Anosmia

THIS BLOG IS ABOUT LIFE AS AN ANOSMIC - SOMEONE WITHOUT A SENSE OF SMELL. I AM A 22 YEAR OLD MA STUDENT IN LONDON AND HAVEN'T HAD A WHIFF OF ANYTHING IN ABOUT 15 YEARS. I AM WRITING THIS TO RAISE AWARENESS OF THIS INVISIBLE DISABILITY AND WILL UPDATE EVERY TIME THERE'S SOMETHING TO WRITE ABOUT.

Tuesday 8 January 2013

The Hunger Games

The most common question that I get asked after I tell someone that I don't have a sense of smell is always "Does that mean you can't taste either?". Your sense of smell and taste are closely linked, but it's not always so simple as that when you lose one, the other goes as well. In this post I want to try and explain this a bit better and that this doesn't mean that I have inhuman resistance to curry powder.

80% of flavour comes from our sense of smell, so obviously an anosmic's experience of food is greatly reduced. Anosmics retain a normal sense of taste however, so we can still distinguish between sweet, sour, salt, bitter and savoury like everyone else that can smell. But due to the fact that we can barely distinguish between flavours we have to rely more heavily on other things such as the texture, acidity and dryness of food to compensate.

Personally, this is enough for me. My anosmia effects my relationship with food in another  way; I repeatedly forget to eat. Most people become hungry from smelling something tasty, or simply something that reminds them of food. As I don't get this, I just don't get hungry until the point where my stomach starts grumbling painfully, which usually happens when I'm stuck in a 3 hour lecture. 

Now that I'm a 'grown up' snf cooking all my own food means that I have to be especially aware of use-by dates and raw meat and fish. As soon as milk goes past it's best-before date I throw it out, even if it's still good. If I cook something that requires the use of an oven, I make camp in the kitchen just in case something sets fire, as I would be unaware of the smoke until it's too late. Luckily, I've never been unfortunate to suffer from food that has gone off despite being within it's use-by dates.

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