The Guardian view on taste, smell and Covid: getting back our appetite
“This is the first meal I’ve cooked in a year that in no way tasted or smelt revolting,” a grateful reader wrote to Ryan Riley and Kimberley Duke recently. While the praise might sound underwhelming, it was heartfelt: the British pair’s slim cookbook, Taste & Flavour, a free collection of recipes to help Covid patients enjoy food again, has won them gratitude around the globe.
An estimated 65% of coronavirus patients experience the loss or distortion of taste and smell, and 10% are left with long-term effects; for 3% it could be permanent. When many long
Covid sufferers report persistent headaches, breathlessness and fatigue, the complaint might sound almost trivial; more curious than troubling. Yet the charity Abscent says that the 3.25 million people in the UK who develop smell loss – often after cancer treatment or head injuries – can experience isolation and depression. Medics and those with smell loss say it can be unexpectedly jarring and depressing, as if all the colour of the world has turned to grey. The especially unfortunate, like Riley and Duke’s correspondent, find that favourite flavours and scents, such as coffee, chocolate or garlic, do not vanish, but become disgusting to them – redolent of decay.
Much of what we think of as our sense of taste is in fact a sense of smell. Bad smells usually help to keep us healthy, warning us away from spoiled food; good ones awaken our appetites not only for food but for life. Some sufferers, like the food critic Tejal Rao, have turned to “smell training”, trying to re-accustom themselves to whiffs of cinnamon or the scent of bacon. Riley and Duke’s book draws on the expertise of Prof Barry Smith of the Centre for the Study of the Senses at the University of London, as well as their experience at Life Kitchen, the not-forprofit cookery school they founded for cancer patients after losing parents to the disease. Recipes such as veggie pi