How We Lost Our Sensory Connection with Food—and How to Restore It

The opposable thumbs are a trait that humans share with our primate cousins such as chimpanzees. But it has only recently been discovered that our thumbs might have first evolved as a device for measuring whether or not fruit was ripe. In 2016, biologist Nathaniel Dominy studied the way chimpanzees pick figs. Dominy found that chimpanzees use their dexterous hands to give figs a quick squeeze to determine whether they are ripe or not—a technique that works four times quicker on average than the method used by monkeys (plucking figs at random, biting them to check for ripeness and spitting out the unripe ones). Humans also have these incredible hands capable of identifying the ripest fruit from touch alone. But most of us don’t use them that way any more.

If you want ripe fruit, you no longer need to rely on your own sense of touch. You can go into the nearest supermarket and buy a plastic tub of pre-peeled, pre-sliced mango or melon labelled “ripe and ready” or “ripe and sweet” and eat it with a fork. Our noses can distinguish fresh milk from sour milk, and yet we prefer to look at the use-by date rather than sniffing. Senses, wrote the late anthropologist Jack Goody, are “our windows on the world”—the main tools through which humans acquire information about our environments. Senses are instruments of survival as well as pleasure.

But today, we have relinquished many of the functions of our own senses to the modern food industry—which suits that industry just fine. A sense of smell has long been regarded as something trivial and even inessential to humans (as opposed to other animals, such as dogs, who live by their noses). Charles Darwin was among the scientists and philosophers to argue that a sense of smell was of “extremely slight service” to humans (compared with the senses of vision and hearing).

In reality, it is not easy to live without a sense of smell. We know from survey data produced by the charity Fifth Sense that anosmia lessens enjoyment of food and drink for almost everyone, as well as increasing feelings of loneliness and depression and in some cases leading to the breakdown of relationships.

The Fifth Sense survey of nearly 500 anosmia sufferers found that 92％ reported enjoying food and drink less than they had when they still had a functioning sense of smell. More than half of the respondents said that they went to restaurants less often than before, and they also reported that cooking had become a source of stress and anxiety because they could no longer experience the joy of trying new recipes, and could not easily tell when something was burned. Amy Kincai, a member of Fifth Sense, reported that they missed both the “dangers and delight” of being able to discern the various odours of food.

A 2020 paper analysing the self-reported experiences of long Covid sufferers on a Facebook group gave a sense of how the joy gets sucked out of food for those who can’t smell. Some said that they lost their appetite while others had the opposite reaction, desperately eating more in an attempt to compensate for the loss of pleasure. Roger Samans, an online friend, noted that “food satisfaction is lacking and I see myself eating more just to try to get that satisfied feeling…I am gaining weight due to a constant urge to satisfy what can never be satisfied”.

[A] believes that dogs’ sense of smell is keener than humans’.

[B] thinks they have lost their sense of smell, can’t enjoy the flavor of food, and can’t smell the burnt food.

[C] reckons chimpanzees judge fruit maturity by hand four times faster than monkeys by mouth.

[D] considers smell is a very basic sense but humans have lost much of the facility to use it properly.

[E] supposes that some patients with olfactory loss fill their missing satisfaction by eating a lot.

[F] deems the effect of smell on humans is far less than that of vision and hearing.

[G] regards senses as tools for obtaining environmental information.

Nathaniel Dominy