Women Prefer Men With Particular Smell - Science Shows
- 5 years ago
Scent of a Man: Women Can Sniff Out a Hot Guy - Men, Listen Up: Women Like The Smell Of Guys Who Eat A Certain Diet - What we eat can influence more than our waistlines. It turns out, our diets also help determine what we smell like. A recent study found that women preferred the body odor of men who ate a lot of fruits and vegetables, whereas men who ate a lot of refined carbohydrates (think bread, pasta) gave off a smell that was less appealing.
Skeptical? At first, I was, too. I thought this line of inquiry must have been dreamed up by the produce industry. (Makes a good marketing campaign, right?)
But it's legit. "We've known for a while that odor is an important component of attractiveness, especially for women," says Ian Stephen of Macquarie University in Australia. He studies evolution, genetics and psychology and is an author of the study.
From an evolutionary perspective, scientists say our sweat can help signal our health status and could possibly play a role in helping to attract a mate.
How did scientists evaluate the link between diet and the attractiveness of body odor?
They began by recruiting a bunch of healthy, young men. They assessed the men's skin using an instrument called a spectrophotometer. When people eat a lot of colorful veggies, their skin takes on the hue of carotenoids, the plant pigments that are responsible for bright red, yellow and orange foods.
"The carotenoids get deposited in our skin," explains Stephen. The spectrophotometer "flashes a light onto your skin and measures the color reflected back," says Stephen. The results are "a good indicator of how much fruits and vegetables we're eating," he says.
Stephen and his colleagues also had the men in the study complete food frequency questionnaires so they could determine the men's overall patterns of eating. Then the men were given clean T-shirts and asked to do some exercise.
Afterward, women in the study were asked to sniff the sweat. (Note: The methodology was much more scientific and precise than my breezy explanation, but you get the picture.) "We asked the women to rate how much they liked it, how floral, how fruity," and a bunch of other descriptors, explains Stephen.
It's a small study, but the results were pretty consistent. "Women basically found that men who ate more vegetables smelled nicer," Stephen told us.
Men who ate a lot of meat did not produce a sweat that was any more — or less — attractive to women. But meat did tend to make men's odor more intense.
"This is not the first study to show that diet influences body odor," says George Preti, an adjunct professor in the dermatology department at the University of Pennsylvania and a member of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia.
Music: Whiskey Blossom by Dhruva Aliman
https://dhruvaaliman.bandcamp.com/album/the-wolf-and-the-river
http://www.dhruvaaliman.com/
Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/artist/5XiFCr9iBKE6Cupltgnlet
Skeptical? At first, I was, too. I thought this line of inquiry must have been dreamed up by the produce industry. (Makes a good marketing campaign, right?)
But it's legit. "We've known for a while that odor is an important component of attractiveness, especially for women," says Ian Stephen of Macquarie University in Australia. He studies evolution, genetics and psychology and is an author of the study.
From an evolutionary perspective, scientists say our sweat can help signal our health status and could possibly play a role in helping to attract a mate.
How did scientists evaluate the link between diet and the attractiveness of body odor?
They began by recruiting a bunch of healthy, young men. They assessed the men's skin using an instrument called a spectrophotometer. When people eat a lot of colorful veggies, their skin takes on the hue of carotenoids, the plant pigments that are responsible for bright red, yellow and orange foods.
"The carotenoids get deposited in our skin," explains Stephen. The spectrophotometer "flashes a light onto your skin and measures the color reflected back," says Stephen. The results are "a good indicator of how much fruits and vegetables we're eating," he says.
Stephen and his colleagues also had the men in the study complete food frequency questionnaires so they could determine the men's overall patterns of eating. Then the men were given clean T-shirts and asked to do some exercise.
Afterward, women in the study were asked to sniff the sweat. (Note: The methodology was much more scientific and precise than my breezy explanation, but you get the picture.) "We asked the women to rate how much they liked it, how floral, how fruity," and a bunch of other descriptors, explains Stephen.
It's a small study, but the results were pretty consistent. "Women basically found that men who ate more vegetables smelled nicer," Stephen told us.
Men who ate a lot of meat did not produce a sweat that was any more — or less — attractive to women. But meat did tend to make men's odor more intense.
"This is not the first study to show that diet influences body odor," says George Preti, an adjunct professor in the dermatology department at the University of Pennsylvania and a member of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia.
Music: Whiskey Blossom by Dhruva Aliman
https://dhruvaaliman.bandcamp.com/album/the-wolf-and-the-river
http://www.dhruvaaliman.com/
Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/artist/5XiFCr9iBKE6Cupltgnlet