The COVID-19 may help enlightening how emotional food is.

Olfactory and gustatory stimuli can elicit potent emotional responses and are essential in food perception. Yet, main theories of emotion often under-represent them, and our understanding of affective phenomena relies mostly on experimental studies conducted on visual and auditory stimuli. Although evidence is still accumulating today, recent findings suggest that the COVID-19 is associated with a loss in olfaction and/or taste. Here, I discuss how this unprecedented and uncommon spread of the loss of olfaction and/or taste worldwide may enlighten how emotional both these senses are and how much they influence food perception.