Sudden Changes In Taste

[Spookdaddy]

I have always had an odd relationship with sugary things; I will binge on stuff like chocolate, cakes and biscuits if they are in the house – but if I don’t buy them, I don’t miss them.

The only thing I have ever actually consciously added sugar to is coffee - one flat teaspoonful - and I probably did this for over three decades.

One morning – maybe eight years ago – I woke, made my coffee, and then screwed my face up in disgust. The liquid was so overly sweet that I assumed I’d done the thing of forgetfully adding sugar to something I’d already put sugar in.

So, I poured another. But it was the same again. Foul.

Overnight (and I do mean literally overnight) my taste had changed so profoundly that I could not drink coffee with sugar in it without wincing and feeling that I wanted to gag.

At the time I filed it away as just one of those things. But making my coffee this morning, and considering the fact that the neglected jar of sugar in my cupboard is now older than my six year old niece, it struck me to wonder if it maybe was quite an unusual thing. (Incidentally, I have none of the underlying health issues which might possibly go some way to explaining such an event.)

So, I was wondering – has anyone else had similar sudden and profound changes in taste? I've certainly never experienced it with any other food stuff. Was it odd? Or is it part of the human condition?

 

[EnolaGaia]

Just for the record ... This sudden disgust didn't coincide with using a different coffee brand or blend, did it?

 

[Spookdaddy]

Just for the record ... This sudden disgust didn't coincide with using a different coffee brand or blend, did it?

No. And I've gone through several since then.

I have, really just out of interest, tried sugar since - and been handed coffee with it in by accident - but my disgust seems universal

 

[Peripart]

So, I was wondering – has anyone else had similar sudden and profound changes in taste? I've certainly never experienced it with any other food stuff. Was it odd? Or is it part of the human condition?

Yes!

Cucumber - I've always found it bland but inoffensive, like a kind of crunchy water. Sliced thin, nice in a tuna sandwich, but otherwise not something I ever paid much thought to.

However, in just the last couple of weeks, it suddenly tastes of something, and it's a distinctly unpleasant something at that. It's not just that we've bought an "off" cucumber - it happened twice at home, and I bought a salad box at the works canteen, and the offending vegetable tasted exactly the same on each occasion. Maybe I've had a virus (maybe it was the virus), but that would tend to reduce taste, not enhance it?

In the interests of science, I'll try some more in a few weeks, but I'm afraid that cucumber and I might be done!

 

[ChasFink]

For the longest time I would eat black olives but very much disliked the green ones. It was the opposite with a woman I was dating on and off for a while. Even though she convinced me to keep an open mind, I still couldn't stomach them. Then one day at the Whole Foods Market I saw a container of green olives with herbs de provence, and felt compelled to buy them. They were incredibly tasty, and now I can eat green olives of all types.

It may have something to do with olives in jars vs. the fresher kind you get at the market, but even the jarred kinds are acceptable to me now.

 

[Analogue Boy]

This recently happened to me with fish. There was a stage where I found it started tasting bland but smoked fish still had a decent flavour and chip shop batter provides a decent tasty crunch. Recently, I’ve gone completely off it and find the smell of someone cooking fish in the house quite repulsive.

A couple of years ago I made a decision to boycott cauliflower. It serves no great purpose and anyway, there’s broccoli which is tastier and not beige.

 

[Kondoru]

Fresher olives are better

 

[Endlessly Amazed]

Thanks, @Spookdaddy for starting this interesting discussion. I have had this with mushrooms. Over my life, I have found mushrooms tasty or repulsive in years-long cycles. It does not matter whether they are fresh or canned, or what species. Right now I am leaving the tasty phase and entering the repulsive stage. Damn! I have only recently perfected an Eastern European style mushroom soup which my husband said was the best he had ever had (he is quite vocal when I make something he doesn’t like so praise is praise indeed) and grilled portobellos with fresh basil.

I also have these swings with both broccoli and cauliflower (right now, broc is in and cauliflower is out). But the mushroom swings are Dostoevsky worthy!

