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Sad COVID Boy Hank Green Eats Foods He Hates but Can't Taste

2022-07-08 · challenge / punishment · Hank · 3:57 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Personal life · mode: Comedy & performance · tags: heavy topic

With rebound COVID and no sense of smell, Hank tastes foods he normally hates (pickles, black licorice, blue cheese, anchovies, olives) to see whether he still dislikes them; licorice, blue cheese and olives turn out good, pickles and anchovies do not.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Hank's rebound COVID and loss of smell; five tastes versus thousands of smells

  • ★★★ Hank says that, probably partly because he takes medicine to control an autoimmune disease, he got a kind of COVID that goes away and comes back, which has him looking for the bright side. (hedged) — 00:00:00 · COVID-19 pandemic
  • ★★ Hank has finally lost his sense of smell and taste; for whatever reason it stopped working in him. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Hank explains that without smell you keep the basic tastes (sour, bitter, sweet, salty, umami) but lose the nose's complexity: five tastes against tens of thousands of smells. — 00:00:00

00:00:29 — Taste test without smell: pickle, black licorice, blue cheese, anchovies, black olives, blue-cheese-stuffed olives; the bright side

  • ★★★ Hank wonders whether, without the smell component of taste, he will still dislike the few foods that taste like poison to him. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ Since the foods he dislikes tend to be vinegary and vinegar is very sour, Hank guesses he will still hate vinegary foods. (speculative) — 00:00:29
  • ★★ Hank, who has never enjoyed a pickle, finds it very bad and bitter, yet afterwards kind of wants more. (playful) — 00:00:29
  • ★★★ Hank, who hates black licorice, finds it fantastic without smell, sweet with a complementary bitter-sour, and says if his smell never returns he will take everyone's black licorice. (playful) — 00:00:57
  • ★★ Not a fan of blue cheese, Hank finds it great when he can't smell: shockingly sweet and very salty. (playful) — 00:01:21
  • ★★ As he guessed, Hank still dislikes anchovies, which he calls pickles but fish: he concludes they are an ingredient, not a thing to eat on their own. (playful) — 00:01:47
  • ★ Hank says his package of anchovies contains 74% of the daily salt, so it is not a good food. — 00:01:47
  • ★★ Black olives without smell are not vinegary but salty with a fatty richness; Hank says if that were how olives tasted he would eat them. — 00:02:33
  • ★★ Blue-cheese-stuffed green olives are very salty, but the cheese adds sweetness, sourness and a nice texture; normally, when he can taste them, olives taste like poison to Hank. — 00:03:03
  • ★★ Hank's bright side of having COVID: he got to eat olives and black licorice without hating them, though there are not many bright sides. — 00:03:03 · COVID-19 pandemic

00:03:45 — Advice from his COVID experience: rest; sign-off

  • ★★ Feeling a bit better, Hank says the main lesson of his experience is to rest, lie down, take no pressure and convalesce, which he has mostly been doing. — 00:03:45

In the description and comments

  • ★ The description says COVID sucks a lot; the taste test turned out fantastic and he would do it all again, except the anchovies. — video description · COVID-19 pandemic
  • ★ In a comment Hank says that, off camera, he spilled sardine oil on his office carpet while cleaning up and cannot tell whether the office now smells of fish. (playful) — creator comment
  • ★★ Agreeing with a viewer that the richness he described in the olives was umami, Hank says this only occurred to him while editing. — creator comment
  • ★★ In a comment Hank says fully vaccinated people have demonstrably far milder COVID and vaccines cut the chance of death many times; new variants infect vaccinated people but their disease is far less serious. — creator comment · vaccine, COVID-19 pandemic

Humor (dominant)

  • Hank introduces black licorice as the next food — 00:00:57

    “I also, like all rational people, don't understand why people have black licorice.”

  • Hank, who hates black licorice, bites into a big hunk without his sense of smell — 00:00:57

    “Oh, absolutely fantastic. I hate black licorice. This is great.”

  • Hank bites into anchovies with nothing to drink — 00:01:47

    “There's no water in here. Oh my god. I'm a spit machine right now.”

  • Hank presents the last food in his bag — 00:02:33

    “I believe designed specifically for people who do not have a sense of taste, it's blue cheese stuffed green olives.”

Threads in this video

  • update · Hank has COVID and a rebound case (2022) — Hank says that, probably partly because he takes medicine to control an autoimmune disease, he got a kind of COVID that goes away and comes back, which has him looking for the bright side. (00:00:00)

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: anchovy · anosmia · blue cheese · liquorice · olive · pickled cucumber

Also: autoimmune disease · COVID-19 pandemic · olfaction · taste · umami · vinegar

Only in the description or credits: vaccine

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