Is It Fattening? Believe It or Not, Your Nose Knows!
A recent eye-opening study by the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia discovered that people can detect the fat content of food via their sense of smell.
The same test was conducted three times; once in Philly with people of average weight, once in the Netherlands with people of average weight, and again in Philly this time with both normal weight and overweight participants. In each test, the participants were given 3 types of milk, each with a different fat content, to smell. Regardless of weight or location, the results were the same all three times – the testers were able to detect the varying levels of milkfat by sniffing the samples.
Researchers are very excited with these results and are eager implement real-world dietary solutions that help cut the amount of fat we ingest daily. Their next step is figuring out exactly which odor molecules give away the food’s fat content.
According to Johan Lundstrom , study senior author and neuroscientist, “”The human sense of smell is far better at guiding us through our everyday lives than we give it credit for. That we have the ability to detect and discriminate minute differences in the fat content of our food suggests that this ability must have had considerable evolutionary importance.”