I vaguely conjecture that the tasty and repulsive phases are my body focusing on different chemicals in the complex mixture making up mushrooms, since the mushrooms don’t change. I have lifelong GI woes which put me into the hospital occasionally, and I wonder if the swings in taste are related to this. I now follow my tasty/repulsive bodily responses as the pain from the GI problem will knock me down for a day or three.

Possibly related:

Also, EnolaGaia may choose to find research on this, but I recall that during different phases of pregnancy, a woman will have violent dislikes, to the point of vomiting, to some foods she liked for years. Broccoli was given as an example. The article I read stated that the more disruptive (mutagenic?) the food was to the pregnancy, the more the woman’s body would reject this. As the pregnancy advanced, the violent dislike would lessen as – conjecture – the fetus had developed past the point where the disruptions would harm it.

IS NAUSEA IN PREGNANCY NATURE'S WAY OF PROTECTING THE FETUS FROM TOXINS? - The Washington Post

 

[m fidget]

to OP the Monell Sciences center in Philadelphia, Pa offers concrete advice and science based info about anosmias and taste disorders. Since Covid they’ve upped their social media.

Are yall aware of genetics and taste? The cilantro gene is a well known one.

Epigenetics, gender, hormones influence taste n smell, too. The Monell folk turned me onto Androstenone. Depending on your gender and place in menstrual cycle it smells differently. Its perceived scent ranges from subway urine, horrendous body odor, sweet flowery or barely soapy.

As part of my Whats That Smell art project i spritzed paper w Androstenone for folks to smell to see what they smelled. A transman on T for yrs who w no prompting or fore knowledge perceived the scent as most men do was apoplectically happy.

Wanna get some? can be bought online as hog mount spray pretty cheap

fwiw OP maybe contact Monnell. I did a scent based art project and they cheerfully gave me buckets of free info and time after I sent 1 email

 

[escargot]

Thanks, @Spookdaddy for starting this interesting discussion. I have had this with mushrooms. Over my life, I have found mushrooms tasty or repulsive in years-long cycles. It does not matter whether they are fresh or canned, or what species. Right now I am leaving the tasty phase and entering the repulsive stage. Damn! I have only recently perfected an Eastern European style mushroom soup which my husband said was the best he had ever had (he is quite vocal when I make something he doesn’t like so praise is praise indeed) and grilled portobellos with fresh basil.

I also have these swings with both broccoli and cauliflower (right now, broc is in and cauliflower is out). But the mushroom swings are Dostoevsky worthy!

I vaguely conjecture that the tasty and repulsive phases are my body focusing on different chemicals in the complex mixture making up mushrooms, since the mushrooms don’t change. I have lifelong GI woes which put me into the hospital occasionally, and I wonder if the swings in taste are related to this. I now follow my tasty/repulsive bodily responses as the pain from the GI problem will knock me down for a day or three.

Possibly related:

Also, EnolaGaia may choose to find research on this, but I recall that during different phases of pregnancy, a woman will have violent dislikes, to the point of vomiting, to some foods she liked for years. Broccoli was given as an example. The article I read stated that the more disruptive (mutagenic?) the food was to the pregnancy, the more the woman’s body would reject this. As the pregnancy advanced, the violent dislike would lessen as – conjecture – the fetus had developed past the point where the disruptions would harm it.

IS NAUSEA IN PREGNANCY NATURE'S WAY OF PROTECTING THE FETUS FROM TOXINS? - The Washington Post

Expectant mothers are already directed to avoid some foods, like unpasteurised milk and soft cheese, because of the risk of listeria.

While this is sound advice, nobody knows for sure why pregnant women 'fancy' certain foods and go off others. There is certainly no proven scientific basis for any of it.

 

[Endlessly Amazed]

Expectant mothers are already directed to avoid some foods, like unpasteurised milk and soft cheese, because of the risk of listeria.

While this is sound advice, nobody knows for sure why pregnant women 'fancy' certain foods and go off others. There is certainly no proven scientific basis for any of it.

