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A 2020 paper analysing the self-reported experiences of long Covid sufferers on a Facebook group gave a sense of how the joy gets sucked out of food for those who can’t smell.
2020年的一篇论文分析了脸书上长期感染新冠病毒的患者的自我报告经历，揭示了那些没有嗅觉的人的快乐是如何从食物中被吸走的。
Some said that they lost their appetite while others had the opposite reaction, desperately eating more in an attempt to compensate for the loss of pleasure.
一些人说他们没有胃口，而另一些人则有相反的反应，他们拼命吃更多的东西，试图弥补失去的快乐。
One person noted that “food satisfaction is lacking and I see myself eating more just to try to get that satisfied feeling … I am gaining weight due to a constant urge to satisfy what can never be satisfied”.
一位网友指出：“我缺乏对食物的满足感，我觉得自己吃得更多只是为了获得那种满足感…我的体重正在增加，因为我不断地想要满足永远不会得到满足的东西。
Given the sheer number of people around the world who have suffered from the virus, it seems likely that tens of thousands will be left living with permanent anosmia, or parosmia, a related condition in which those affected are tormented by horrible false smells such as burning rubber.
考虑到世界各地感染这种病毒的人数很多，似乎有成千上万人可能会永久性嗅觉缺失或嗅觉障碍，在这种情况下，患者会被可怕的虚假气味(如燃烧的橡胶)所折磨。
Yet before 2020, very few people even knew the word anosmia, let alone realised it might be something significant for their wellbeing.
然而在2020年前，甚至很少有人知道嗅觉丧失这个词，更不用说意识到它可能对他们的健康有重要意义。
Our ignorance about anosmia is part of a wider loss of engagement with our own senses in relation to food.
我们对嗅觉缺失的无知是我们对食物的感知能力丧失的一部分。
No human activity is more multi-sensory than eating, but to eat in the modern world is often to eat in a state of profound sensory disconnect.
没有一种人类活动比吃有更多感官的了，但在现代世界，吃往往是在一种严重的感官脱节状态下吃东西。
We order groceries on a computer, or takeaways on a phone, and they arrive wrapped in plastic, so that we can neither smell them nor see them before we take the first mouthful.
我们在电脑上订购食品、杂货，或者在手机上订购外卖，它们都是用塑料包装的，这样我们在吃第一口之前既闻不到也看不到它们。
Vegetables are sold prechopped and almost all salad is prewashed.
出售的蔬菜是预先切碎的，几乎所有的沙拉都是预先洗净的。
Any hint of the soil the food grew in has been erased.
食物生长在土壤中的任何迹象都被抹去了。
We judge the goodness of food by the words on the packet rather than by our own senses.
我们根据包装上的文字来判断食物的好坏，而不是靠我们自己的感官。
In the US and UK, more than half of all calories consumed are made up of ultra-processed foods whose ingredients are so heavily disguised that they are beyond the power of human senses to disentangle.
在美国和英国，超过一半的卡路里是由超加工食品构成的，这些食品的成分被严重掩盖，超出了人类感官的能力。
Very likely, we then eat this meal in front of a screen, barely glancing down to see the colours or shapes of what we are consuming.
很有可能，我们边看电子屏幕边吃这顿饭，几乎不看我们正在吃的东西的颜色或形状。
Our sensory disconnect from food is both cause and consequence of the fact that so many of us have poor diets.
我们的感官与食物的脱节是许多人饮食不良的原因也是后果。
This starts early.
这种现象很早就开始了。
Consider commercial baby food.
以商业婴儿食品为例。
Much of this is now sold as disposable pouches of pureed fruits and vegetables in which the colours and shapes of the original food are hidden.
其中大部分现在被当作一次性袋装果泥和蔬菜泥出售，里面隐藏着原始食物的颜色和形状。
Parents like these pouches -- which often boast that their contents are organic -- because they are a convenient way to feed a baby or toddler while out of the home.
父母们喜欢这些袋子--它们经常夸口说里面的东西是有机的--因为它们喂养婴儿或蹒跚学步的孩子很方便。
But as a report from the First Steps Nutrition Trust highlighted in 2018, these pouches are not a good way for babies to get their first exposure to food.
但正如First Steps Nutrition Trust在2018年的一份报告中强调的那样，这些袋子不是婴儿第一次接触食物的好方法。
By sucking food directly from pouch to mouth (which seems to be how they are generally used, even if the manufacturers officially say that they recommend decanting the product into a bowl), children cannot tell what they are eating.
通过直接将食物从袋子吸到嘴里(这似乎是他们通常使用的方式，即使制造商官方建议他们将产品倒入碗中)，孩子们也不知道他们吃的是什么。
Why does this matter?
为什么这很重要呢？
Dr Helen Crawley, a public health nutritionist, has noted that eating purees from a pouch does not help children to get accustomed to the tastes and textures of real food.
公共卫生营养师海伦·克劳利博士指出，吃袋子里的果泥并不能帮助孩子们适应食物真正的味道和质地。
The problem is that a pouch of sweet carrot gloop does not teach a person either to enjoy or to recognise real carrots.
问题是，一袋甜胡萝卜胶并不能教会一个人品尝或识别真正的胡萝卜。
