Anosmia: 2020’s ‘diet pill’

Tonight, the words smell, taste, flavour and ‘olfactory bulb’ splashed out onto the ears of a prime-time TV audience.

It could have been a small bang; a little tremor to gently put anosmia on the table. It could have started a movement of understanding and parity.
It could have been so much more.

I clicked onto All4 and spun through the minutes, not sure of what I was searching for, or if I wanted to find it. I finally settled upon the segment, and heard the first sentence:

“I want to know if blocking your sense of smell can make you slimmer.”

Even reading it back now, it rockets tears out of me.

It’s January. Weight is on everyone’s mind. Imagine having your brilliant, new, misunderstood disability touted as a weight-loss tool. Imagine if you’re vulnerable, susceptible to triggers. Imagine if you listen to the magazines, the social media, the supermarkets and think the weight loss messages are pitched to you; the you who is already a size six but now using safety pins to keep your jeans up, using tablets to fill empty gaps where food should be inside you but instead it’s missing because you’ve got no appetite and a mind telling you it’s fine to carry on like this.

Imagine this isn’t all loosely guised jargon and this person is me.

Someone you know. Someone you love and care for who is struggling because it doesn’t get easier even when you’re two years’ deep. Then imagine Channel fucking 4 dubbing losing your sense of smell as “the future of weight loss”.

Is this it; where vanity has led us? Wishing disabilities upon ourselves to get thin? The two participants using the ‘smell blocking invention’ were named “lucky recipients” – lucky because they managed to eat around 50% less calories than the two unaffected. And that’s all that matters, isn’t it? I’ve heard people seriously wish viruses upon themselves so they can lose weight, because it’s easy to just vomit out yourself instead of doing anything healthily. Quicker. Easier.

Just like having no smell is the new açai-avocado-bullshit shake that’ll help you drop ten pounds in a week.

I’d give anything to have my senses back. I’d give what this programme would call an enviable ‘after’ figure. Nothing feels like an achievement when it’s been created out of sadness.

Anosmia is so misunderstood. The words taste and flavour have been colloqusalised to mean the same, when they’re absolutely separate. It’s not even as clear-cut as losing weight – for some it increases as they’re searching for something that will taste, or craving salt and sugar because their basic taste is all they have left.

Christmas has been an incredibly tough time, for me and for many others like me. Trying desperately to connect to nostalgia without keys of smell or taste to unlock memories is exhausting. To walk into a house and have no clue if anything is cooking. Or, if you’re cooking yourself, no idea how it will taste or if anything is burning. Sure, you think it sounds melodramatic – but peg your nose next time you prepare a meal and see what it’s like, then try to feel confident presenting it to others.

I’m furious at Channel 4. The negligence displayed is incomprehensible; the lack of research of how damaging and offensive this proposition is to those with olfactory impairments is unforgivable. Would you make a show with money-saving hacks suggesting if you were blind you could save because you needn’t redecorate your home? No, because it’s offensive and ridiculous. So why was this allowed?

Thank you for making our disability a fun option for weight loss. Thank you for belittling us into a fad diet. Thank you for undoing everything we’re trying to do through our efforts to raise awareness and provide vital support for one another.

In a world where a debilitating illness is freely paraded in front of a national audience with zero thought for the mental impact it could have on sufferers, more needs to be done to make sure this is the last time a slur like this happens.