I agree. Just much conjecture, some better than others.

 

[hunck]

As part of my Whats That Smell art project i spritzed paper w Androstenone for folks to smell to see what they smelled. A transman on T for yrs who w no prompting or fore knowledge perceived the scent as most men do was apoplectically happy.

Wanna get some? can be bought online as hog mount spray pretty cheap

Next time I’m mounting hogs I’ll bear that in mind.

 

[Yithian]

So, I was wondering – has anyone else had similar sudden and profound changes in taste? I've certainly never experienced it with any other food stuff. Was it odd? Or is it part of the human condition?

I'm a great believer that if you haven't 'broken' the standard functioning of your body, it will tell you what you need. We all know that pregancy brings strange tastes and cravings, so I have no difficulty in believing the opposite is true: via the mechanism of reducing positive taste-stimulus or inducing disgust, your body seeks to dissuade you from consuming foods that deliver nutritional elements of which you have a surfeit or even a dangerous surfeit. This, I'm sure, operates at a less extreme level among the non-pregnant. Last time I saw a photo of you, you were not at all overweight, but perhaps your body was seeking to regulate some kind of nascent pancreas/insulin/blood-sugar issue.

For the past eight months, I've more or less abandoned meal times. I eat when I'm hungry and don't trouble to assemble any kind of traditional balance—I eat what I want with minimal moral overdrive and a selection of dietary supplements to plug any gaps. I don't consume much sugary food or drink at all, but from time to time my brain 'tells' me to 'eat sweet' and I'll dump some maple syrup on some museli; another time, it'll demand oil and I'll fry a whole mackerel or a hunk of salmon.

My wife thinks I've gone mad, but I feel better than I have for years.

 

[Yithian]

Expectant mothers are already directed to avoid some foods, like unpasteurised milk and soft cheese, because of the risk of listeria.

While this is sound advice, nobody knows for sure why pregnant women 'fancy' certain foods and go off others. There is certainly no proven scientific basis for any of it.

You might know about this. Is it true that in the U.K. and U.S. doctors counsel against sushi and other raw seafood?

I heard this, but as far as I know, there's no such prohibition in Japan and Korea.

 

[charliebrown]

I assume taste changes with life styles like smoking, alcohol, strong coffee.

Then taste changes with sickness.

But taste greatly changes when a person ages.

My father, when he was alive made his own barbecue sauce, but as he aged, his taste buds went bad.

On one family meal when he served his barbecue sauce, we all went for the milk to try to kill spices in the sauce because our mouths were burning.

He could not taste the spice, and sadly he did not know what the fuss was about.

We stopped eating his barbecue sauce.

 

[IbisNibs]

hog mount spray

???

Next time I’m mounting hogs I’ll bear that in mind.

I was going to ask, is this a kind of pig perfume that farmers use to get more piglets?

What a great question Spookdaddy, thanks for asking it!
My taste has changed, but only gradually, never overnight.

 

[m fidget]

???

I was going to ask, is this a kind of pig perfume that farmers use to get more piglets?

Yes. Look for a product w Androstenone.

 

[Spookdaddy]

I'm a great believer that if you haven't 'broken' the standard functioning of your body, it will tell you what you need...

Yes. An example with me would be milk. I don't use a lot, and do not drink it straight on a regular basis. However, very occasionally I get - not a craving exactly - but some sort of unconscious nudge, which can only be answered by a few gulps of milk; at which point a thing which I'm generally completely indifferent to tastes like nectar.

I've always just gone with things like this, assuming that my machine is telling me something that the pilot isn't aware of.

 

[catseye]

I've noticed this very same thing - to the extent that I wondered whether I may have suffered Covid and just not noticed. Not a lack of sense of taste, but just my sense of taste becoming sensitive to some things and desensitized to others. I was never a 'curry' person. Could take or leave it but didn't like spices so couldn't eat it hot. Within the last year I started craving proper, nice curry - still not too hot and more on the 'creamy' side, but I can certainly take and enjoy more spice than a couple of years ago.

