When you’re too old to taste and smell, you’ve still got turnips left

I read in a “Consumer Reports on Health” that, as we grow older, it’s surprisingly common to lose some of our sense of smell. It’s also one of the Covid symptoms. And, when we lose our sense of smell, our sense of taste is likely to go right along with it.

That’s why, the older we get, the more salt and pepper, hot sauce, mustard and horseradish we slather on our food. You never see babies eating hot sauce, do you?

I used to think people who munched on Jalapeño peppers like they were M&Ms were just tough guys. Now I know they’re just aging faster than those of us who still prefer mayonnaise. It also explains why children instinctively reject spinach, broccoli, cauliflower and other strong food. To the fresh palate of a baby, pablum may taste exotic.

Conscientious parents inevitably insist that their kids eat a wide variety of healthful foods while the kids inevitably throw tantrums, fall out of their chairs, spill the food on the floor, spit, gag, throw up and go to bed without their dinner — — whatever it takes to avoid a food that to them smells like poison, never mind the taste.

I have remembered all these years a kitchen scene in which my mother told me I had to eat all of my canned spinach before I could have any chocolate pie. When she left the room for something, I quickly went outside and scraped off my plate behind the rose bush. She was so pleased to see my clean plate and of course I ate all my chocolate pie.

What new parents can’t remember is that they made the very same protests themselves and, if their child lives on nothing but Campbell’s tomato soup and mashed potatoes for months, as one of mine actually did, he will continue growing.

Parents will grow a lot better themselves if they just cool it and quit making ugly scenes at mealtime, advice I wish someone had given me when I was a young parent.

But now I’m worried that my own sense of smell and taste are on the downhill slide because, on a Thanksgiving Day in Canada some years ago, I ate turnips. What’s worse, I liked them. The only reason I broke a lifetime boycott against turnips was because I was in a French restaurant in a foreign country on their holiday.

I thought it was my duty as a tourist to at least try the turnips on my plate snuggling up against the turkey. I started with a teensy taste like you do when you know you are going to hate something but, to my great surprise, those turnips were delicious. I ate every bite.

It is reassuring, though, that I can still smell liver and collard greens well enough to know they will taste exactly like they smell.

How do we know how tasteless we are? The article said to saturate a tissue with alcohol and see if we can smell it while slowly bringing the tissue from our chest to our chin – probably a test better done when no one else is around…

And we shouldn’t worry when kids defiantly refuse to eat strong-tasting and smelling foods.

“That’s OK, honey,” we should tell them. “Save it for your old age when spinach and turnips may be more exciting than money and sex.”

Mary McClure lives in Lawton and writes a weekly column for The Lawton Constitution.