sense of smell

Is Your Sense of Smell Making You Fat?

Our senses play a key role in our everyday life, and the sense of smell might actually play a role in how much weight we gain. As odd as it may sound, researchers are now looking into the possibility that if we can’t smell what we are eating, it allows us to stay leaner in the long run.

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Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to treat or diagnose any condition. It is recommended that you speak with your doctor before starting any exercise program, changing your daily nutrition, or adding any supplements to your regimen.

What is the Benefit of Your Sense of Smell?

sense of smell

The sense of smell, also known as olfaction, provides numerous benefits to humans and other animals. Some of the key advantages include:

  1. Detection of Danger:
    • Smell helps in detecting potential dangers such as fire, gas leaks, spoiled food, or other hazardous substances. This early warning system can be crucial for survival.
  2. Taste Perception:
    • Smell is closely linked to taste, and together they contribute to the overall flavor experience of food. Many flavors are a combination of taste and aroma, making the sense of smell essential for enjoying a variety of tastes.
  3. Memory and Emotion:
    • Smell is strongly linked to memory and emotion. Certain smells can trigger vivid memories and evoke powerful emotions. This connection is part of what makes aromas significant in various cultural practices, traditions, and personal experiences.
  4. Social Interaction:
    • The sense of smell plays a role in social interactions and communication. Pheromones, chemical signals released by individuals, can convey information about reproductive status, territorial boundaries, and emotional states.
  5. Identification of Familiar Scents:
    • People can identify and distinguish between familiar scents, such as the smell of loved ones, pets, or specific environments. This ability aids in recognizing and navigating familiar places.
  6. Appetite Regulation:
    • Smell is linked to the stimulation of appetite. The aroma of food can trigger the release of saliva and digestive enzymes, preparing the body for the intake of nutrients.
  7. Detection of Spoiled Food:
    • The sense of smell helps in identifying spoiled or rotten food, preventing the consumption of potentially harmful substances.
  8. Sexual Attraction:
    • In many species, including humans, pheromones play a role in sexual attraction. The sense of smell can influence mate selection and reproductive behaviors.
  9. Personal Safety:
    • Individuals can detect and recognize the smell of their own bodies, helping them maintain personal hygiene and avoid unpleasant odors that may impact social interactions.
  10. Environmental Awareness:
    • Smell contributes to a person’s awareness of their environment, including the presence of nearby objects, people, or specific locations.

How Does Your Sense of Smell Affect the Taste of Your Food?

sense of smell

The sense of smell significantly influences the taste of food, and the combination of these two senses contributes to the overall flavor experience. Here’s how the sense of smell affects taste:

  1. Flavor Perception:
    • Taste and smell work together to create the perception of flavor. While taste primarily detects basic qualities like sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami, the sense of smell adds complexity by identifying specific aromas.
  2. Aroma Detection:
    • The aroma of food is detected by olfactory receptors in the nose when volatile molecules from the food travel to the olfactory epithelium. This information is sent to the brain, where it combines with taste signals to create a more intricate flavor profile.
  3. Retronasal Olfaction:
    • When you eat, volatile compounds from the food travel through the back of the mouth to the nasal cavity. This process is known as retronasal olfaction. The combination of taste sensations on the tongue and retronasal olfaction creates the perception of flavor.
  4. Enhancement of Taste:
    • Aromas from food can enhance the perception of taste. For example, the smell of vanilla can enhance the perception of sweetness, while the aroma of roasted coffee can enhance the perception of bitterness.
  5. Loss of Smell Impact:
    • Individuals who experience a loss of smell (anosmia) often report a reduced ability to taste food. This is because a significant portion of what we commonly think of as taste is actually due to the aroma detected by the olfactory system.
  6. Food Identification:
    • Smell is crucial for identifying specific foods. Without the sense of smell, distinguishing between different flavors becomes more challenging, as many distinct flavors are actually a combination of taste and aroma.
  7. Variety and Enjoyment:
    • The sense of smell adds variety and enjoyment to the eating experience. Foods with diverse aromas contribute to a more pleasurable and satisfying culinary experience.
  8. Personal Preferences:
    • A person’s individual preferences in food are often influenced by the aroma of the food. Some people may be drawn to certain scents, while others may find them off-putting.

Hold Your Nose

Walk into any bakery and you can smell the fresh bread, the donuts, and the pastries. Likewise, if you walk into a pizza parlor, there’s no mistaking that aroma in the air. But, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, are now examining how our sense of smell actually affects the possibility of weight gain.

The researchers at UC Berkeley were working with obese lab mice when they noticed the obese mice who lost their sense of smell, also oddly enough lost weight. These researchers set up a study where they used mice and fed them the same diet consisting of mostly fats. They separated the mice into two groups where one group was able to smell the food they were consuming, while the other group had lost their sense of smell by the researchers destroying olfactory neurons which temporarily caused the mice to lose their sense of smell for upwards of three weeks—until those neurons were able to regenerate. Doing this caused no pain or suffering to the group of mice.

Your Sense of Smell Had the Answer Right Under Your Noses the Whole Time

While consuming the same high-fat diet, the rats who could not smell their food lost weight with all factors being the same—slimming them down to the size of normal mice. Even more surprisingly, the weight that was lost by these mice was strictly fat with no loss in muscle mass, organ mass, or bone mass. Shockingly, the group of mice who could smell their food actually doubled their original weight in the same timeframe. How could this be possible? After all, we all smell EVERYTHING we eat unless for some reason we lost that sense somehow due to illness, injury, or disease.

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Matt Weik

Matt Weik, BS, CPT, CSCS, CSN, is the Owner and Head Keyboard Banger of Weik Fitness. He is a well-respected, prolific writer with a global following and a self-proclaimed fitness and supplement nerd. Matt’s content has been featured on thousands of websites, 100+ magazines, and he has authored over a dozen published books.