If you have a cold, how does it affect your ability to perceive flavor?

When you have a cold, your nasal passages often become congested, significantly affecting your sense of smell. Since flavor is a combination of both taste (which is primarily detected by the taste buds on the tongue) and aroma (which is detected through the olfactory system), the loss of smell hampers the overall perception of flavor.

This means that even though your taste buds can detect basic tastes like sweet, sour, salty, and bitter, the complexity of flavor—which includes the aromatic components—cannot be fully experienced. Thus, while you might still identify certain basic tastes, the broader experience of flavor is diminished, leading to a situation where you may be unable to perceive flavor in its entirety, relying only on your sense of taste.