In the Absence of Taste and the Presence of an Eating Disorder

A week ago today, I lost my sense of smell and taste after testing positive for Covid-19. Despite being vaccinated and not contracting the virus, or at least being asymptomatic, since its mass inception in March 2019, I finally fell ill after traveling during Thanksgiving Day weekend for a family wedding. I packed two boxes of protein bars to have on my person during the wedding parties where food would be present. I also located, in proximity to my hotel, the nearest café – the same one I worked at back home – so that I could pick up the lowest-calorie, and the most filling, protein-packed option which also happened to be extremely satisfying for my taste. The entire time I was out of state for the wedding, I ate either my protein bar or those protein egg white bites from the café. There is no doubt that my eating disorder, the anorexia, is thriving.

The last day I was out of state, I woke up before 5 am as per usual, and asked my father to drive our rented midsize SUV to the café so I could pick up my breakfast. Upon arriving, I saw that the café was closed due to a water problem. I quickly navigated my mobile maps to find four other cafes. All were closed, not due to the time, but for some other reason. After making my agitated father drive unknown terrain while he was sick, unbeknownst to us sick with Coronavirus, I reconciled to have my sea salt chocolate almond protein bar for breakfast. I forged a plan with my father, who knew I was in the thick of an eating disorder despite maintaining a healthy weight: I would tell my mother that I picked up something from the supermarket and hide the protein bar in one of those take out containers with lids that the hotel breakfast bar had available. He looked defeated that his daughter was still suffering from an eating disorder. I, however, admittedly felt triumphant and thankful that I had the wherewithal to go to Whole Food Market back home and stash those protein bars into my checked in suitcase.

We were watching the news while I was stealthily eating my breakfast in front of my mother, behind the cover of a lidded container. I heated up the bar on 10 seconds in the hotel microwave so that the dark chocolate-date blend melted around the almonds and the sea salt’s crunchy contrast was even more pronounced. The taste of the protein bar felt so gratifying. It was healthy and tasty and something I would never permit myself to have while at home. The news flashed a breaking update on the flat-screened television: there was a citywide water mane problem causing all the cafes to close down. I felt a tickle in my throat on our last day there. Something was wrong. I felt the coming on of a sore throat, which made itself known the next day. Two days later I lost my smell and taste.

The truth was most everything I eat is “safe” – the same things I eat day in and day out knowing its nutritional content and if and how it will affect my body. These “safe” items tend to be bland and lacking potent flavors. Think: soft-boiled eggs and crackers. I was eating my lunch, a piece of low-moisture mozzarella string cheese when I noticed that I could not detect its faint smell. My eating process is somewhat disordered: I first sniff my food like a fine glass of wine I have yet to have in my lifetime. I inhale its aroma. I then eat in slow, measurably small, methodical bites to stretch out the eating experience because eating still felt so rare an occurrence that I had to preserve it.

I began breaking off stringy pieces of mozzarella and let it hover over my open mouth before chewing. I chewed, but I did not taste… anything. I was chewing for the sake of chewing. I was chewing to stave off emptiness rather than physical hunger. I ate because it was noon, my self-prescribed time for lunch. But I could not taste the slightly tangy, unique-to-dairy flavor. I kept blowing my dry nose with effort that caused my throat to hurt even more, but to no affect. I was not congested. I did not have a runny nose. I simply could no longer smell nor taste.

As someone with an active eating disorder, this prospect of lacking taste first hit me hard. I would no longer gain any pleasure from eating – the one thing I looked forward to while weight restoring over 50 pounds was to taste food again. The one thing I looked forward to now, when I eat so little and so restrictive a manner, is the taste. The second reaction, however, didn’t so much as hit me hard as it came in a soft, gentle nudge. If I couldn’t taste, perhaps, I won’t want to eat. Eating would lose its value. Food would no longer serve me. I won’t have to eat. I will lose weight again. I’ll be able to walk into any shop and wear clothes without going up a size. My mind spiraled out of control.

