The sweetest smell of them all confirmed by science
People like the same smells all over the world whatever their cultural background with vanilla coming top, according to a new study.
Scientists have found people enjoy or turn their nose up at the same odours regardless of where they are from.
Our preferences are determined by the structure of each odour molecule, the researchers say.
A team of academics at the University of Oxford and the Karolinska Institute in Sweden wanted to test whether our smell preferences are determined by the culture we grew up in.
It had been thought that culture influences our preferences, but in fact culture has very little to do with what smells we like. Instead, some smells are universally liked and disliked.
For the study, the researchers looked at nine groups of people with very different lifestyles.
Four of the groups they studied were hunter gatherers while the other five survived from farming or fishing.
Some people who took part in the study do not eat Western food or use Western goods very often.
The study’s 235 participants were asked to rank smells on a scale of pleasant to unpleasant.
Participants were living in a wide range of environments including rainforests, mountain regions, coats and cities.
Different people within each group had their own preferences, but there were very few differences between each group.
Watch now: The way your home smells reflects who you are, according to Americans
Read more: Couple ditch daily grind to live in a 7.5 tonne lorry
Vanilla smelled sweetest, followed by ethyl butyrate, which smells like peaches.
Isovaleric acid, which is found in cheese, soy milk, apple juice and even foot sweat was the least popular fragrance.
Variation could be explained first and foremost by personal preference and then by molecular structure.
The researchers say people may like and dislike the same smells because an ability to sniff out bad odours was useful as humans evolved.
Study author Dr Artin Arshamian said: “We wanted to examine if people around the world have the same smell perception and like the same types of odour, or whether this is something that is culturally learned.
Read more: Best coffee machines 2022: from Nespresso, Tassimo, Lavazza and more
Read more: Holly Willoughby launches first perfume - but it's her dress that has fans talking
“Traditionally it has been seen as cultural, but we can show that culture has very little to do with it.
“Cultures around the world rank different odours in a similar way no matter where they come from, but odour preferences have a personal – although not cultural – component.
“Since these groups live in such disparate odiferous environments, like rainforest, coast, mountain and city, we capture many different types of ‘odour experiences’.
“Now we know that there’s universal odour perception that is driven by molecular structure and that explains why we like or dislike a certain smell.
“The next step is to study why this is so by linking this knowledge to what happens in the brain when we smell a particular odour.”
The findings were published in the journal Current Biology.
Additional reporting SWNS.
