Foods
that cause body odor
Sure, the smell of your last meal can linger around your
house–for better or worse–but it can also change your smell.
What causes body odor? Not sweat itself, which has no
scent–it’s basically water and electrolytes. Instead, B.O. comes from a sort of
chemical reaction.
Most normal body odors are the interaction of skin bacteria
with secretions in the area.
Food might alter this smell because certain byproducts get
secreted as our bodies break down what we eat, then react with the bacteria on
our skin.
There’s not a huge amount of scientific evidence pointing to
which foods are the worst offenders, but there’s enough anecdotal evidence to
give us a sense of what kinds of foods find their way into our body odor.
Here’s what we know.
Garlic
You
already avoid garlic before a date or a job interview. But here’s an experiment
to demonstrate why: Rub crushed garlic on your feet (yes, your feet) then wait.
Within
half an hour or so, you can taste the garlic in your mouth. The chemicals get
absorbed into your bloodstream and then into your lungs. Then they come out
your breath, urine, and, you guessed it, sweat.
Chewing
or even just cutting garlic unleashes enzymes that break down into a sequence
of compounds to eventually form allicin. Allicin is broken down in the body
into the sulfur-containing compounds that cause that lingering stink.
A
quick fix for garlic breath? According to one study, drinking milk, either
before or after eating garlic, can help restore freshness.
Onions
Eating onions is equally ill advised if you want to make a good first
impression, and for the same reason as garlic: Onions also break down into
sulfur compounds.
Many of these volatile sulfur compounds have a high odor impact and can
be detected at very low concentrations. In other words, a little goes a very
long way.
It’s sometimes hard to distinguish between garlic or onion breath and
garlic or onion body odor.
Cruciferous veggies
Cabbage, bok choy, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts–among other
cruciferous produce–also contain ample amounts of sulfur.
A lot of the evidence for cruciferous vegetables contributing to body
odor (through your breath, sweat, or flatulence) is anecdotal, adds Smith.
Regardless, there’s a strong argument for eating these foods anyway.
They have a lot of fiber and contain plenty of beta-carotene along with
vitamins C, E, and K as well as folate. In addition to being good for general
health, there’s some evidence they may also help prevent certain types of
cancer.
Meat
Here’s another reason to limit the amount of meat, especially red meat,
you ingest–particularly if you’re a man looking for love.
In a small study, researchers randomized a group of 17
guys to either eat meat or abstain for two weeks. Then they switched groups.
Women analyzed body odor from the men's armpits at the end of each session,
saying that the body odor of the men when on vegetarian diets was “more
attractive, more pleasant, and less intense.
Alcohol
Certainly excess amounts of alcohol can be detected on your breath,
hence the roadside breath tests that can tell if you’re over the legal driving
limit or not.
What you may not know is that alcohol can also emanate off your skin.
The alcohol is metabolized in the liver and broken into acetaldehyde
that goes through your lungs into your breath, but it also gets to the pores.
One or two glasses of wine probably isn’t going to make you reek, but a
few too many (not good for your health anyway!) could. “It’s dose-dependent and
individually based.
Fish
Fish certainly carry their own pungent aroma, at least when they’re out
of the water. But can they alter body odor in humans? Apparently so, at least
in people who have a genetic disorder called trimethylaminuria.
These are inborn errors of metabolism where people can’t break down
certain types of protein, including an amino acid called trimethylamine, which
is produced in the intestines when the body digests foods like fish and eggs.
As trimethylamine builds up, it “gets into your urine. You can smell it on your
breath and also in your sweat as well.
The smell can be a fishy one, but some have also described it as
smelling like rotting fish, rotting eggs, urine, or garbage.
Asparagus
Asparagus doesn’t contribute to body odor so much as it alters how your
urine smells after you eat it. Most everyone produces the stinky chemicals that
are excreted in urine as their bodies break down asparagus, but interestingly,
not everybody can smell the resulting odor.
Some people just can’t smell it.
About 8% of people don’t produce the offending odor and 6% can’t smell
it.
What smells the difference? Just like so many other things, genetics.
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