I can always tell when I have moved from the sniffles into a full blown cold, because I can smell the cold. The smell from the virus in my sinuses, or whatever it does to the mucous, overlays everything else. When I was a kid, I couldn’t stand peanut butter and jelly while I had a cold because of the way the smell altered the taste of the peanut butter.
Recently my wife picked up some more of the coffee I use in the espresso machine from the bulk beans section at the grocery store, and I was sure she had bought the wrong ones. Even though the “cold smell” had gone away, my sense of smell was screwed up enough that the lattes tasted wrong (and bad) even though I made them exactly the same way. When I tried again a few days later the taste was back to normal.
I had also tried during this time to pick out a tea to make from some canisters of loose leaves, and couldn’t smell them at all, even though my sinuses were clear.
Is there any food that you can’t eat during a cold because the taste is ruined by a suppressed, or altered sense of smell?
Everything tastes just awful to me, when I have a cold, so it really doesn’t matter what I eat. I eat because I feel empty, not hungry. I recall one particularly virulent cold where I just heated up a can of Alphabet Soup every night for a week. Tasted, if you could call it that, awful. Well, I remember thinking. This certainly sucks. I did lose a few pounds, though, that was the bright side.
Egg drop soup
Sunny side up eggs
Poached eggs
Other than hard boiled (my favorite kind) those are the only other ways I’ll eat eggs. I have tried all 3 in the last 4 months while suffering from colds (because I’m a moron and I didn’t learn the first time). The texture, without the taste, is truly repulsive. It’s like voluntarily eating snot for nutrients.
For years I couldn’t drink Apple Juice because the smell reminded me of strep throat but that’s not the same thing.
Only bread and butter and milk taste normal when I have a cold. Some things like cheese are just tasteless and I can force down. Most stuff is sweetly gagalious. Right now my head is ready to explode from a cold caused migraine and I’m running a fever. Shoot me now.
Anything sour, but mustard is worst of all for some reason. When I have a cold, my sense of sour flavors generally becomes unbearably intense. Mustard actually feels like it’s burning my mouth and sinuses.
I know what you mean about the smell of a cold, and it’s not just an alteration in my sense of smell. The odor of my breath and sweat change noticeably, taking on a sort of acrid scent; as soon as I recover from a cold, I wash my sheets and air the place out to get rid of the smell. I’ve noticed a similar smell on other people a few times, and it turned out they had a cold as well.
Pizza. Gag. I could live off it any other time, but when I have a cold, no interest whatsoever.
I can always tell when I’m getting sick because my appetite goes down the drain. I’ll eat 3 blueberries and feel full and have no desire to consume anything else for a full day. Sometimes I’ll feel hungry yet paradoxically not want to eat.
I have zero desire for any food when I’ve got a cold. Nothing looks or smells or tastes appetizing.
I eat because I need fuel in order to get well again and that’s it. My main focus is finding something soothing enough for my throat and easy enough to fix that I don’t want to fall asleep while standing in the kitchen.
