Blog about my “competitive inhibition”

How I lose the taste when I eat sugar!

For some time now, I have lost my sense of taste in my mouth as soon as I eat or drink food that contains industrially processed sugar. Apparently, this is supposed to be a competitive inhibition. Where does this come from? How it goes away? No idea! Unfortunately, I haven’t met anyone who has the same thing either. That’s why I’m trying to find fellow-sufferers or experts via blog who may be able to help me!

How everything began

It happened before Christmas 2020 when I noticed how the food became tasteless after a few bites. At that time I had no idea what the trigger could be, which frustrated me every day more and more. The thought that from now on my meals would be tasteless left me anything but hopeful about the future. In the following time, day after day, at every meal or snack, after one or two bites, my sense of taste left me. I lost the desire to eat.

It happened five months later in the jungle of Peru, where I ate, against all my expectations, a complete meal WITHOUT any loss of taste. To drink there was pure water only . Suprised I asked myself, “How is this possible?” New hope arose “Should it really be possible to find the root cause?”
And so I began to experiment. Step by step, I thus succeeded in reducing the cause to the sugar added to food.

As a result, I was able to figure out the following types of sugar as the cause: refined white sugar, brown cane sugar, malt sugar (maltose) and milk sugar (lactose) – as soon as I avoided these types of sugar, I could enjoy my food as before. Wow, what a wonderful News for me!

Unfortunately, this does not seem to be the final list. Although fructose normally doesn’t affect me, my sense of taste nevertheless says goodbye while eating a sweet Mango and Pineapple, for example. Or some types of white wine. Also particularly sweet perfumes affect me. However, the sense of smell. But that is connected anyway.

With my new knowledge, I went to the ear, nose and throat (ENT) department at the University Hospital in Zurich. The attending doctor didn’t really take me seriously and said that this definitely has to be Long-Covid. Thanks for nothing!
I can exclude Long-Covid, because I had COVID in the meantime. This loss of taste felt different, more complete.

A spontaneous meeting with a food chemist finally brought some “light into the dark”. This was the first time when I heard the term Competitive inhibition. He also explained me that this is a chemical problem, not a health problem. For this reason, ENT doctors will not be able to help me. I am also far from alone in having this problem. Unfortunately, he was unable to provide any further information.

Since this particular phenomenon has been with me for three years now, I took the chance and turned my entire diet upside down. My new credo is Zero Sugar. But giving up sugar is not that easy. It has added sugar in almost every (processed) food. Ketchup, Mustard, etc.
But thank God there are now more and more sugar-free alternatives to almost everything. In addition, there are also unprocessed sugars, which do not harm me. Such as honey, Date-Syrup und Raw cane sugar. As well as Erythritol and similars.

How to proceed?

Due to my willingness to give up processed sugar almost completely, I have a relatively problem-free life. Positive side effects are that I generally feel fitter since the change in diet and have lost about 6 kilos of weight.

But still, I’m interested in knowing the cause. And that’s why I’m looking for people who know about this phenomenon, or at least have heard about it. Maybe there are other affected people somewhere out there. Who knows… That is the reason why I publish this article.