The latest discovery by Berkeley scientists – people gain weight from smelling food

Our sense of smell is key to experiencing pleasure from food. Therefore, the results of experiments on mice at the University of California, Berkeley, are not surprising. Obese rodents that lost their sense of smell also lost weight. It's strange that these slim, smell-deprived mice ate the same amount of fatty food as the smell-deprived mice and thus gained twice as much weight. Furthermore, it turned out that the mice with a heightened sense of smell gained even more weight on the high-fat diet than the mice with a "normal" sense of smell. Researchers' observations suggest that the smell of what we eat may influence how our bodies manage calories. If you can't smell the food, you're more likely to burn it than store it. These results suggest a crucial link between the olfactory system and brain regions that regulate metabolism. This is primarily the hypothalamus, but the underlying neural circuitry remains unclear. The Berkeley team's research is among the first to show that manipulating olfactory data can change how the brain perceives energy balance. People who lose their sense of smell due to aging, injury, or illnesses such as Parkinson's disease often struggle with loss of appetite. The cause is still unclear, as the loss of pleasure in eating leads to depression, which in turn can lead to loss of appetite.

A study published in the journal Cell Metabolism suggests that loss of smell plays a key role. It could be helpful in developing intervention programs for people who have lost their sense of smell, as well as those struggling to lose weight.