JAKARTA – A new study shows that people enjoy or lift their noses at the same smells regardless of where they come from.
Scientists say the vanilla scent is universally loved around the world. As for the smell of cheese, apple juice, and sweaty feet, it's the opposite.
A team of academics at the University of Oxford and the Karolinska Institute in Sweden adds that our preferences are determined by the structure of each odor molecule.
"We wanted to examine whether people around the world have the same perception of smells and like the same types of smells, or whether this is something that is culturally studied," said study author Dr Artin Arshamian, as quoted by the Daily Mail.
"Traditionally smell has been seen as culture, but we can show that culture has very little to do with it," he said. “Cultures around the world sequence different smells in the same way, no matter where they come from. But smell preferences have a personal, though not cultural, component."
"Now we know that there is a universal odor perception driven by molecular structure and that explains why we like or dislike certain smells," he said.
The authors studied nine groups of people with very different lifestyles, to test whether a person's smell preferences were related to their culture.
Many of the researchers were field workers working with the indigenous people, so four of the group were hunter-gatherers while the other five made a living from farming or fishing.
Some of them don't eat Western food or use Western items very often.
"Because these groups live in different smelly environments, such as rainforests, beaches, mountains and cities, we capture many different types of "smell experiences," says Dr Arshamian.
A total of 235 people who took part were asked to rank odors on a scale of pleasant to unpleasant. Different people in each group had their own preferences, but there were few differences between each group.
Vanilla smells sweetest, followed by ethyl butyrate, which smells like peach. While isovaleric acid, which is found in cheese, soy milk, apple juice, and even foot sweat, is the least popular fragrance.
Variations can be explained first and foremost by personal preference and then by molecular structure.
Researchers say people may like and dislike the same odors because the ability to sniff out bad odors came in handy as humans evolved.
"The next step is to study why this is by linking this knowledge to what happens in the brain when we smell certain odors," said Dr Arshamian. The research has been published in the journal Current Biology.
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