My body stayed still – sedentary – as my lifestyle has quickly become in my overtly watchful household in a sleepy Long Island town that can be traveled solely by car and not by foot. I stayed sitting on the leather swivel stool that bordered my kitchen island. I finished my string cheese as it dawned on me that the Coronavirus was very real and I was human, susceptible to airborne illness from my nearest and dearest, my father. After eating my lunch of string cheese, I began eating my choice of fruit – cubes of watermelon that I had cut up into a bowl. I could no longer detect the sweetness and instead honed in on the feeling of spongy flesh of melon and liquid bursting in the walls of my cheeks. I felt the bolus go down my throat and enter my abdominal cavity. I became acutely aware of my body no longer being empty. In that moment, I wanted more. I wanted more because I wasn’t satisfied. Without taste, my scant serving sizes seemed just as small as my therapist had been trying to convince me. I knew string cheese did not constitute a meal. I knew that fruit could not make me gain exponentially and that most of the feeling of fullness was water retention.

I saw two photos of myself. One was of me at a wedding function in the evening, after consuming watermelon that afternoon and everyday before then. The other photo was of me during the out-of-state wedding function. I hadn’t consumed fruit in a few days while out of state because, like I said before, I ate either the café egg white bites or a protein bar. In the latter photo, my face was less bloated, less round, less voluminous. My cheekbones were more prominent, my clothes fit, as they should. But fruit was safe for me. It kept me full and it satisfied me, so I continued to eat it while home.

Without taste, I became more aware of the importance of food. That’s not to say that I will change my disordered ways. Epiphanies do not necessitate change in implementation in spite of a change in mindset.  But my loss of taste has made me approach food in an even more rigid and calculated manner. I eat breakfast before 5 am: my protein cereal immersed in high protein flax milk that has been heated up in the microwave for 8 minutes to produce a porridge-like texture. I eat lunch around noon. I eat dinner around 7 pm. I then consume fruit until I get ready for bed, which nowadays, is by 8 pm. I taste nothing. My food has become like Play-Doh. I chew it and slosh it around inside my mouth, manipulating its shape into something small enough to swallow.

Suddenly, textures have become meaningful for me and no longer seem like arbitrary accouterments that Michelin-star chefs add to their dishes for décor or resourcefulness. I opt out of eating my soft food and try and seek pleasure in the crunch of my chia seed-dotted crackers that contrasts so delightfully to the soft shell of egg white surrounding a rich organic silky yolk. I also find temperatures mean so much more. I prefer hot to cold foods, again, because it makes the eating process last for a longer duration.

I’m trying to make good out of lacking both my sense of smell and taste, but the truth is, I’m losing my tolerance for believing that the glass is half full. I would relish the aroma of coffee brewing in the morning; I used to taste its slight chalkiness and slightly acidic taste offset by notes of milk chocolate. Suddenly, coffee didn’t have its same affect. I drank it for taste, not for caffeine.

There were three pros to working in a coffeehouse: the income, the regular gentleman customer who I took a fancy to, and smelling of a freshly concocted espresso latte. I could no longer smell myself. I couldn’t smell a day’s worth of work or a freshly showered and laundered self. Drastic as it may sound, I don’t feel alive without smell and taste. But I have also never felt more alive than I do when I eat without taste. It is as if my cells are real-time absorbing nutrients from the little food I do ingest.

I don’t look forward to eating because I am mechanically masticating food items without tasting it. But I do look forward to eating because I know that in doing so, I am practicing what it means to be recovered from an eating disorder. I’m not starving myself in spite of not tasting. I found alternate avenues like texture and temperature to make up for taste. An yet, I cannot imagine continuing to live like this – without taste. I’m still not recovering but I hope to. I hope to again indulge in the spices of my culture, to again have milk, real milk, in my tea that is spiked with cardamom, clove, and fennel. Without taste, recovery isn’t possible. Seeking pleasure in the ingredients used to create culinary invention is not possible. But without taste, I am now able to determine that there such a thing as recovery. Its just a journey that I have yet to embark on.