text: why does having a stuffy nose effect your taste so much? i have a stuffed up nose, and i was just curious. 80% of taste is smell.  we only have 5 types of taste buds: sweet, sour, bitter, salt, and umami (new one just dicovered that responds to an amino acid high in beef).  life would be pretty boring if that was all we tasted.  meanwhile we can smell about 10,000 different things, so your tastebuds and olfacory receptors work together.  unless your olfactory receptors are covered in mucous!  i find that i use a lot more salt when i'm stuffy, probably because i can taste that.