I’ve been eating a lot of grapefruit recently, and they’ve all been very good. However, this morning I started to eat one, but it tasted so bad I was about to throw it away. I don’t mean it didn’t taste as delicious as I wanted it to; it was absolutely unpalatable. My wife offered to finish it for me and thought it tasted perfectly fine although maybe some of the cells were a little dry. Being a wine expert who’s very interested in the physiology of taste (and has an absolutely amazing palate), she put a little sugar on the grapefruit and asked me to try another bite. It was even more bitter than before, like chewing on the rind, and left a lingering taste of copper in my mouth. As an experiment, she asked me to try an orange, it it tasted perfectly fine. I haven’t had anything to eat or drink since before going to bed last night, and I hadn’t brushed my teeth yet this morning. My wife has previously suspected that I may be a super taster, but she thinks it’s more likely I’m a picky eater who doesn’t like bitter foods. Does anyone have any thoughts that one particular food on this one particular day would taste so bad?
Are you getting the flu? I just got over it, and during the sickness, wine (which I ordinarily love) tasted awful. I couldn’t drink it.
No, I’m not sick, and I had my Flu shot. I can’t think of any reason my sense of taste would be off. I’m curious whether it’s something particular to grapefruit.
Pay attention for a few days, and see if this is just some transient thing. I had that happen to me once, with sense of smell rather than taste. One day (when I was a little bit sick with some creeping crud), I was suddenly hyper-smell-sensitive. When I drove to work, it seemed I could smell every tree I passed and every patch of oil on the road. Stopping at McD for breakfast, I was overwhelmed by the smell of every separate item cooking there. It was all so over-the-top, I wondered if I was hallucinating it all.
By the next day, it was all gone.
Also: Any medications involved, or any recent medication changes? Several meds apparently can mangle your sense of taste like that. (Also, many meds come with instructions to avoid grapefruit or grapefruit juice.)
Have you been using any Crest mouth care products, such as mouthwash or teeth whitening?
Consumerist: Crest Pro-Health Mouthwash Still Taking Out Tastebuds
Grapefruits have some unique chemicals in them which have all sorts of weird properties and can interact in ways with other compounds that is not seen in any other fruits. They can also screw up the working actions of lots of medicines which is why docs say not to take them if you are using any of very wide variety of medicines.
This might be one of those interactions.
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/17/grapefruit-is-a-culprit-in-more-drug-reactions/