I had a sad realization as I ate part of a turkey drumstick on Thanksgiving Day. I have to give up eating meat. When I was recovering from the coronavirus four months ago, I noticed a distinct loss of taste and smell.
No big deal as it would gradually come back, which mostly it has, except that I’ve noticed some tastes are different. I was getting a metallic taste when I ate certain items, so I started to keep track of what would bring it on.
I gradually began to see that meat wasn’t appealing to me the way it has all my life. My dad was a cattle feeder and my husband is a farmer, so I’ve eaten beef pretty much twice a day all my life and loved it.
So it was a mystery when we’d have grilled hamburgers and I would take a few bites then look at mine questioningly. Did I get a bad burger? Why was everyone enjoying theirs and mine tasted, well, weird?
It happened with steak, too — mine had an off taste when no one else’s did.
My favorite broasted chicken at a local restaurant was weirdly blah if not aluminum tasting. Still, I plugged on, eating meat at every meal and grinning and bearing the bad aftertaste that would last for an hour or so.
I put up with it until I took my first bite of Thanksgiving turkey and thought I had eaten something close to the flavor of roadkill. At that moment I decided to forswear meat \h— at least for now.
I’ve talked to other people who have this thing called parosmia from COVID.
In the past, mostly smokers have parosmia, which is a miscommunication between your taste buds and your brain so things can have weird tastes. Now, COVID is causing it, and some experts say it may take months or years for the taste to straighten out.
I’m hoping it’s more like weeks for me to be able to enjoy the taste of meat again.
I ordered my first vegetarian lover’s pizza this weekend, which definitely was a whole new food. This new way of eating may also result in some weight gain as I’m eating more bread and pasta to fill the hole that meat usually took.
I like to eat salad with strips of steak or chicken on the top, so strips of avocado will now have to work. I’ve made fun of veggie burgers all my life and now they’re in my grocery cart.
This is no big deal — lots of people are vegetarians — but eating meat has a social aspect, too, and cauliflower steaks just doesn’t cut it.
December 02, 2020 at 09:00PM
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