SALON

Wednesday, Jun 23, 2010 5:05 PM UTC

Why do some foods make us smell funny?

Garlic, asparagus, tuna, and other things you should think twice about before eating on a first date

By

Topics: Food Advice, Ethics of eating, Food,

Why do some foods make us smell funny?"Summer" by Giuseppe Arcimbaldo

We are all well-acquainted with the terrors of garlic breath and odoriferous onion-laden meals. Perhaps slightly less well known is that asparagus makes your pee smell … so much so that a British club asked its members to refrain from peeing during asparagus season. (To say nothing of British manners.) And as we looked into it, other body-odorizing foods abound: some complain of a tuna smell after eating tuna, while others even talk of a beer smell in your urine after a night out drinking. What really caught our attention, though, was a recent piece in the Atlantic about the spice fenugreek’s magical ability to make our bodies smell like maple syrup. So why do some foods make us smell while others don’t? And why are some of us more susceptible to the food-smell syndrome than others?

Dr. George Preti, an organic chemist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center and an expert in human body odor, had some answers for us. The main factor affecting food and body odor, he said, is the presence of volatile organic aromatic compounds in certain strong-smelling foods. That distinct Indian-restaurant smell lingering on you after eating a curry? That’s all the cumin — which has a multiplicity of volatile organic aromatic compounds — in the food you just ate. More important, the aromatic compounds have to be fat soluble, so that they dissolve easily in your bloodstream. As a result, when ingested in large quantities, the smell comes out in your sweat. “Unfortunately, scientists still haven’t been able to figure out at what quantity the smell starts affecting your body odor in the long term,” says Preti, which means that, at some point, repeated eating of certain foods can make you smell like them indefinitely. Incidentally, it’s the same aromatic-compound-fat-solubility principle at work when you’re tested for marijuana. (We sense a major aha moment here.)

Other foods, like broccoli, Brussels sprouts and cabbage — members of the Cruciferae family – aren’t so strong smelling themselves because they safely lock their stinky sulfur compounds inside, but those compounds break loose when the body metabolizes them. Garlic, too, releases these sulfur bad boys into the skin and lungs, giving you the much-reviled garlic breath. And while asparagus isn’t a cruciferous vegetable, it also produces — you guessed it –  smelly sulfurs, along with a particularly skunky chemical called methyl mercaptan, which pass into the eater’s urine stream.

Interestingly, not everyone perceives these smells in the same way. “We all have between 300 and 400 olfactory receptors but not everyone has the exact same receptors. As a result, we all have different smelling abilities,” Preti says. In fact, some people even suffer from olfactory blindness — the complete inability to recognize a particular smell while having normal olfactory abilities for everything else, which is why some people scratch their heads when others talk about asparagus pee.

So what are some of the other olfactory criminals? “This hasn’t been proven scientifically but it’s possible that long-term consumption of deep-sea products can eventually affect skin odor,” says Preti. A 2006 study by scientists in the Czech Republic found that the sweat of non-meat eaters was “significantly more attractive, more pleasant, and less intense” than the sweat of meat eaters.

But sadly enough, the body of research on this vital subject seems to be severely limited. The best way to find out, if you ask us? Eat yourself silly and keep your nose open.

Riddhi Shah is an editorial fellow at Salon. More Riddhi Shah.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 30 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Slave descendants seek equal rights from Cherokee Nation
58 points59 points | 3 comments
vote
Oklahoma senator who voted against federal funding for Hurricane Sandy victims: Tornado aid “totally different” from Sandy aid
37 points38 points | comment
vote
"Slave descendants seek equal rights from Cherokee Nation": long, detailed narrative of legal and historical complications in red-white-black relations
23 points24 points | comment
vote
Obama opposes GOP bill on Keystone XL oil pipeline: The White House said Tuesday that the bill “seeks to circumvent longstanding and proven processes” by removing a requirement for a presidential permit. The legislation also says no new environmental studies are needed.
21 points22 points | 2 comments
vote
Here come the tornado truthers. Already
9 points10 points | 8 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations