Is It Peri-Menopause.. or Have My Taste Buds Changed?
When I was a child, and even throughout my teenage years, rujak was never really my thing.
You know rujak, right? It is a combination of fresh fruits—often sour, tangy, and sometimes slightly bitter—served with a wonderfully chaotic mixture of chilli, palm sugar, and occasionally shrimp paste.
For many Indonesians, it is heaven.
For my younger self?
Nope. Absolutely not.
I rarely ate it. I could have lived my entire life perfectly happily without craving sour mangoes, kedondong, pineapple, or other fruits covered in spicy-sweet palm sugar sambal.
Then, recently, I realised that something had changed.
I started craving rujak.
Not just, “Oh, that sounds nice.”
I mean the kind of craving that would suddenly make me ask my husband at night:
“Can you please go to the nearest rujak stall?”
This happened more than once.
At first, I thought, “Okay, maybe I am just getting older.”
Then I came across something interesting: taste perception can change during the menopausal transition.
A 2024 study comparing premenopausal and postmenopausal women found differences in how certain tastes were perceived. In particular, the postmenopausal women in the study showed reduced perception of sweet and bitter tastes, while their perception of sour and salty tastes appeared relatively unchanged.
Of course, this does not mean that perimenopause automatically turns everyone into a rujak lover.
The menopausal transition is complex. Changes in taste and food preferences can be influenced by many factors, including hormonal fluctuations, changes in saliva and oral health, ageing, medications, nutritional status, and psychological or behavioural changes.
Still, it made me think.
What if some of the foods we suddenly start craving—or stop enjoying—are not simply a matter of being “picky”?
What if our bodies are undergoing subtle changes that we do not immediately recognise?
I find it fascinating that something as simple as taste may not be as fixed as we think.
The foods I disliked as a child are not necessarily the foods I dislike today.
Flavours that once made me say, “No, thank you,” can now make me send my husband on a late-night mission to find the nearest rujak stall.
Perhaps that is one of the interesting things about growing older as a woman.
Our bodies change.
Our hormones change.
Our metabolism changes.
Our sleep changes.
Our energy changes.
And apparently…
Even our taste buds might join the party.
If you suddenly find yourself craving foods that you never used to enjoy, you may not be imagining the change.
There is still much to learn about the relationship between hormonal transitions, taste perception, appetite, and food preferences. Research has also suggested that changes in eating behaviour and food intake may occur during the menopausal transition.
As for me?
I am still trying to understand whether this is truly related to perimenopause, changing hormones, shifting taste perception, or simply my taste buds finally discovering how amazing rujak can be.
Either way…
Dear husband, please be prepared for more late-night rujak requests.
Maybe this is not just a craving.
Maybe my taste buds are entering their perimenopause era too.
References:
1. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11254317/
2. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4625274/
Anita Sabidi
2026