Covid 19, Old Age, or food processing?

 One of the symptoms of covid 19 is a loss of smell and taste.  Well, we have experienced that for some time before the pandemic and we are often told that it is related to the aging process. I am inclined to the view that it is also related to eating foods that have been processed or manufactured in some way.

Almost everything that we eat these days has been through some processing. You may think that raw vegetables do not come into this category but with the emphasis on "natural", or "organic" there has been some interference with the normal growing process.  Farming today is as much a factory-type activity as the production of bread. so even the humble potato or carrot is not safe from being manipulated in some way and tomatoes grown in chemical fluids rarely if ever taste like tomatoes.

In ordinary food processing then the recipes have changed over time and the emphasis on being salt-free has changed most foods that we buy.  But simply removing salt from some recipes would not have been enough so something had to be substituted.  Going salt free of course had an added bonus for manufacturers, less cost!

Even meat goes through processing even if it is still referred to as butchering.  If your chops arrived prepackaged, cryovacced etc then they have gone through a process that is far removed from what used to happen at your local butcher. And it is tempting to wonder if beef mince has ever been near a cow let alone being part of one!

Had one of these for breakfast:

Dont know what it tasted like, but it was not like a crumpet.

Smuggling cigars

Dad's stepfather George Pokham was a merchant seaman who worked mainly on the ships carrying various items between the London Docks and the Baltic ports. Only short runs and he was rarely away for more than a week at a time. 

With her somewhat difficult experience with her first husband, our Grandmother did not trust the second one to come straight home after being paid off and she would regularly be at the dock gates and often inside waiting for George to leave the ship. Security was not as great in those days, there were only the Dock policemen on the gate, it was quite a regular occurrence for wives with their children to wait inside the gates for their husbands to come off the ships with their pay.

Gran usually had a couple of the younger boys with her on these occasions and they would run up to George to be lifted up and swung round with great shows of paternal affection. He was also stuffing their pockets with contraband cigars during this process. He would always speak to the dock police at the gate and offer his bag for inspection. Ironically this was at the gate in Pennington Street now being used for the upmarket event venue called Tobacco Dock.

Dad was never sure if Gran or even the policemen for that matter was in on this minor smuggling, but it seemed to happen every time. The blind eye may also have been related perhaps to the fact there was a small block of Police flats in Pennington Street at that time, so many of the regular gate police were neighbours as it were.