And double cream, which I used to LOVE (to the extent of swigging it out of the plastic container in the fridge, but don't tell anyone I told you that), now tastes of not very much at all. My tastebuds seem to have swung far more to the savory side than the sweet, which is a bit of a relief, given the state of my teeth...

 

[ChasFink]

Wanna get some? can be bought online as hog mount spray pretty cheap

Next time I’m mounting hogs I’ll bear that in mind.

Usually when I find out that there's something out there that the common man doesn't normally see, but which is available, I have a momentary desire to get some: black garlic, high powered model rockets, the foam rubber they use to make makeup appliances, etc. Sometimes I follow up, sometimes I don't.

I have no desire to get hog mount spray.

You might know about this. Is it true that in the U.K. and U.S. doctors counsel against sushi and other raw seafood?

I heard this, but as far as I know, there's no such prohibition in Japan and Korea.

Yes in the U.S., because raw fish is more likely to contain parasites, etc. - even (to a lesser extent) the fish expressly sold as sushi/sashimi ingredients. The U.S. is not as circumspect in avoiding mild contamination as other countries are, probably because raw fish is not anywhere near as popular as it is in your neck of the woods.

I bet it's even easier for you to get that black garlic, too.

 

[Endlessly Amazed]

You might know about this. Is it true that in the U.K. and U.S. doctors counsel against sushi and other raw seafood?

I heard this, but as far as I know, there's no such prohibition in Japan and Korea.

Adding to what @ChasFink wrote:
I think that this topic, once you get beyond the surface, is complex with many different contributing factors. I think that fish in North America is no more or no less likely to contain parasites than the fish in Asia. However, in most raw fish-eating cultures in Asia, it is common to freeze the fish first if you are not going to cook it. -4 degrees Fahrenheit for 7 days will kill parasites like worms but not microbes. This is supposed to happen in the US.
parasites-in-marine-fishes-uc-davis.pdf (oregonstate.edu)

The US is a surprisingly heterogenous population, with peoples from all corners of the world speaking different languages.
Languages of the United States - Wikipedia

It is large enough, in geography and population, to have different cultures living in different neighborhoods, at least until the second or third generation of American born. Eating food which is harvested by someone within this cultural group means that normal, conventional food inspection does not happen. Some cultures have a tradition of eating raw fish, eggs, and meat. As a child, I often ate raw fish, raw eggs, raw beef, and, rarely, raw pork (pork was a guilty pleasure I enjoyed with my Lithuanian godfather). The fish was awful. The beef and pork delicious. Eggs are meh.

Populations which are culturally diverse are also more difficult to communicate health information to: language and literacy barriers (about 67M residents don’t speak English; over 250 different non-indigenous languages), cultural distrust of authorities, the belief that we have always done it this way and we are fine, and so on.

The normal US food inspection is inadequate to keep food really safe. It is a spot check. Cooking thoroughly is the best preventative for parasites and microbes. To have safer food would require more resources for inspection, and US taxpayers are adverse to having higher taxes.

The most recent place I ate raw fish and raw egg was in Russia 30 years ago. The raw fish – an eel – was offered in a home in which I was a guest. My hosts were not ethnic Russian, but Kazak from the north. The eel had not been frozen. Everyone present each placed the same eel in their mouth, cut off the remainder with a very short curved blade, and passed the remainder and the knife to the next person. My hosts watched me closely to see if I could do it. I prayed I could do it. I bit, cut, swallowed, and did not throw up. Thank God and vodka.

The raw egg was served on a pile of thin sliced salami. This was breakfast in the Mir hotel in Moscow, an old stomping ground for Soviet bureaucrats. Along with rye bread, tea, and vodka. I kid you not.

