Question

What is ‘flavor’. Discuss your experiences with food when olfaction does NOT take place (when you have a cold / stuffy nose). Discuss the anecdote about smelling ‘Aquavit’ and a similar situation you’ve experienced.

Answer 1

• Flavor is the sensory impression of a food or other substance, and is determined mainly by the chemical senses of taste and smell. The "trigeminal senses", which detect chemical irritants in the mouth and throat, may also occasionally determine flavor. The flavor of the food, as such, can be altered with natural or artificial flavorants, which affect these senses.
• Of the three chemical senses, smell is the main determinant of a food item's flavor. While the taste of food is limited to sweet, sour, bitter, salty, umami, and other basic tastes, the smells of a food are potentially limitless. A food's flavor, therefore, can be easily altered by changing its smell while keeping its taste similar.
• Cold or stuffy nose takes place because white blood cells in your body produce chemicals to kill virus-infected cells. This causes increased mucous secretions as well as nasal swelling and inflammation.
• More importantly though, is to understand that the flavour of food involves both smell and taste. In fact, 80% of our taste is related to smell, so it’s not surprising that most of the flavour of a food comes from your ability to smell it.
• The tongue is your taste organ, as it can sense salty, sweet, sour, bitter and umami (savoury). Our sense of smell (known as olfaction) provides the rest of a food’s flavour, which is why it’s difficult to appreciate food flavour when you have nasal obstruction from a cold, stuffy nose or rhinosinusitus.
• A small area called the olfactory cleft high up in the roof of your nose senses smell. Here, special cells sense different odours found in the air that we breathe and then send signals to the brain via the olfactory nerve. Anything that interrupts taste sensations being transmitted to the brain will cause taste problems.
• When you have a cold, the swelling causes inflammation and obstruction, which impairs your smell. The flavour of food is produced only after taste is combined with a smell, so if a stuffy nose impairs your sense of smell, it will also decrease your perception of taste.
• When your nose is stuffy, taste receptors in your taste buds have to do the job of assessing food flavour in different taste molecules all on their own. Truth is, even though you have around 2000 and 5000 taste buds on your tongue, in your mouth and throat (with each containing 50 to 100 taste receptor cells) they still don’t come close to what your nose knows.
• This happens with all of us inlcuding myself.When I suffer from a cold,I cannot smell anything and taste anything.The food seems tasteless and without any fragrance.
• Due to time limit,remaining questions can be asked as another question,they will be answered,thankyou for your cooperation