If somebody asks if by any chance you have “Anosmia”, I would pay attention to them and maybe ask them why they are asking you that strange question. Your replay could be “No, I don’t have insomnia” and of course, you are wrong because we are talking about “Anosmia “, but you could be right also because you might actually have “insomnia”.

That is a pretty lame line, but Anosmia it is not. It is a very serious, let’s call it disability. It is the inability to detect any kind of odor. As you can imagine, it could be just plain dangerous because you will not be able to smell a gas leak or smell food that has gone bad; and I know you can come up with more awkward situations where the inability to detect smell could embarrass someone’s life. This means that a person has about 5 million cells devoted to smelling (that is the number of cells each person has dedicated to the sense of smell) that are not working. By the way, dogs have 220 million cell devoted to smelling and four times the power to process scents.

Anosmia is not reversible when it is caused by a head trauma, but it could also be temporary when it is caused, for example, by inflammation of the nasal passages and in that case, it could be restored with training. Many times it could be also limited to one nostril only, so it is not detected.

The other disability, which is not as severe, is Hyposmia. It is estimated that up to 4 million people in the US have it. This is a decreased ability to detect smells. It could be caused by allergies, nasal polyps, and infections.   At the other extreme, there is Hyperosmia, which is the increased ability to detect smells. I think I fit in this category, and sincerely, I could be happy to skip a few levels on the smell test. (Perfume that most people can’t detect goes right up my nostrils with a consequence of a headache).Now you are wondering why I am writing about this subject when I usually write about food. The sense of smell and tasting food are definitely and intimately linked; and they are critical to the enjoyment of food.

Ben Cohen, better known as a co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s has anosmia and obviously he has made up for the lack of smell, because his ice creams are rich with texture, chunks and color. Stevie Wonder is another person with the same issue, and there are quite a few more famous people with this affliction.

Basically, smell equals taste and vice versa. So the loss of smell will also impact taste.

As a chef, anosmia could be disastrous for your career but it is still manageable. You will have to compensate with texture, color and your helper to tell you when too much is too much. It is matter of trust.

But wait, not everything is lost. You can actually “re-train” your sense of smell. First, to see how bad you have it, with a friend’s help, taste some vanilla ice cream and some chocolate when you are blindfolded. If you can taste the difference between the two, consider yourself to still have some or most of those million cells still working. Another other way to see if you have problems is for you to place a pad saturated with rubbing alcohol behind your chin. If you can smell it, you are OK. (At least as far as your nose is concerned)

Now, let’s talk about one way to keep your sense of smell really active: choose some fragrance that you might like, for example shampoo, coffee, bananas, cinnamon, and place some of each in a covered jar. Remove the lid and sniff those scents a few times at day inhaling a little of a time instead of a big one.

Last night my dog Ginger had a close encounter with a skunk. Trust me; if you have anosmia, you thought you were cured. No way could you miss the strong and unique smell of a skunk.  I am just wondering how many scent cells the skunk has. I hope for his own good that he has anosmia.

By the way, I think if I have a chance, I would like to come back in my next life, as a dog. What is the possibility that all the 220 million scent cells would go bad? I might still have a shot at tasting food.

The nose knows…keep on cooking.

Lullu