How Does Smell Affect Taste?
There are many different ways smell affect taste, one reason for this is because of the way the brain percepts how the food smells. For example, if you smell something that might smell like strawberry, like a slushie that may have strawberry in it but mostly smells like strawberry , you might think that it is strawberry or, but it could really be blueberry flavored, your brain may still think that is strawberry, this is because of the way it smelled, even though you may have already tasted it you may still think it is strawberry/raspberry flavored. Smell also affects taste because of how taste and smell interact with each other. If someone smells something that smells sweet, …show more content…
In addition, the older you age the more likely you are to lose your sense of smell.You may not lose your smell completely, but you will most likely lose a lot of your sense of smell as you age. According to (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2579627/) 62.5% of 80 to 97 year olds have something with their sense of smell called olfactory impairment. Basically, olfactory impairment is when you have a disorder in your sense of smell which makes it hard to smell things. Also, during my researching, many websites have mentioned that patients that report they have problems with their sense of smell, a lot of them don’t have a problem with their sense of smell, but with their sense of taste instead. According to (http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/smelltaste/pages/smell.aspx) the things that lead to smelling/ or sense problems are “aging,sinus and other upper respiratory infections, smoking,growths in the nasal cavities,head injury,dental problems, exposure to certain chemicals, such as insecticides and solvents numerous medications, including some common antibiotics and antihistamines, radiation for treatment of head and neck cancers ,conditions that affect the nervous system, such as Parkinson’s disease or …show more content…
Therefore, affecting your taste because your sense of taste won’t be as strong as it once was. This means that your food will not be as “flavorful” and you will not be able to recognize the flavors or taste of foods as easily. Also as your sense of smell differs from younger or older people than you , for example if there is someone younger than you they might think something has a different smell than what you think. This affects your sense of taste because smell affects taste, so if someone thinks that something smells like mint but the food is really flavored chocolate they will still think the food tastes like mint this is because when they first smelled the food it smelled like mint but, if someone smells the same food they may think the food smells like strawberry but it is really flavored orange, they will still think the food (or gelatin) is slightly strawberry flavored because when they smelled the food it smelled like strawberry and your nose “sends” the smell of the food to your brain your brain will “send” the smell to your