We eat the same food, why am I always the fat one? A very sensitive sense of smell may be the key!

The aroma of food can stimulate appetite, but if we eat the same amount of food, can the smell also affect our weight gain? "Cell Metabolism" recently published a new paper from the University of California, USA. The research team stated that the smell of food may be directly related to how the body processes calories.

In this study, the authors used mice as experimental animals and fed all groups of mice the same amount of high-fat food. The experimental results showed that obese mice that lost their sense of smell lost weight, while the weight of the mice that retained their sense of smell increased by about two times. In addition, compared with the group of mice with normal sense of smell, the group of mice with particularly enhanced sense of smell gained more weight.

The results show that the ability to detect food odors is related to how mice burn calories. The key link may be between the olfactory system and the brain areas that regulate metabolism, especially the hypothalamus. However, more research is needed to prove the neural circuits related to this mechanism.

The study was published in Cell Metabolism, Vol. 26, No. 1, pp. 198-211.e5

This article is from ELSEVIER Global Pharmaceutical News