Nick Johnson skims the lunch menu at the White Dog Cafe, a warren of little rooms and ante-rooms in Philadelphia’s university district. “Beef empanadas … I would have loved those. But all that braised beef would just get lost on me. Fish and chips I avoid: all fried foods taste the same. I’m looking at the fish tacos. I know I’ll get the spicy heat and a little bit of pineapple flavor, and with the peppers and the guacamole, there’ll be some mouthfeel there.”
He orders the tacos, and we get a beer that’s on tap. It’s called Nugget Nectar, and it’s produced by the local craft brewery that Nick’s worked at for the past ten years. Nugget Nectar used to be his favorite beer. “It has a real nice balance of sweetness and hops. But now,” he says, and his face falls, “it’s a shell of its former self to me.” He can describe what it smells like: “piney,” “citrusy,” “grapefruity.” But he can’t smell it any more.
We don’t think of ourselves as being particularly good smellers, especially compared with other animals. But research shows that smells can have a powerful subconscious influence on human thoughts and behavior. People who can no longer smell — following an accident or illness — report a strong sense of loss, with impacts on their lives they could never have imagined. Perhaps we don’t rank smell very highly among our senses because it’s hard to appreciate what it does for us — until it’s gone.
Nick, who’s 34, can pinpoint the moment he lost his sense of smell. It was January 9, 2014. He was playing ice hockey with friends on the frozen pond at his parents’ place in Collegeville, Pennsylvania. “I’ve done it millions of times,” he says. “I was skating backwards, slowly, and I hit a rut on the ice. My feet went out from under me. I hit the back right side of my head. I was out. I came to in the ambulance, people surrounding me, blood pouring out of my ear.” He had ruptured an eardrum and fractured his skull in three places. He had blood on his brain, and was suffering from seizures. “I had no idea what was going on.”
After making a rapid recovery, he was cleared to drive again six weeks later and returned to work as regional sales manager at Tröegs brewery. Before long, he found himself in a meeting about a new beer. “We were tasting it, and the others were saying, ‘Can you smell the hops in the beer?’ … and I couldn’t. Then I tasted it. There were guys saying, ‘It’s got this pale biscuity flavor’ … and I couldn’t taste it. Then I went and tried one of the hoppier ones … and I couldn’t smell it. That’s when it clicked.”
