Everyone's taste changes all the time due to a variety of reasons some which David mentioned. Taste buds per say have a life cycle of 10-14 days in everyone and die off continuously, and regenerate, and everyone has a diffetent amount of taste buds to begin with anywhere from 2000-5000. In our case, more died off in a differerent way from chemo and radiation, and more were destroyed than can be replaced, plus treatment destroying or damaging the salivary glands, and the nerves that tranmit taste to the brain, all has an effect on taste.

There are other things can effect the change of taste too like medications, infections, certain foods, eating hot, spicy or irritant foods or anyhing else that may dull the senses. It takes time, and some taste senses come back sooner than others, and other salivary glands may compensate for the loss of damaged ones.

There is more to taste than just tasting. It not only involved the 5 taste senses...salt, sweet, sour, bitter and umami, but other senses are inloved such as memory, smell, hearing, seeing and feeling, so using all these senses may help improve taste, and eating food warm, cool or room temperature, instead of hot, improves taste too.

Saliva can be produced by smelling lemons or drinking lemon water. Taste can be acquired too by introducng different foods, and I just keep trying different foods to expose my taste buds to them.

If you ever want to see the amount of taste buds you have, you can place a round sticker, the type used for loose-life paper holes, on the tongue, and place a dot of blue food coloring in the center of it. The papillae will not turn dark color, so you can count them, and the higher the number of these the better your taste is.