Question

When your nasal passages are blocked due to a heavy cold, food seems to lose flavor. why

Answer 1

Answer: Flavour is a combination of taste and smell. When we chew food, the aroma of the food travels to our nasal cavity where there is a patch holding hair cells or cilia that detect and carry the odor-related signals to the area of the brain (olfactory bulb) that processes odor information. The information from both, our taste buds and sense of smell helps us to recognise the flavour of food.

During heavy cold, the nasal patches are blocked due to a layer of mucous covering it. As a result the cilia that collect the odour are not functional,thus leading to a loss of sense of smell. Thus we cannot detect the flavour of food during a heavy cold.