The bell is ringing. Here comes the pizza. I hit the wrong button on the food ordering app so I have to pay something with cash after a long time. I put Kobra Kai on the TV and start munching on my usual pizza. The same pizza I’ve been ordering for almost 2 years (it’s that good).
“Anastasia, it’s not the same this time. It’s completely tasteless.”
And I keep chewing. Hmmm, I realize what I said. It is indeed curiously tasteless. And then this crazy suspicion arises. Is there a chance?
I run to the fridge. I open it and look for something with a strong smell. My eye falls on a well-wrapped item on the top shelf. Metsovone cheese! We got it last week from Metsovo (no surprise there). One thing its Wikipedia page can’t describe enough is how strong it smells. Well, not to me! Nothing! I take it with me and return to the living room.
“Do you smell that?”, I asked shoving the cheese up my wife’s nose.
“Pffff what are you doing? It smells awful!”
“I don’t smell anything!!!”
I take one of the numerous rapid tests that are available in random spots around the house. I shove the stick in my nose. I pour 3 drops. I am waiting for a while and the second line appears. Positive for COVID19! I was one of 46,000 that day in Greece…
I’m fine btw, I’m having pretty light symptoms. A bit of a headache and that weird anosmia…
Two days of anosmia and strange thoughts have started to cross my mind. What if we didn’t have any taste and smell at all?
We certainly wouldn’t take a shower as often. Actually, I don’t know if hygiene would play the same role in our lives. You would have to see visual feedback to know you need to clean yourself. Ewww!
Also RIP to all the companies that produce deodorants, soaps, shampoos, perfumes, room fragrances, etc.
As for the food, it certainly wouldn’t make much sense to eat sweets, soft drinks, spices. Would we only eat healthily? I think about my beloved, delicious (and overpriced) steaks becoming an endangered species and I feel sad.
Would we see food as a simple means of survival and not as a pleasure? Or would the brain form other criteria for pleasure? Would it have to do with the texture, the mouthfeel? How easily digestible is it? Based on the outward appearance maybe?
When you eat a piece of chocolate, chemicals are released in the brain that cause euphoria. Does the same thing happen if you have no taste? Is it the sweet taste that causes the euphoria? Or maybe the chemicals? Or is it our mind’s perception that we are eating something sweet? Anyway, I tried it (for the sake of science of course). It wasn’t the same, it was kind of… sad!
I approach life questions from a practical point of view. I think that everything arises out of necessity, from a practical reason. Are foods sweet or salty by themselves? Or has our brain created these tastes/smells to tell us that something is suitable or not for us to eat?
I believe the second, it’s all in our heads. Food, flowers and everything in nature just has some chemical compounds. Classification into tastes (salty, sweet, sour, bitter, umami) and smells are creations of our brain. It started as a basic binary sensor “that one is edible” and the other “better not”. Sensors began to accumulate on our tongues and noses that are constantly becoming more sensitive, as are the brain neurons that communicate with them. And this is how this huge range that we recognize today began to be formed.
I’ve heard somewhere that smell developed later than taste, that’s why it’s less sensitive. There aren’t that many distinct “categories” of smells. You can’t easily describe a smell. You should liken it to something, eg it smells like a lemon. So it seems like a work in progress. It is our brain trying to know the world around it and increase its survival chances!
(Tasteless) food for thought!
PS I found this very interesting and informative article (How does our sense of taste work?) on how taste works and why we prefer sweet to bitter!
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