Out of all the senses gifted to us, smelling is one of the strongest of them. And smelling food is the key to enjoying distinct delicacies. But looks like mere smelling of food can now make you fat if studies are to be believed.
Experiments conducted at the University of California, Berkeley, suggest that the odor of food has a direct link with how the body processes the calories.
The new study conducted on mice published in the journal Cell Metabolism implicates that the ability to detect the smell of food is related to whether the calories are burnt rather than stored.
In the experiment, obese mice that had lost their sense of smell also lost weight, whereas mice that retained their sense of smell ballooned to twice their normal weight. Also, super-smeller mice (mice with boosted sense of smell) got fatter than mice with a normal sense of smell when provided with a high-fat diet. Both the smell-deficient mice as well as mice with a sense of odor were fed with the same amount of fatty food.
Céline Riera, the researcher points out that sensitivity to smell is more when hungry than after consumption of food in both mice and human; possibly, the lack of smell tricks the body into thinking that it has already eaten. The body stores calories when it is unsuccessful in searching for food, and feels free to burn it when food is secured.
Source: Comprehensive News
