Taste
This page contains interviews with sensory experts on taste during the COVID19 pandemic. It also includes an evolving bibliography of news media and academic articles on the same topic.
Have an academic article or news piece you think we should include? Let us know at pandemicsensoryarchive@gmail.com.
If you want to submit your own sensory experiences to the Pandemic Sensory Archive then you can do so here.
Expert interviews – Click below to listen to our chats with various sensory experts.
Dr Evangeline Mantzioris
Dr Eerang Park
Dr Eerang Park is Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellow of Tourism in Edith Cowan University. Her research is interdisciplinary at the boundaries of geography, cultural studies, and social psychology. Her research on food tourism enhance our understanding of the meaning of taste experience in travel and tourism, and how food performs in developing a social relationship in tourism. Her current research projects focus on food and gastronomy tourism grounded in the emerging Asian tourism platforms and discourses. Website.
Norman Mazel
Norman Mazel has been working as a coffee quality analyst since 2008 and is currently Head of Quality at Beans Coffee b.v. Norman was the first European citizen to attain all three of the highest attainable coffee certificates issued by The Quality Coffee Institute and one of only a small number of people worldwide to hold all 3 certificates. During the pandemic he suffered a temporary loss of smell and taste and in this interview he talks about how this impacted his work.
You can find out more about Norman’s work and connect with him here.
Susan Boyle
Thomas Buckley
An Alumni of The Royal Shakespeare Company Immersive Fellowship Thomas is an artist that uses immersive and emergent technologies alongside sensory storytelling. They’re work explores how archival data can become more accessible and immediate through scent and taste. They’ve most recently worked with ArtHouse Jersey to research and interpret creative works that reveal the experiences of survivors of the Nazi occuption through novel and disarming ways.
You can find more about Thomas’s work here and follow him on twitter here.
Key articles – Collating expertise and key links on taste during the pandemic.
Media:
- Lost taste and smell from COVID-19? A new cookbook aims to help – Samuel Rothman for ABC News
10/04/21
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/loss-taste-smell-covid-19-cookbook-aims/story?id=76887711
About a new cookbook that aims to help people whose sense of taste and smell has been affected by COVID-19 - Could a distaste for broccoli indicate greater resistance to COVID-19? – Bill Sullivan for National Geographic
29/05/21
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/could-a-distaste-for-broccoli-indicate-greater-resistance-to-covid-19
Research into whether “supertasters” who are sensitive to bitter tastes might have some protection from COVID-19. - What to cook if covid-19 has affected your sense of smell and taste – Sam Wong for New Scientist
05/05/21
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25033332-600-what-to-cook-if-covid-19-has-affected-your-sense-of-smell-and-taste/
On what to eat if your sense of taste has been impacted by COVID-19. - Cooking During COVID-19: Family Meals And Fantasies Of Future Dinner Parties – Dave Davies for NPR
07/04/21
https://www.npr.org/2020/04/07/828498977/cooking-during-covid-19-family-meals-and-fantasies-of-future-dinner-parties
On the return of family mealtime and cooking as a brightside to the pandemic. - New Jersey food tours, slowed by the pandemic, are back in business – Julia Duggan for the Burlington County Times
07/06/21
https://eu.burlingtoncountytimes.com/story/entertainment/dining/2021/07/07/nj-food-tours-return-2021/7780380002/
A piece noting that food tours have been a useful way of helping restaurants in some towns bound back from the pandemic, combining food and local history. - Virtual restaurants and the ghost of California burritos past – Frank Shyong for the Los Angeles Times
02/07/21
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-07-02/reopening-and-ghost-kitchens
A reflection on the increasing trend towards ‘ghost’, ‘cloud’, or ‘virtual’ kitchens in the context of the pandemic, where people order food online and do not visit or sit in a bricks and mortar establishment. The taste might be the same but a further separation of the consumption and production of fast food is taking place. - Study: Pandemic Has More Coffee Brewing – Thomas Mulloy for CStore Decisions
07/07/21
https://cstoredecisions.com/2021/07/07/study-pandemic-has-more-coffee-brewing/
This piece discusses a report that American home coffee consumption has risen during the pandemic, with those surveyed increasingly citing a ‘fresher’ tasting product as a reason for coffee preferences.
Academic publications:
- Gwyn Easterbrook-Smith (2021). By Bread Alone: Baking as Leisure, Performance, Sustenance, During the COVID-19 Crisis, Leisure Sciences, 43(1-2): 36-42. https://doi.org/10.1080/01490400.2020.1773980
- Michael Carolan (2021). Practicing social change during COVID-19:Ethical food consumption and activism pre- and post-outbreak, Appetite, 163. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2021.105206
- Lauren Kassell (2021). Going Nowhere: Routines in a Pandemic. PMLA, 136(2): 310 – 316.
https://doi.org/10.1632/S0030812921000122 - Dominika Głąbska, Dominika Skolmowska, Dominika Guzek (2020). Population-Based Study of the Changes in the Food Choice Determinants of Secondary School Students: Polish Adolescents’ COVID-19 Experience (PLACE-19) Study, Nutrients, 12(9), 2640.
https://doi.org/10.3390/nu12092640