What can cause tastes to change? Taste buds are constantly being replaced, so changes in health, nutrition, medications, hormones and age can all affect how they function, causing foods to taste bland or all the same, or leading to a metallic, sweet, chalky, blood-like or otherwise undesirable taste in the mouth.
republic - a form of government whose head of state is not a monarch; the head of state in a republic is usually a president. form of government, political system - the members of a social organization who are in power. Translations.
The term republic has many different meanings, but today often refers to a representative democracy with an elected head of state, such as a president, serving for a limited term, in contrast to states with a hereditary monarch as a head of state, even if these states also are representative democracies with an elected or appointed head of government such as a prime minister.