 

[ChasFink]

The most recent place I ate raw fish and raw egg was in Russia 30 years ago. The raw fish – an eel – was offered in a home in which I was a guest. My hosts were not ethnic Russian, but Kazak from the north. The eel had not been frozen. Everyone present each placed the same eel in their mouth, cut off the remainder with a very short curved blade, and passed the remainder and the knife to the next person. My hosts watched me closely to see if I could do it. I prayed I could do it. I bit, cut, swallowed, and did not throw up. Thank God and vodka.

The raw egg was served on a pile of thin sliced salami. This was breakfast in the Mir hotel in Moscow, an old stomping ground for Soviet bureaucrats. Along with rye bread, tea, and vodka. I kid you not.

I'm sure the vodka also helped with any possible contamination in the eel. As for that Russian breakfast, sounds just right to me!

When I spent a six-week summer semester in Poland back in the Soviet era, the dorm I stayed in got a LOT more good food than the surrounding area (Kraków). Most of the meat was pork, but the North Americans were missing the beef. We had a few days in Warszawa before leaving, and there was a lunch at a local restaurant that served steak tartare (raw ground beef) with raw egg. I ate a little, but didn't like it much, and had to leave early to try and visit relatives in town. I found out later that the steak tartare was only an appetizer and the main course was a nicely grilled beef steak.

 

[Endlessly Amazed]

I'm sure the vodka also helped with any possible contamination in the eel. As for that Russian breakfast, sounds just right to me!

When I spent a six-week summer semester in Poland back in the Soviet era, the dorm I stayed in got a LOT more good food than the surrounding area (Kraków). Most of the meat was pork, but the North Americans were missing the beef. We had a few days in Warszawa before leaving, and there was a lunch at a local restaurant that served steak tartare (raw ground beef) with raw egg. I ate a little, but didn't like it much, and had to leave early to try and visit relatives in town. I found out later that the steak tartare was only an appetizer and the main course was a nicely grilled beef steak.

When my husband was in Poland on business for a month in 2014, he stayed in a hotel in a small town. His service was greatly upgraded, especially the food, when he told the desk clerk that his wife in the US was Polish. Still, he found some aspects of the food difficult as he is not Eastern European, no matter how much sour food I have stuffed down his craw over the years.

 

[Mythopoeika]

I'm sure the vodka also helped with any possible contamination in the eel. As for that Russian breakfast, sounds just right to me!

When I spent a six-week summer semester in Poland back in the Soviet era, the dorm I stayed in got a LOT more good food than the surrounding area (Kraków). Most of the meat was pork, but the North Americans were missing the beef. We had a few days in Warszawa before leaving, and there was a lunch at a local restaurant that served steak tartare (raw ground beef) with raw egg. I ate a little, but didn't like it much, and had to leave early to try and visit relatives in town. I found out later that the steak tartare was only an appetizer and the main course was a nicely grilled beef steak.

I've had steak tartare only once (without knowing what it was) - and I really didn't like it. Does anybody actually enjoy it?

 

[ChasFink]

I've had steak tartare only once (without knowing what it was) - and I really didn't like it. Does anybody actually enjoy it?

I think it's one of those things that almost nobody likes, but people eat it because it has a sort of snobbishness about it.

There's something similar going on with natto. I've heard that even in Japan people will joke that they're "not Japanese enough" to enjoy it. When interviewer Ann Curry, whose mother is Japanese, told Martha Stewart that they eat natto at her house, Stewart exclaimed "I love natto!" Make of that what you will. (Full disclosure: I don't detest the stuff, and will occasionally have one of those little single-serve containers of it.)

 

[Spookdaddy]

I think the following counts - although it's maybe not so much a change in taste, as an unconscious change in habit (and again, coffee based):

I like my coffee. I'm a stovetop coffee person - can't stomach instant. Ever since I started drinking it, I put milk in coffee - until a couple of years back, when - without actually registering the change - I started sometimes adding it, sometimes not. It's only recently that it was pointed out to me that sometimes drinking coffee black, and sometimes drinking it with milk, is odd - generally being an either/or thing.

