive into learning all I could about this condition, I became philosophical.  (I was a Philosophy and Art double major in college and without a career in either, I tend to philosophize about mundane facets of my life.  I can be exhausting, I suppose, but we won’t analyze that here).  What occured to me, all jokes aside, is that pleasure from eating is a privilege.  

I took for granted that I’d be delighted and experience a bit of euphoric pleasure from a meal (or, disappointment from a bad meal). I was struck by the truth that many, far too many, in our country are denied access to foods that bring pleasure and must eat for sustenance only.  The chronically hungry do not expect delight, instead they seek relief from the pain of hunger.  Those who experience food apartheid (also called food deserts) have little access to foods that have any flavor other than salt and sugar.  The complex flavors that I’ve come to know and love - and center my cooking around - are available to the privileged minority. 

Deriving pleasure from food comes from the amygdala in the brain.  Pleasure is natural, primal, even critical to survival.  The first humans were driven to life-saving nutritional variety by this pleasure seeking amygdala.   In The Flavour Journal, a publication of BioMed Central, a medical research firm, Morten Kringelbach writes in his article The pleasure of food: underlying brain mechanisms of eating and other pleasures “The evolutionary imperatives of survival and procreation are not possible without the principle of pleasure for the fundamental rewards of food, sex and conspecifics—and as such may well be evolution’s boldest trick.” A pretty good trick in my book. 

In the book Babette’s Feast by Isak Dinesen (nom de plume for Karen Blixon), we are feasted with the transformational effect of great food.  I plan to reread this book now (torture, perhaps, while in recovery).  A religious sect of pleasure deniers is treated to a feast by their French servant Babette.  This feast changes them forever; their senses are awakened for the first time and not just the food related ones.  It also changes them as a community - the power of gathering around food is beautifully described in this scene.  

So, imagine never experiencing that pleasure. The good news is most COVID victims’ senses are completely restored within a month.  For those who do not find recovery that quickly or who can’t even wait two weeks (guilty!), there is such a thing as olfactory nerve retraining. Who knew! 

Abscent.org has a mission to help people restore olfactory health (COVID is not the only culprit).   The training is simple.  Gather four scents (essential oils are recommended, but anything with a distinct aroma will do) and sniff each for about 20 seconds a couple of times each day.  They say to use little “rabbit” sniffs - shallow sniffs, multiple times.  

A fascinating component of the training comes from our brain (I am really revealing what a nerd I am, but stay with me).  As we sniff each scent, we are to recall a memory, story, or association with that scent even if we can’t smell it at all.  My four chosen scents are 1) ground clove; 2) ground cardamom; 3) rose water; 4) eucalyptus leaves.  

I have been practicing the smell training for two weeks now and I am up to about 50% recovery.  I am hopeful (okay, desperate).  But, like the folks at Babette’s table, I am transformed by this experience, but in reverse. The deprivation of pleasure has allowed me to focus on what a gift it is. My transformation has come in the form of mindfulness and gratitude.  I will never again take the pleasure of eating for granted.  

Now, time for my olfactory training session. 

Eat well and mindfully,

Cary