COVID taste loss remedy with oranges, sugar gains popularity on TikTok. Does it work?

Users on the popular video-sharing app TikTok are convinced an at-home remedy that requires charring an orange over an open flame and snacking on the flesh mixed with brown sugar can revive their sense of taste and smell after COVID-19 stripped them of it.

Several people have recorded their surprised reactions to tasting their favorite foods for the first time in weeks, but experts say there isn’t any science to prove the remedy, which users say stems from Jamaican culture, actually works.

“Taste loss related to COVID-19 is due to the loss of olfaction, which is your sense of smell,” Dr. Bozena Wrobel, an otolaryngologist — a physician trained in head and neck disorders, including the ears, nose and throat — at Keck Medicine of the University of Southern California, told Shape in December.

“Your taste buds are not affected by COVID-19. Because COVID-19 smell loss eventually gets better in the majority of people, some [TikTokkers] perhaps were already recovering from their smell loss,” Wrobel added.

TikTok user “tiktoksofiesworld” admitted “it could totally be a coincidence” after consuming the cocktail of home ingredients and being able to taste a spoonful of mustard.

On her Instagram account, she added, “I am not a doctor or medical professional and in no way stating this brings back your sense of taste. This video was created for fun/out of curiosity after seeing others try it at home. It could very well be a coincidence as today marks two weeks since COVID symptoms started. Just had to throw that out there.”

Dr. Pamela Dalton, a researcher at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, said the strong orange taste could also be shocking people’s senses so much it makes them believe their tasting abilities have returned — when really they were always there, just muted.

“People often don’t know how much smell they lost, so if they do something that’s really intense, like burning an orange peel, that will give you an extraordinary sensation, you may have already had an ability, but you’ve essentially shocked your system into smelling something strong,” Dalton told NBC’s Today in December.

Some people who try the remedy may also be experiencing phantosmia, “a condition that causes you to smell odors that aren’t actually present,” according to Healthline. Common causes are allergies, common colds and upper respiratory tract infections.

“I can tell you the room smells like banana and there may not be a banana odor in the air, but you’ll look for it, and you might recall the smell of a banana and think you smell it. There’s a huge suggestibility factor,” Dalton told Today.

Experts believe smell training, which involves smelling different odors several times a day over months, could help affected COVID-19 patients recover their senses.

The Washington University School of Medicine is planning a clinical trial to test the idea in recovered coronavirus patients. The school says the loss of sense of smell and taste appears to persist in about 10% of affected patients six months post infection, and it estimates that more than “150,000 Americans will suffer permanent loss of smell” within the next 12 months.

This “makes post-COVID olfactory disorder a major public health problem. Thus, there is a pressing need to identify effective treatments,” the school said.

Loss of smell can hint at how severe your COVID infection is, study finds

An analysis of electronic health records found that COVID-19 patients are 27 times more likely to lose their sense of smell and just 2.2 to 2.6 times more likely to have fever, cough or respiratory difficulty compared to people without a coronavirus infection.

While there’s no evidence that eating the inside of a burned orange with brown sugar can revive smelling and tasting abilities, there’s also no evidence to suggest the at-home remedy can harm someone’s health.

Registered dietitian Ginger Hultin told Shape that charring an orange “doesn’t appear to produce” carcinogenic substances similar to those in charred meat. And because people eat the insides of the fruit and not the skin, there are even less concerns.

But Hultin did express safety issues with the process itself.

“What I’m most worried about is the way people are charring their orange over an open flame in their kitchen. It would be easy for neighboring items to catch fire.”