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Awakening the Taste Buds
By Stephanie Nunes, RD, CSSD
Chemotherapy, radiation therapy, or cancer itself, can cause changes in your taste with food. Some people have a bitter or metallic taste in their mouth. For others, food tastes like “nothing”. Also note that taste preferences can change from day to day.
General suggestions
Many foods like meat and poultry taste better if they are cold or served at room temperature instead of hot.
Eggs often taste good when the taste for meat is lost.
Fresh fruits and vegetables, pasta dishes, and milk products are often well tolerated.
- Fruit sorbet, sherbet, and fruit smoothies usually taste good.
- Fresh fruit popsicles, ice cube trays, freeze grapes and bananas, etc.
Tart foods with more distinctive tastes may be added to foods to help cover the metallic taste.
- Try adding orange, lime, or lemon juice or orange marmalade to fruit salad, salsa, and sauces for pork or chicken, stir- fried or cooked veggies, and oil-based vinegar.
- Add vinegar, lemon juice, or pickles to creamy dressings for potato, macaroni, tuna, or Cole slaw salads.
- Lemon juice added to chicken broth, broth based soup, gazpacho, or guacamole to enhance the flavor.
Peel carrots before eating or cooking. This eliminates the bitterness that is noticeable to some people and makes them avoid eating carrots.
- Try baby carrots that are already peeled and cut!
If you have sores in your mouth, try using horseradish or any of the flavored mustards like Dijon, honey mustard, sweet and sour, etc., to add to you sandwiches or other food.
- Ideas? My favorite sandwich right now….
Rinse your mouth with fruit juice, tea, ginger ale, club soda, or salted water before eating. This will help clear your taste buds.
Suck on lemon drops or mints, or chew gum after eating and/or throughout the day to get rid of the undesirable taste in your mouth.
- Try different flavors of gum to see which one works best.
Try marinating meat or poultry in fruit juice, wine, vinegar-based salad dressing, or other sauces for more taste.
Experiment with spices and herbs.
A special note on spices……
Research is continuing on the benefits of adding herbs and spices to your food to do more than just make a “tasty” meal. Some compounds are being suggested to have antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-bacterial, protect the heart, normalized blood glucose, improve mood, boost brain function, and even repel cancer cells! (You get the picture)….
Here is a list of the “hottest” spices being researched for health benefits!
- Cinnamon
- Curry powder
- Ginger
- Oregano
- Rosemary
- Saffron
- Sage and Thyme
- Tumeric or Curcumin
Ideas for using these spices?
- Experiment with new foods.
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Try foods or cuisines you may not have tried before. Example = Thai food.
- Eat out in restaurants that feature buffets.
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Try small amounts of a variety of food without having to prepare it yourself.
- Be sure to see your dentist regularly. Cancer treatment can cause tooth decay and other problems in your teeth and gums that can lead to a bad taste in your mouth. Ask your dentist about special mouthwashes and good mouth care.
- Try tart foods such as oranges or lemonade that have more taste.
Things to Avoid:
Do not force yourself to eat foods that taste bad.
Find substitutions for those foods in the food group. Examples….
- Avoid eating no-salt-added or low-salt varieties of canned soups or vegetables (unless you have high blood pressure and are instructed to do so by your physician).
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Soup and vegetables tend to have a metallic taste when the salt is eliminated in the processing.
- Do not drink citrus juices such as orange or grapefruit immediately after brushing your teeth with fluoride toothpaste.
~ The chemical mixture of fluoride with citric acid can make an unpleasant taste in the mouth.
- Avoid using metal dishes or utensils if a metallic taste persists.
~ Try using plastic eating utensils, chopsticks, or porcelain Chinese soup spoons.
- Avoid metal cooking utensils.
~ Use plastic, Teflon, wooden, or rubber spatulas.
- Avoid cooking with shiny, thin aluminum cookware, copper cookware, or cast iron frying pans or pots.
~ Some of the metal may transfer to the food, especially if the food is acidic.
- Choose stainless steel or glass cookware.
Other tips:
- Keep mouth moist - Chew on sugarless gum or suck on candy, carry a water bottle, rinse your mouth out before and after meals with ¼ tsp of baking soda in 1 cup water.
- Dry mouth at meal time and snack time- Make stew, casseroles, and simmered foods, add more liquid to make softer. Dip or soak food in whatever you are drinking, chop, grind, or puree food, soften or thin foods with milk, broth, water, or oil. Drink liquid shakes, drink fruit nectars, liquid nutritional supplements, tender cooked veggies, popsicles, and sip drinks often.
References: The Cancer Survival Cookbook, National Institutes of Health “Eating hints for Cancer Patients”, www.cancer.gov.
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