The World Taste & Smell Association (WTSA) is hosting "Understanding Taste and Smell: In Harmony and Discord," an online presentation on May 8th at 11:00 am EST. This insightful event will unravel the mysteries of our most cherished senses and the crucial role they play in our well-being, memory, emotion, and survival. Attendees will also gain a greater understanding of chemosensory disorders and hear powerful testimonials from those affected.

Loss Of Smell is a symptom preceding Parkinson's Disease. "Recognizing and addressing these signs promptly is crucial for intervening early and improving outcomes in Parkinson's disease," says Dr Kuldeep Shetty.April is Parkinson's Awareness Month, and today is #WorldParkinsonsDay.

Doctors are harnessing our sense of smell to reignite positive memories and reduce anxiety. [Image Credit: @GoDolceVita]

Neurogastronomy, merges the science and culinary worlds by studying the human brain and the behavior that influences how we experience eating and drinking. FOR MORE ON THIS.

The World Taste & Smell Association (WTSA) is thrilled to partner with the Museum of Food and Drink (MoFAD) for this year's exhibit on "Flavor, The World To Your Brain," at MoFAD's new location in Brooklyn, New York City. This unique collaboration promises to open doors for trade and consumers to explore the fascinating intersection of taste and smell interactively.

The Cleveland Clinic research says the use of aromatherapy helped reduce anxiety and also improved image quality since the patient was able to lie still. It starts with a calm talk with the patient and then an offer of aromatherapy, that is a small tub of essential oil placed on the inside of the MRI machine. The patient breathes it and relaxes.

When is a wine flaw not a flaw? Some defects that can afflict wine, like TCA (aka cork taint), are always considered a fatal imperfection by experts across the board. But when we talk about Brettanomyces, it becomes much less clear. The aromas of bacon, BO, and barnyard in a wine have people retreating to camps, with one side welcoming these sometimes-pungent notes and others dismissing them right out of hand as defective.

Mike DeSimone and Jeff Jenssen went out across the wine world to understand where people stood on Brettanomyces today and if they should consider it a fatal flaw. For more on this.

It’s not unusual for medicine to taste bad. Memorably, Mary Poppins even suggested a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. But Paxlovid™, a medication used to treat COVID-19 in some adults and children over age 12, takes the idea of bad-tasting medicine to another level.

According to Science World, our sense of smell actually accounts for around 80% of what we taste. In the real world, you have probably experienced this first hand if you've ever had a stuffy nose, and foods just don't taste as flavorful as they used to. In this case, the inability to smell something makes the food or flavor taste less intense. Well, it turns out that the reverse can also be true, that our sense of smell can enhance flavors. For example, scientists have discovered that smelling ham, something that we associate with salty foods, can affect how salty a certain food tastes.

The fragrance industry, traditionally reliant on the expertise of human perfumers, is undergoing a transformative shift with the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI). While AI is reshaping the industry, it doesn't replace the human element in perfumery.

Allure Magazine has more on this.

General covid-19 symptoms include fever, chills, coughing, shortness of breath, difficulty breathing, fatigue, muscle aches, headache, loss of taste or smell, sore throat, congestion, runny nose, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea, according to the CDC.

Adults over 70 with a poor sense of smell are more likely to develop depression.

In this fascinating CNN article, dive into the world of Joke Boon, a Dutch cookbook writer with anosmia who lost her sense of smell at age four. Despite her condition, Boon has authored five cookbooks, exploring how to experience food beyond traditional senses. She harnesses the trigeminal nerve — responsible for facial sensory perception — to 'taste' her food through sensations like ginger's warmth and mint's coolness.

While the distinction might seem subtle, understanding the difference between taste and flavor is akin to grasping the nuance between notes and a melody. Our tongues, adept as they are, decode various chemical compounds, giving us the basic sensations of sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami. But flavor? That's where the concert begins.