The odd thing is that the decision isn't quite a conscious one; in fact, it's more of an automatic, than conscious decision - one that seems natural at the particular time I'm making a particular cup of coffee. (And another weird thing is that if someone puts milk in when I'm in black coffee mode - it tastes weird. And vice versa.)

I suppose my first question would be - is the above actually that odd, or do others do the same?

 

[Floyd]

I think the following counts - although it's maybe not so much a change in taste, as an unconscious change in habit (and again, coffee based):

I like my coffee. I'm a stovetop coffee person - can't stomach instant. Ever since I started drinking it, I put milk in coffee - until a couple of years back, when - without actually registering the change - I started sometimes adding it, sometimes not. It's only recently that it was pointed out to me that sometimes drinking coffee black, and sometimes drinking it with milk, is odd - generally being an either/or thing.

The odd thing is that the decision isn't quite a conscious one; in fact, it's more of an automatic, than conscious decision - one that seems natural at the particular time I'm making a particular cup of coffee. (And another weird thing is that if someone puts milk in when I'm in black coffee mode - it tastes weird. And vice versa.)

I suppose my first question would be - is the above actually that odd, or do others do the same?

Does this happen when you drink coffee after a meal? I'm just wondering if what you have eaten decides your preference on that particular occasion.

(I grew up on instant with milk. After having black 'Turkish' coffee though, I could never go back to that stuff).

 

[Spookdaddy]

Does this happen when you drink coffee after a meal? I'm just wondering if what you have eaten decides your preference on that particular occasion.

(I grew up on instant with milk. After having black 'Turkish' coffee though, I could never go back to that stuff).

No. Not that logical. I always have a coffee first thing, well before I eat anything; sometimes it's with milk, sometimes not.

 

[catseye]

I made a fruitcake on Sunday, for a friend. Now, I LOVE cake, to the extent that I sometimes have to cut back on my intake... but when I tried a couple of slices of the cake I'd made (purely for experimental purposes, you understand...) I found it almost disgustingly sweet.

I'd been faffing with the recipe when I made it, and thought I must have somehow mismeasured the sugar, because this was SWEET.

Anyway, I left it until Tuesday, wrapped in foil, then I had a small slice on Tuesday night, because I had to deliver it on Wednesday and wanted to make sure it hadn't...well, gone off or anything. And it tasted absolutely fine. Not to sweet at all, just like a normal fruit cake.

And then I remembered that last week, and on Sunday, I had cut right back on the refined sugar. Nothing but fruit for several days (well, ordinary food, but nothing with much sugar in, only fruit for dessert). So I guess that eating very little sugar for a few days, had reset my taste buds and resulted in the cake tasting massively too sweet, only for them to go back to normal by Tuesday (because I'd been eating a more normal diet for me, with more sugar in it).

So maybe sometimes our taste buds can be a little bit sensitive to something we've not had for a while?

 

[SimonBurchell]

I think the following counts - although it's maybe not so much a change in taste, as an unconscious change in habit (and again, coffee based):

I like my coffee. I'm a stovetop coffee person - can't stomach instant. Ever since I started drinking it, I put milk in coffee - until a couple of years back, when - without actually registering the change - I started sometimes adding it, sometimes not. It's only recently that it was pointed out to me that sometimes drinking coffee black, and sometimes drinking it with milk, is odd - generally being an either/or thing.

The odd thing is that the decision isn't quite a conscious one; in fact, it's more of an automatic, than conscious decision - one that seems natural at the particular time I'm making a particular cup of coffee. (And another weird thing is that if someone puts milk in when I'm in black coffee mode - it tastes weird. And vice versa.)

I suppose my first question would be - is the above actually that odd, or do others do the same?

After living in a coffee-producing country for a number of years, I have become a bit of a coffee snob (I like filter coffee, but not coffee-chain americano, which is invariably burnt, for example). So, if the coffee is a decent cup of filter coffee, I will drink it black. If the coffee is not to my taste (or is poor quality), or if I am given gack, sorry, I mean a coffee-chain americano, I will add milk, to take the edge off the burnt-coffee taste.