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A Potential Explanation For My Lack of (Culinary) Taste
My mother read recently that chronic ear infections in children may be connected to altered sense of taste. Being aware of my weird sense of taste, she thought this was really interesting. Apparently, I had recurring ear infections as a little boy. I also did not react to any pain they might be causing me. The first she knew about one of them, she told me today, was when my eardrum burst; before that, I hadn't expressed any discomfort.
I went Googling around and found this article: http://mealtimehostage.com/2013/04/16/taste-its-in-your-ear/
Some of this sounds quite a lot like me. The writer uses experiences of a friend with a bad cold and altered sense of taste to explore the ways food is experienced differently when certain parts of the sense of taste are not working, and wonders how this would affect children who grow up that way. I think I might be such a child. A quotation from her sick friend about her eating with a cold:
This is me. I'd never thought very deeply about this until some conversations with Lisa, but there are so very many things that just don't taste like much of anything to me. Other quotations are striking to me too, as someone whose choices of foods are strongly shaped by texture. The article writer's friend says "Apples are crunchy at the front of the mouth and are sweet right away. They also soften quickly. I can taste an apple. Carrots you have to chew at the back of the mouth and you have to work to get the sweet. I can’t taste them." While I don't like apple texture myself, this is the same language in which I describe foods to other people. (And I don't think carrots taste like anything either. They never have.) When I'm eating all this salad lately, the things I put on it are entirely so that it has taste and texture. I can't taste spinach, and the texture is not very pleasant. I *can* taste, and more importantly, feel, the chow mein noodles or croutons. And bacon crumbles are wonderfully salty; salt I can taste.
The foods that I like most in my life are ones that I can taste most strongly. Cheeses like mild cheddar or muenster are, to borrow another article quote, "rubber blobs." Eggs, the friend says, smell like sulfur and are unpleasant. For me, eggs have no taste at all, and, in fact, occasionally smell like sulfur. Ew. I only like them with lots of cheese, ketchup, and/or hot sauce. Really sharp cheddar or very strong blues, though, are wonderful. The article posits that children who are affected this way will prefer "Fatty, creamy, energy-dense foods....pasta, pizza, mac n' cheese..." that is *so* me.
Anyway, this is just fascinating to me. It also offers an alternative theory to my life-long weird eating habits other than an autism spectrum disorder-related sensory integration problem. Back when an autism spectrum disorder seemed to be one of the better fits for explaining my life to date, that made sense. Now, I feel like failure to develop any social skills due to unrecognized prosopagnosia through my early twenties is a better fit, but the food issues were still there. I'd come to believe that I simply have a very atypical sense of taste, and it's nice to have an idea of why that may be.
And with that, I'm going to go eat the sweet, creamy, fatty, fabulous Reese's Peanut Butter Cup I budgeted for today!
I went Googling around and found this article: http://mealtimehostage.com/2013/04/16/taste-its-in-your-ear/
Some of this sounds quite a lot like me. The writer uses experiences of a friend with a bad cold and altered sense of taste to explore the ways food is experienced differently when certain parts of the sense of taste are not working, and wonders how this would affect children who grow up that way. I think I might be such a child. A quotation from her sick friend about her eating with a cold:
"What am I eating? Carbs. Sweets. Things I CAN taste. Cheese is a rubber blob and everything else might as well be styrofoam. I can taste chocolate and cookies and things. I’m not looking forward to the pancakes that my husband is making for dinner. All I can taste from a Coke is sweet. It’s not that exciting, being just sweet water that stings the tongue.”
This is me. I'd never thought very deeply about this until some conversations with Lisa, but there are so very many things that just don't taste like much of anything to me. Other quotations are striking to me too, as someone whose choices of foods are strongly shaped by texture. The article writer's friend says "Apples are crunchy at the front of the mouth and are sweet right away. They also soften quickly. I can taste an apple. Carrots you have to chew at the back of the mouth and you have to work to get the sweet. I can’t taste them." While I don't like apple texture myself, this is the same language in which I describe foods to other people. (And I don't think carrots taste like anything either. They never have.) When I'm eating all this salad lately, the things I put on it are entirely so that it has taste and texture. I can't taste spinach, and the texture is not very pleasant. I *can* taste, and more importantly, feel, the chow mein noodles or croutons. And bacon crumbles are wonderfully salty; salt I can taste.
The foods that I like most in my life are ones that I can taste most strongly. Cheeses like mild cheddar or muenster are, to borrow another article quote, "rubber blobs." Eggs, the friend says, smell like sulfur and are unpleasant. For me, eggs have no taste at all, and, in fact, occasionally smell like sulfur. Ew. I only like them with lots of cheese, ketchup, and/or hot sauce. Really sharp cheddar or very strong blues, though, are wonderful. The article posits that children who are affected this way will prefer "Fatty, creamy, energy-dense foods....pasta, pizza, mac n' cheese..." that is *so* me.
Anyway, this is just fascinating to me. It also offers an alternative theory to my life-long weird eating habits other than an autism spectrum disorder-related sensory integration problem. Back when an autism spectrum disorder seemed to be one of the better fits for explaining my life to date, that made sense. Now, I feel like failure to develop any social skills due to unrecognized prosopagnosia through my early twenties is a better fit, but the food issues were still there. I'd come to believe that I simply have a very atypical sense of taste, and it's nice to have an idea of why that may be.
And with that, I'm going to go eat the sweet, creamy, fatty, fabulous Reese's Peanut Butter Cup I budgeted for today!