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#1 Posted : Monday, June 10, 2024 2:03:13 PM(UTC)

After 4 years being free of covid, we have finally caught it during our travels to Europe. My husband and I have lost our sense of taste and smell.  Good for trying  to lose extra weight, but very bad for someone who likes to cook often by taste.  


Apparently, 80-90% regain their sense of taste and smell after 6+ weeks.  But there are those minority who never do.  That will be so awful.  I am reading up on retraining those senses and I found two recipes that seems good.  One is peanut butter oat meal honey cookies and another apple cider lemon ginger tonic.  


Made both and although, we can faintly taste  the peanut butter, the smell is still very light  and the tonic does not taste  that sour.  Perhaps, takes time. 


Have you any ideas or recipes to try for resetting those lost senses? 

#2 Posted : Monday, June 10, 2024 2:44:02 PM(UTC)

Sorry. I don't know anything about how to regain the senses of smell & taste. I thought you were going to ask for spicy recipes with strong aromas.

#3 Posted : Monday, June 10, 2024 6:36:29 PM(UTC)

You might want to read this book Season to Taste about a chef who lost her sense of smell after an accident. It seems to have good advice about how to train yourself to help regain those senses. I do recall reading recently about kits you can buy that help retrain those senses. I think it was specifically for people who had the issues post-Covid. Sorry I don't recall where I read it, but you should be able to see quite a few articles about it if you Google.

#4 Posted : Tuesday, June 11, 2024 4:55:25 AM(UTC)

First you have my sympathy for getting Covid, and then to losing your sense of taste.


I had Covid in March 2020, and I had particular problems with taste. 


Initially there was anosmia which is a lack of sense of taste which I think is where you are now. This doesn't last long and the trick is just to keep trying different flavours so that your brain remembers it's supposed to smell and taste things.


In my case. my sense of taste came back muddled all wrong. This is called parosmia and it went on for about two years properly and bits have persisted for the full four years though I think I'm pretty much back to normal now. It's very hard to say what happens if you go into power or smell people say oh does that not taste nice? What does it taste like and the answer is it doesn't taste like anything else it just taste horrible and how it tastes horrible varies from person to person. For example, I hear stories of people with parosmia using curry spices to cover the unpleasant tastes, but in my case, curry was one of the worst things that in particular was revolting, as was red meat and pork. 


If you have either anosmia or parosmia badly. the best thing is supposed to be smell training. You can sniff things that you might not want to swallow. Oil of lemon is a good one for this, but the trick is just to keep trying different things and going back to things after a while. if you have short lived anosmia that will resolve itself, then sweet things like cookies are a good way of getting something pleasant, but if it persists, then you have to be more inventive, I did get through a lot of Sriracha, for some reason that was always okay, as were eggs, potatoes and apples, anything else felt like Russian roulette. 


The last things to go in terms of parosmia have been red wine. Some are now okay but I still get the occasional glass I find unpleasant, and coriander herb, which I have always loved, and I'm back to eating it now, but it tasted very unpleasant for a while yet I could substitute dill, which is very closely related. 


Good luck - remember it probably won't last long.

#5 Posted : Tuesday, June 11, 2024 4:59:33 AM(UTC)

Life Kitchen might be useful. It is targeted at cancer patient who lost their sense of taste and/or smell because of chemotherapy rather than at CoVid-19 patients.


More general book How to Taste targeted at anyone who wants to improve how their food tastes not only to cancer or CoVid patients.

#6 Posted : Tuesday, June 11, 2024 12:24:45 PM(UTC)

As I was coming to terms with my altered taste after radiotherapy, I found Taste: What You Are Missing by Barb Stuckey a very informative read. I'm not really sure it fixed anything but helped me understand what I was experiencing.

#7 Posted : Wednesday, June 12, 2024 9:22:26 AM(UTC)

These are all great recommendations, thank you very much.  I bought all 3 of the books and looking forward to learn from them.  


I did not know the terms anosmia or parosmia, but yes, I think I have anosmia now.  The use of sriracha is interesting.  I made chicken noodle soup and don't even know if it tastes good or bad. I often add small amount of hot sauce before eating chicken noodle soup but this time, I added gobs of hot sauce to get some sense of taste.  Yet surprisingly, it did not taste hot or spicy like it should with all the added hot sauce.  

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