FitForMe is trusted by 200,000+ customers and 8000+ healthcare professionals
FitForMe is trusted by 200,000+ customers and 8000+ healthcare professionals
Trustpilot score: 4.4 out of 5
You may have noticed that dishes that were once your favourites now suddenly seem too sweet or simply no longer appealing. Everything just tastes so… different. You are not alone in this. You can read here why this so often happens after bariatric surgery.
Around 30% of people with a sleeve and around 70% of those with a gastric bypass notice a change in their sense of taste. Sweet and fatty foods in particular tend to taste too sweet or too rich. As a result, they simply no longer taste enjoyable.
Many of them also report that before their surgery they had a real sweet tooth, but that afterwards they suddenly crave savoury foods instead. Some people experience exactly the opposite. And that does take a bit of getting used to.
What is taste perception, exactly?
Taste buds are found all over your tongue. These taste buds detect the five basic tastes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami. They then send a signal to your brain. When you eat something sweet, your taste buds tell your brain you are eating something sweet — and you actually experience that delicious, sweet flavour.
Your brain also draws on other information, such as the smell of food and how it looks. The combination of the taste buds on your tongue, the appearance, texture, and smell of food together determine how it actually tastes to you.
Getting used to tastes
If you eat a lot of a particular flavour, your taste buds and brain begin to adapt to it. And as you become accustomed to something, you taste it less and less intensely. You then need more of that flavour in order to still be able to detect and enjoy it.
A bland cycle
Many people with an unhealthy diet regularly eat sweet foods. Their taste buds are already so used to sweetness that they need increasingly sweet food to still be able to taste it and feel satisfied. This leads to a cycle of eating progressively sweeter and therefore often less healthy food.
Why does taste perception change after bariatric surgery?
Reason 1 – New eating, new experience:
After bariatric surgery, your stomach is very sensitive to certain foods. You will notice that some foods can sit badly and make you feel very nauseous or dizzy. Sugar-rich food in particular tends not to be well tolerated.
You have also drawn up an eating plan with your doctor or dietitian that focuses on healthy foods to support weight loss. As a result, you will undoubtedly be eating differently after your surgery than before. Most people eat less sugar-rich and fatty food following their operation.
Because your sweet taste buds become less active due to these dietary changes, eating something sweet can suddenly taste far more intensely sweet than it used to. You become especially sensitive to sweet foods — particularly after a gastric bypass.
From sweet to savoury
Because your eating habits change so significantly, your taste buds also need a great deal of time to adjust. Where has all that sweet food gone? The sweet taste buds become less active, while other taste buds start working harder. Your entire taste experience changes. And over time, food that you previously did not find particularly tasty can suddenly become genuinely enjoyable.
Reason 2 – Hormonal changes:
The stomach also plays an important role in producing hormones such as GLP-1 and ghrelin. Together with other hormones, these regulate when you start eating and when you stop. You experience this as the sensation of hunger.
These hormones do not only influence your feeling of hunger — they also affect how you perceive taste. After your surgery, your stomach, intestines, and brain work together in a very different way. Fewer of these hormones are produced as a result. This means that sweet and fatty foods in particular taste very different from before.
Is there anything you can do about the change in taste?
Unfortunately, you cannot really influence this change. The change in taste perception can last several months after a sleeve gastrectomy, after which it often stabilises. But for many people with a gastric bypass, it is permanent.
Every cloud has a silver lining
A change in taste perception may sound rather unpleasant. But the positive side is that it can actually be a real advantage if sugar-rich and fatty foods no longer appeal to you. Because if something does not taste good, you are unlikely to eat it — and that can be a genuine help when it comes to choosing healthier options and losing weight.
So give yourself time to adjust to new flavours, and enjoy discovering what you truly like now. You can check out our recipes to find something you'd like.
What if my multivitamin no longer tastes good to me?
Have you purchased a FitForMe multivitamin before your surgery, but found that it no longer appeals to you afterwards? That can happen too, as a result of changes in your taste perception. Please get in touch with our customer service team. We are happy to explore with you whether a different variant might be a better fit - one that you will actually enjoy.
