Olfactory scientist Sanne Boesveldt is specialised in the relationship between smell, taste and eating behaviour. She co-founded the Dutch Smell and Taste Centre, in which the Wageningen Department of Human Nutrition and Food Sciences collaborates with the Gelderse Vallei Hospital. Boesveldt studies the effect of scent on appetite and eating behaviour and changes in smell and taste due to ageing and diseases such as cancer. ‘At first, I was more interested in the brain, but during my PhD research on olfactory disorders in Parkinson patients, I discovered how fascinating smell is. Scent is underappreciated. We don’t know nearly as much about it as we know about sight and hearing. Smell and taste are essential to the quality of life and play an important part in social life, but also healthy eating habits.’
People who have contracted the coronavirus may be infectious before showing any symptoms such as coughing or fever. However, many seem to lose their sense of taste and smell in the early stages of infection. Wageningen scientists are collaborating at an international scale to collect data on the loss of…