Fluctuating sense of taste. Anyone else?

Post Reply New Topic

For quite some while I've noticed that my sense of taste fluctuates. It's especially noticeable with sweet tasting things. Anyone else here experience the same?

yes, I notice flavors a lot more sometimes, or things taste differently than I expected them to. When I was young it seemed as if my hormones related to my cycle or whether I was pregnant or not changed the way I sensed things, taste included. Sense of smell fluctuates too. I noticed when I was on certain meds that my sense of taste and smell changed even more than when I was not on them. I have had olfactory hallucinations off and on, too, usually when under great stress/distress. It would surprise me if others did not experience this too. interesting topic!

With me it was smelling gas or even more the smell of a roll up cigarette. My wife used to smoke those, but she died in 2005. I've never smoked.

I experience something like that with coffee. There are times when coffee tastes so good with certain specific subtle deliciousness in it, but most of the time it does not. I believe it's to do with my tongue condition, which is affected by other physical conditions. I think the taste buds are very sensitive to other physical and mental conditions, which affects how food can taste. Also, what you eat prior to eating something else can alter how the latter tastes. A typical example is that pineapple damages your taste buds temporarily and food has less flavor after eating pineapple.

Even though I've had COVID twice, my sense of taste has been pretty consistent over the years.

I enjoy the SMELL of coffee and liver/onions. I abhor the TASTE of both, though.

Yes.

But that's because my sense of smell is less reliable overall and fluctuates just as much.

Gained Number Post Count (1).
Lose Time (n).

Lose more time here - Updates at least once a week.

I notice the same thing with bacon. Sometimes it tastes nice and salty and other times it tastes like ham.

I think this phenomenon applies to everyone regardless of extrinsic factors such as medications and aliments (neurological, mental and immunological), although it may be amplified for us spectrumites as we have more intricate gustatory senses. When I was young I used to like the taste of strawberry calpol paracetamol fluid, now it grosses me out due to it's ultra-artificial aftertaste . Same with Batchelors Super Noodles (curry) which I used to have at least twice a week for well over ten years, and then I got so fed up it that I ineluctably eliminated it from my weekly dietary routine, unlike some foods such as milk chocolate (I have a very sweet tooth), curry, bread rolls (especially sesame seeded ones) cream crackers that I will likely never get fed up with. Fluctuating senses of taste are of course often intertwined with olfactory senses (this is very important to me), for instance I really like eggs and butter, but the smell is rather funky. Oh and Nestle white chocolate is a bit smelly compared with higher quality ones such as Lindt.