tiktok tuesday: burning oranges to get your taste back?

social media users who lost their sense of taste after contracting covid say eating a burned orange can help.

by emma jones

published nov 02, 2021

last updated nov 09, 2021

4 minute read

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4 minute read

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tiktok tuesday: burning oranges to get your taste back?

tiktok users who lost their ability to taste are burning oranges as a way to help. (@katie.kotlowski and @toosmxll via tiktok)

this article has been updated to include an interview with dr. amin javer.in yet another questionable series of videos, tiktok users are claiming that eating an orange burned to a blackened crisp will help with taste loss that’s sometimes a result of covid-19.
in one video, user @katie.kotlowski explains that she and her roommate both lost their sense of taste after contracting covid. to try and regain their sense, they put an orange directly on the heating element of their stove until it turns black, then peel it, mash it up and add brown sugar. after eating the concoction, they show a clip eating a strawberry, with obvious looks of excitement on both of their faces. another video, posted by @toosmxll, has an orange directly on a gas flame until the entire surface is charred, before being mashed up with brown sugar. the narrator explains that this remedy can help “if you lost your taste buds,” although they don’t specify if it’s due to covid or another reason.dr. amin javer, the director of st. paul’s sinus centre and professor of surgery at university of british columbia medical school, says that this trick seems purely anecdotal.“i don’t think there’s any real hard evidence to support the claim,” javer explains. “it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”approximately 38.2 of patients who have had covid-19 experience some form of “gustatory dysfunction,”according to a meta-review of studies from 13 countries worldwide encompassing 8438 patients. more than 82 per cent of patients regain their sense of taste within a month, a study published in the american journal of otolaryngology found. the loss of taste and smell being a temporary side effect for the majority may give some insight into why this “hack” gained traction. it is likely that as they slowly recover their ability to taste, this recipe appears to work, pamela dalton, a researcher at the monell chemical senses center in philadelphia, told today. one facebook post, for example, tells skeptics to “keep trying [the orange recipe] until it works.” the premise isn’t completely without merit. the strong smell that comes from attempting to crisp an orange directly on the stove may also be strong enough for those with weakened or recovering senses to pick up, says dalton. focusing on familiar scents is also similar to a therapy called smell training, where practitioners will use several different strong scents to help re-develop the senses. smell training, however, is much more involved than the one-off burnt orange trick, explains javer. in practice, patients will expose themselves to different scents – usually rose, lemon, cloves, and eucalyptus – several times a day for weeks or months, working to associate whatever smell they perceive with that object. it’s also worth mentioning that some tiktok users have tried the recipe with no success. user @anniedeschamps2, who says she had lost her sense of taste from covid “over a month ago,” posted a video of her trying the burnt orange trick but later confirmed she was still having trouble tasting. why do patients lose their sense of taste? there are not a lot of definitive studies on why some covid patients lose their sense of taste, although we can say with some certainty that the illness does not cause you to actually “lose” your taste buds — they just aren’t working normally.one research article, published in acs chemical neuroscience, suggests that inflammation caused by covid-19 impacts the ability of taste buds to do their job. as the inflammation goes down, the theory suggests, the sense of taste will come back in most patients. the loss of taste may also be connected to loss of smell. the sensation of taste is a combination of three different mechanisms – taste, smell, and chemesthesis (the sensation that chemicals elicit, like how menthol feels cool) – so losing the ability to smell will impact the sensation of taste, according to nature.when we “smell” something, we have actually inhaled small molecules that trigger the olfactory centre – a small section of nerve endings in our nose that communicates the scents to our brain. javer explains that for many viral infections, not just covid, swelling makes it difficult for those small molecules to reach the olfactory center.researchers at harvard medical school also found that the covid-19 virus infects the cells that support the olfactory neurons within the nose (the cells that are responsible for communicating scents to the brain). damage to these support cells, called sustentacular cells, may mean the neurons aren’t able to do their job properly. regardless of the connection, the prolonged loss of taste and smell can be distressing to many patients and has been linked to depression and anxiety. however, rather than potentially starting a small kitchen fire, there is scientifically proven help available.
“i think the most important message to pass out there is: be safe,” says javer. “this is not a proven treatment. there’s no scientific basis to it. “but there is scientific treatments available, like retraining therapy, vitamin a [drops], omega oils. all of these things…have been scientifically proven to work. so maybe that’s a better option than burning oranges and potentially harming yourself.”emjones@postmedia.com | @jonesyjourn